For months, I was euphoric just being free of TE. While I still had to deal with him a lot regarding the kids and getting the divorce settled, his problems weren't my responsibility anymore and he couldn't tell me what to do. He would take the kids every Wednesday and every other weekend, and every other Monday night for dinner; I had so much more time! I went out with BB a lot, and started to get work done at a better pace after getting really behind while leaving TE (luckily, with the two grants, I felt pretty secure about tenure and was not overly worried about it--and this year I did get tenure!). Slowly, it became normal life, but still much happier and especially more calm than before (except for the thing with LP that I'll have to write about later).
After the divorce was final, which took more than a year because TE was dragging his feet, I made a profile on a dating website. I knew that BB would be a good dating option, but I decided that if I started really dating him, it would be serious too quickly. I needed more time and to think through what I wanted. Dating was really scary, but it was fun too ... the first date I went on, I was totally overwhelmed ... I hadn't dated anyone since dating meant going to the Homecoming dance or something! And obviously I hadn't been internet dating. A guy with a really nice profile, DD, messaged me and sounded nice ... I spent most of the first date just trying to make sure he wasn't an axe murderer ... I decided he was safe, and made a second date. Then on the second date I was thinking, wait, what did he say on the first date? He was really sweet. He was very different from me, more creative and artistic, and he grew up in a more poor, rural area. He had nice friends. It was fun to talk, learn about his hobbies, and hear his perspective on things; I think I party understand pro wrestling now :). In the end, I decided I wanted someone more like me; more mathematical/logical in thinking and someone who loves kids. DD almost had me on the latter point, though, because he said that even though he never wanted to be a father (I don't think that's a bad thing in and of itself, but it's a feeling that I don't identify with), he thought he would make a good stepfather. I remember thinking so too; one night he came over and texted at the door instead of knocking, in case the kids were in bed, and I felt he kind of understood better than most single men what children are like. LP liked him. But I also didn't think he'd do better than BB, who is amazing with my kids. We had a pretty good break up, and stayed friends for awhile (hopefully still are, but I'm not sure we'll stay in touch as he said he is moving away).
I thought about dating one other person from the internet, who I had a huge percent match with, and who's very much like TE (a great engineer, driven to build things) except happier and kinder. But I was thinking that BB would be my choice, and didn't want to lead anyone on. I just became friends with him instead.
BB was single throughout all of my dating, and it kind of made him nervous. Finally deciding to date him was super fun. It was years that we were flirting then half dating during the divorce (at first not expecting anything to happen, then later thinking it was a possibility but very uncertain in the long term). So finally dating to see where it would go was nice, especially given that I already thought of him as one of my best friends (though it was a bit of a worry that it didn't work out, I could lose a friend, I felt confident that we could handle that eventuality). It went about how I expected, which was awesome. I'm not a loner and love having someone else around.
Speaking of not being a loner, in the middle of dating BB, I also heard from LP's best friend's mom that she was looking for a place to stay in our school district. She had lived near us before, but moved away, which was hard on LP (still saving that for another post). Having 5 bedrooms and needing help with the kids as a single mom, I asked her if she'd stay with us for awhile. She's been with us for over a year now and it's been really fun. Though there was some adjustment, I think the extra adult in the house and extra perspective with the kids, along with always having another kid to play with, has been great for my kids. It relieves some of the pressure of cooking and groceries and school pick ups for me too ... though we both do some of this for each other, overall it makes less work for each.
BB integrated into our family life really well. After about a year of dating, he asked me to marry him and I said yes! I didn't want to be the one asking this time, after it didn't work out for me the first time. I don't think he wanted to either, because things also didn't work out so great for him the first time he asked a woman to marry him. But he did it anyway. He got me a purple bike for a engagement present :) The kids are super excited that he's going to be a real part of our family. There's a bit of tension with the fact that he's not their real dad (and he wouldn't want to take that place), but he has been doing great working through those issues with us and I am sure we can handle it. He even went to the parent nights at school while I was traveling.
Thinking back over the single period, I have been happy but also grieved a lot about my marriage failing. I probably always will have regrets about not thinking through the red flags before marrying TE. I wish it were covered better in pre-Cana; I feel as though my Catholic education failed me in this regard. However, I didn't understand sexism and domestic abuse in the same way I do now. Also, the biggest incident that happened before we were married I thought would never happen again because it was from when we were 17, and he seemed to get it and change after that. He really did change right upon getting married, though the change was slow. I also regret not pushing harder for him to seek help earlier, instead getting into the situation where I couldn't feel safe without leaning too much on BB and my other friends for help. I should have gone to the shelter the first time I thought of it, when he pushed me for trying to protect LP before we moved here. After that I didn't realize how much I treated him differently because I was scared of him, and how much the kids were getting hurt. After that, it was probably even harder for him to change because I was just trying to survive, and protect him from feeling bad, and that made it harder for him to understand how he was treating me. Not that it was my fault. But I've apologized to him for this part, and for not communicating even better about the situation with BB, and I apologized to the kids for not protecting them better. I even went to confession (not being Catholic anymore, I thought it would be silly to seek an annulment, but somehow I wanted to say some of this out loud). I feel pretty settled about my shortcomings in all of this, especially relative to when I first became single.
Overall, I have tenure and am about to get married, and I have a great housemate and two kids who are doing well. TE is doing relatively well also, in the sense that he's on medicine and seems happier than most of the time we were married. He's dating a really wonderful woman who also has two kids. There is no way I could have predicted any of this (except for tenure) 5 years ago. I'd say things are pretty great over here.
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