✨Breakup Recovery Guru✨ 💔 Everyone has had a breakup. Whether the breakup is from romance, friends or family, the time to heal is now. Heal Healthy. #1YearOfSingle
🌿 Did you know that centuries ago people were convinced that the world was flat? There was nothing that anyone can do to convince the population that the world was indeed round. Had you been someone who believe that the world was round, you would have been laughed into an insane asylum. Imagine an entire population thinking that the world is flat. Laughable now, right?
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Have you ever been to a beach? Have you ever sat on the sand at the beach and watched the water come into the shore, then leave again, come in to the shore and roll out again? What about on land: Have you ever stood in an empty building and shouted just to hear your own echo come back?
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Just as these things happen – waves going out and returning, so do your thoughts. However, similar to the echo in an empty room, what comes back to you is amplified, and it’s not just an emotional thought, is enough time and emotional attention, it returns as an actual thing.
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And it’s based in actual science.
No shit.
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For anyone thinking “this is complete bullshit,” feel free to keep running your life into the ground with constant negative thoughts. But if you’re tired of feeling like the world is against you, and the reign of crap is never ending, I urge you to take six months to focus on nothing but the good things in your life. No excuses.
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If you refuse, then I say you like your life as crappy as it is. It’s your choice.
I still remember the veil coming off my mother’s façade as she lost her shit on me a few times. The sweet, innocent martyr was gone in an instant, and the vicious woman I knew existed just below the surface would reveal herself for just an instant. She quickly reigned-in her craziness again when she realized what she was doing, what she was allowing to be revealed.
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Too many people fall for the narcissist’s act. Get out as soon as you discover who you’re dealing with.
I would venture to say that most people make plans to lose weight or trim-down in the new year. I’ve done so countless times myself. And yet by the time each February rolls around, I’m bored with the calorie counting and repetitive fitness schedule. Another resolution down the drain.
Make traveling your new New Year’s resolution.
Just recently, my officemates and I had been talking about the Keto Diet (although they have taken advantage of its theory much more than I have). It got me thinking about New Years resolutions and fitness. Should I attempt another fitness-health resolution? So boring, I muse. I shouldn’t have to make a resolution in order to be healthy. I want to do something else.
When I saw this meme I thought, This is brilliant. Of course! This is the entire enchilada wrapped up into one shebang. If you become more active – if you get involved in your own life, including traveling – you’ll most likely lose weight and naturally become more healthy. I’ve done it before. I can do it again. So in essence, a healthy preoccupation with anything other than food – exploring new locations and people – should most likely help me to lose weight and become more healthy. An article by Forbes discusses the same thing, citing multiple benefits and studies on how health is improved when we travel for recreation.
I love that. I believe the mind has to be involved in other things other than food. After all, the more I’m forced to think about dieting, the more I eat. It’s simple Law of Attraction. Add to that how we become stressed when we overeat, and it’s pretty clear to me that traveling can actually outweigh the benefits of dieting alone.
And so I put this to you as well. Make traveling and discovery your new, New Year’s resolution. It’s not exactly tossing aside health – it’s incorporating it. The more you explore and see the world, the healthier you become.
My son and I were discussing #StanLee and his impact on the world, and realized he’s affected us as well. Every holiday that we went to the movies – if there was a Marvel movie – that was our choice, and it became tradition for us to look for Lee in the film. And so there we were about 20 minutes ago, blubbering in my son’s room, wiping some light tears from our faces for a man we never met.
Now, accepting that my son and I were misty over Lee may help you realize why you became so attached to someone in your life in such a short time. Ultimately, it’s never the length of time that you know someone that matters — it’s the quality, the meaning that they bring into your life that matters.
Match.com leaves your profile online even after you’ve gone through the deletion process. I know this because years ago I deleted my profile and received the “your profile is deleted, but will be on display until…” reply. I wasn’t happy about it. I wanted the profile down immediately. If it’s still on display, it’s not really deleted, is it?
Match not only didn’t remove my profile when I wanted it to, but it continued to slam me with notifications and emails. I was then forced to change my profile to reflect that I’m no longer willing to be in the dating game, especially on Match.com. “This profile has been deleted,” I wrote. “Please don’t contact me.” Yet I was still slammed with countless emails from guys who either didn’t read my profile, or thought I’d be a fun challenge. Either way, it only proved they were mentally unhealthy.
