6 Strategies for dating after a divorce or significant break up

1. Sever soul ties, communication, and attachment to your past marriage/ relationship

• You owe no one an explanation for the account of your absences. If it inhibits your growth, healing, or value because it’s rooted in your past, it must go.

• Ask yourself how will holding on to them help you move forward?

• During my divorce I changed my number and disconnected from mutual connections. I didn’t need to keep tabs on him and didn’t need to be around people who felt the need to keep tabs on me and share it with him. Sometimes there is good and goodbye. It’s how you protect your process and guard your heart.

• This is also how you set the standard that you are emotionally available for future relationships and how you attract the right partners going forward.

• Think about it this way, maybe some of the people you dated in the past were broken and toxic. Maybe you were too. So you both used each other to fill voids or used each other as an emotional crutch. But once you become healed, whole, and healthy, you realize the only person you need is you. So you no longer have the desire or capacity to fill those spaces with reminders of where you used to be.

• When you come into a new relationship with that much baggage from your past you will be seen as a burden not a blessing. This is the difference between dating a partner and a project.

• Your attachment to your past is dead weight that will sink any future relationship before it has the chance to sail.

• Being attached in any way to the person you were married to/ in a relationship with and anything connected to them WILL damage your healing process and stunt your growth. Your vision won’t be illuminated by what could be out there, because it will be stuck on what could’ve been. It’s toxic and unproductive to forward thinking.

• Emotional maturity says pruning good character is more valuable than preserving bad company.

• Pruning isn’t just about cutting off, it’s cutting down to grow further. So sometimes cutting your grass low enough to find any snakes might be the best thing you can do. That will be the difference between growing fruitful relationships in the future or growing weeds that will need to keep being cut down because they pull you back to where you used to be.

2. Survey your mistakes and desensitize the stigma of unworthiness

• When I first walked through the doors of divorce I condemned myself more than anyone else could. I felt like a failure because of a fear of judgement. The stigma of divorce labels you as a failure, instead of acknowledging the deficiencies in the marriage/relationship itself. Simply changing your language from I failed, to "it" failed, can remind you that "it" can be left where it is, but you can move forward.

• Stigma is the reason that a lot of people have adopted these life long partnerships and ten year engagements because of the weight and responsibility that marriage and divorce bring. Y'all marriage is a beautiful thing when done right.

• I was embarrassed because I was the one posting on Social media projecting a glorified marriage that could no longer inspire man because it wasn’t honorable to God. At one point I prided myself on inspiring others through that marriage, so once it fell apart I didn’t see how anyone would be inspired by divorce. That just doesn’t even sound right. So I deemed myself as unworthy and invaluable to God as if recycled materials don’t reproduce necessary resources on a daily basis. “Broken crayons still color.”

• The truth is the reason my marriage failed, was the same reason my other relationships prior to that failed. I was the one ignoring red flags, I was the one with low self-esteem, I was the one with no boundaries, I was the one who tolerated continued abuse. So I stopped looking at them and started working on me.

3. Set Boundaries

• The only person you can blame for violating your emotions is you. Boundaries billboard the non-negotiables in your life that can’t be bulldozed because they serve as a barricade.

• Boundaries are your physical, spiritual, emotional, mental, and financial traps and parameters that inhibit offense and abuse.

• During my divorce a lot of boundaries consisted of critical conversations, and releasing people who befriended us mutually. My anxiety was also sky high at the time so boundaries for me, was telling people no I didn't want to hang out, without giving them a long explanation as to why. Boundaries was not going out and having sex with the next person because I really wanted to get back to loving myself.

• A lot of times dating someone who has been divorced may look/feel different because they are very clear on what they will and won’t tolerate. They have very clear boundaries and will state them up front.

• She’ll say she doesn’t want you to meet her son because the last man that played the father role let him down and you won’t be next one to do that.

• He’ll say he can only date you in public places because he’s struggled too much with sexual immorality in the past and wants to hold himself accountable of not going after your body before gets the chance to know your heart.

• She’ll say no I don’t want to give you a list of what “my type is” because she doesn’t want you to waste your time trying to replicate what you think she likes, she wants you to be herself.

• Boundaries are for you, and how people respond to your boundaries solidifies who they are and what position they should play in your life.

4. Surround yourself with community

• Surround yourself with people who grieve with you AND grow with you.

• Accountability is essential

• Trusted sources are essential

• People who are mentally and emotionally rooted in your past grievances, won’t have the capacity to help nourish or bring light to your potential fruit because at best all they can do is throw dirt.

• Keep in mind everyone is not rooting for you or praying in agreement with you. Some people are planning for you to fail again. So with this in mind, its no ones business what you choose to do. However healthy accountability from one or two trusted sources can be helpful.

• Today, my healthy accountability consists of my counselor and my mentor.... dassit.
  

5. Stay rooted in your morals.

• Healthy love, monogamous love, and agape love are sacred and rooted in defined values.

• We live in a dying generation of healthy love because the standard has been thrown out. We live in a generation that is more impressed by the social media trends; riding a fence where we constantly waver our norms and values for the expectations of everyone else.

• When dating after divorce or a break up, the pick up lines and “getting to know you phase” will look, sound, and feel more daunting than ever because your tolerance for nonsense will be low. Don’t grapple with the mystery of surface level attention to occupy your loneliness. Rather, stand firm in the highest level of intimate affection rooted in your standards. Standards still matter.

• Many of my broken boarders were buried in being judged by church people with unrealistic standards. They tried to manipulate the word of God by the church’s standards in attempt to have me fulfill these robotic relational acts to avoid making the same mistakes.

• The best thing I could do for myself was un-root myself from religion and plant myself in my own relationship with Gods standards not the worlds. After examining how my morals and values have been rebirthed in my sacred and intimate moments with God, I’ve thrown out everything else. It’s the difference between a firm foundation and quick sand.

• When people and situations change, you don't have to. Stay rooted!

• Identify YOUR morals and plant there.

6. Stay present

• Trying to paint the perfect picture instead of being in the picture is a trap. Trust the process and enjoy the moment you’re in.

• Don’t over obsess about things needing to be perfect or overly fearful that things will turn out the way they were before.

• There is life after divorce and hard break ups!!!

• There is logic in applying lessons learned. You’re not blind or bound anymore! So move forward and enjoy the blessings birthed in second chances.