I had a brief discussion with my then-therapist about this.
“If they’re trying to contact me,” I began, “despite me explaining the situation and vividly expressing that I’m no longer interested in dating—isn’t it really just revealing their unwillingness to get involved with someone who is available?” I asked. Yes, the therapist agreed.
“So even if their profile seems solid,” I continued, “I should probably still not bother because they’re trying to get involved with an emotionally unavailable girl, yes?” Yes, the therapist agreed again.
Hot damn, I thought, Men are just like us. They want to get involved with unavailable women. They may not even realize it themselves, we concluded. It may all be on a subconscious level.
Good God, I thought. I sat back in shock for a minute, proud of myself for the revelation, humored that I could finally see the Matrix, but dismayed over the reality of it all. Logically speaking, the theory actually proves that men who fight for their women are actually mentally unhealthy.
Soak that in. How many of us have wanted our guy to fight for us in some manner or another? So in essence, do we want them to be mentally unhealthy?
My mind was spinning. I left the therapist’s office feeling defeated. I thought about the MarriedGuy who went back to his unstable wife, “fighting” to make his marriage work. Sad, I thought, but good riddance. I realized that if he was willing to take-back someone who was that unhealthy, he couldn’t possibly be healthy enough for me. And I realized as my own self-awareness and self-assurance grew, the dating pool shrank. Significantly.
I crossed New York City’s midtown streets on my way back to work, still thinking about how the dating pool was becoming nothing more than a dried-up puddle. The thought repeated in my mind. Unhealthy men like unavailable women.
In all honesty, women do the same thing. My friends and I clocked plenty of hours chasing unavailable men. So we can’t sit-back and say it’s just the men. It’s everyone. But that doesn’t mean I have to tolerate it.
Unstable men like unavailable women. The thought persisted. I started wondering if the level of unavailability in women mattered. What if a women just didn’t want to get involved because she wanted to live her life for a while? There should be a difference between busy women and women who blatantly say “hell no,” right?
My solution is to find out. I’ve been researching all the things that I’ve wanted to do over the years, but never had time for. While my original “1 Year of Single” has been over for a few years now, I still want to use my 1-year, yet this time it’ll be 1 Year of Rediscovery. 1 year of rediscovering myself and things I love to do. Have you ever spent a specific amount of time purposely rediscovering yourself? That’s what I’ll be doing. And I guarantee, it won’t include spending time on Match.com.
Folks ask me what I’ve learned in a year and it usually comes back to how no guy has impressed me nearly enough to make me keep him around. I usually go back to being happy as a single mom. And the further I go, the more I realize that I’m not sure anyone will ever be worth that changing.
I just had a dream with my ex. He ignored me, I ignored him. He left his shoes where I was in the dream and my old-self would have told him, “Hey, you left your shoes here.” But after 1Year Of Single and taking care of me – I left them there and walked away.
After cutting off cable and watching endless episodes of Biggest Loser on Hulu Plus, I’ve got a big fat hankering to try rock climbing. I know nothing about rock climbing so I’m going to research a few places in New York City. All I need is a wall and an instructor.
This is part of my To-Do list. I may have a friend come and photograph it. Hmmm…
I love the sh!t out of the online cards, SomeECards. Don’t be surprised if I bombard my blog with SomeECards (let’s just call them SEC). So what is SEC? If you’re having a sh!tty day and need a good laugh full of irony and sometimes vengeful wit, check out their site. You’ll be snorting across your keyboard in no time. And yeah, you can also make your own. Imagine what would have happened if Taylor Swift or even Eminem got a hold of SEC before their first albums came out.
“I just don’t understand why you’re single,” a guy said that to me recently. But after years of hearing it from others, I got really pissed off. It’s because I keep failing. Failed marriage. Failed relationships. I feel like I’ve been thrown multiple life lessons and I’m failing every one. Why else would the lessons be never-ending? When I look around, I don’t see everyone else going through years of endless dating torture.
I want to know when these stupid little life lessons are going to end and I’m going to enjoy the fruits of my labor. Where’s the damn prize? I feel like I’m getting nowhere, like a salmon swimming upstream; I don’t even know what the lessons are, or what the point of the lessons are. And yet at the same time, I look back on my decisions and think, “God must be tired of me spinning my wheels all the time like a Gafatch.”
Devil’s Advocate:
I can’t accept that all happily married women got everything right or had learned all these ridiculous life lessons before they got married. Chose the right guy? Stayed true to themselves? Didn’t neglect their friends? Worked their career religiously? It’s a crock. I think most women – and men as well – are in denial about a lot of things pertaining to dating and their significant other.
Let’s talk about the things I’ve been in denial about when it came to the guys that have been in my life. Putting aside the fact that I’m a result of my dysfunctional family and they’ve had to deal with me, in whole or in part they:
– still had feelings for or went back to their ex
– cheated on me
– were on drugs
– couldn’t handle my dysfunctional family
– where in the middle of a divorce
– were not intelligent
– were alcoholics
– were low income
I’d like to say that there were no quality guys where I lived when I was younger, but I’ll be honest with you: I was completely terrified of quality guys. I had several that asked me out in my life and I emotionally and somewhat physically ran from them. I actually married my ex-husband thinking, “Well, he’s kind of a slob, but that’s okay because no other girl will want him.”
That’s excruciatingly pathetic.
Once again we can thank my horrifically dysfunctional mother and father for putting into my head that I wasn’t worthy or capable of dating a quality person.
For the last few weeks I convinced myself that I wasn’t groveling for bits of affection. I quite pitifully accepted being on a back burner. I was allowing myself to be on the bottom of his list. Despite the fact that I get anxiety when I think of having to fit someone into my life – I was still accepting crumbs.
Typically from the above scenario I would picture an unkept girl with wrinkly clothes and no makeup who sits at home, testing her phone to see if it rings. Not the case. I had the week off, but was very busy most of the week. But I realized I was missing an ex and wanted to hear from him – and that angered me. It also made me realize he wasn’t reciprocating.
Denial is such a sick, twisted thing. We think that we’re fully aware and capable and in control, and suddenly realize we’ve been groveling and pathetic.
Denial isn’t good. It’s a shitty river and I can’t swim.
I’m finally, finally starting to respect and honor myself and allow myself to be angry when I realize that there’s no need for me to accept emotional crumbs from someone who’s just not good for me. My friend Joe would say, “You DID win. You escaped a shitty relationship.” After decades of feeling alone in my family and now in relationships, that’s hardly a reward.
The other night I was with extended family at an event in a small, popular town by me (thought I saw Blake Lively walk by with a guy – that kind of town). As my family and I waited on the corner for the event to start, my ex-husband walked by with a girl. He was wearing the same gym shorts that he was wearing the day before when he dropped off my son, a gray t-shirt, sneakers and round black sunglasses. I recognized his beer gut first, then the gym shorts. I wouldn’t have thought it was him if he wasn’t wearing sunglasses at 9:30pm.
I think I laughed for a good ten minutes. I want to take the man shopping so he can get a quality girl. But I thought of two things: 1.) I am a quality girl. He had me and he blew it wide open 2.) I’m not helping any man. A quality guy will do it himself.
Oh, that made my night more than the actual event.
Screw what I’m doing. This is what I’m not doing: I’m not contacting “him.”
You know at some point you’ve all had a “him” or a “her” that you’ve wanted to contact, but knew you shouldn’t. Let’s marinate in this feeling for a moment: Remember how difficult it was to not contact that person? Remember how horrified you were when – if you did contact them – you felt like a complete jackass because it didn’t work out like you wanted it to once you did contact them?
Well, I didn’t contact him and I feel like a million bucks.
This weekend has some interesting scenarios that – if he was a regular friend – I’d be involved in. But screw it, I’m sticking to my Lessons Learned, especially #2. I’ll be honest – I had about eight moments when I literally had the phone in my hand but thought, I’m not investing in someone who isn’t investing in me,and I put the phone down. You would have been proud of me. Hell, I was proud of me.
By not doing something, I am doing something else: I’m valuing me. And hot damn it feels awesome!
Please give me a suggestion as to why I can’t stick to my guns. Do you deal with this self-defeating crap too? Why the hell can’t I be unbending? Hit Like if you know what I mean!
I had a brief discussion with my then-therapist about this.
1 Year of Single 