{"id":4348,"date":"2020-06-21T16:47:45","date_gmt":"2020-06-21T20:47:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/motivatedtomarry.com\/stage\/?p=4348"},"modified":"2020-06-21T16:47:45","modified_gmt":"2020-06-21T20:47:45","slug":"true-love-after-divorce-is-it-possible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/motivatedtomarry.com\/stage\/true-love-after-divorce-is-it-possible\/","title":{"rendered":"True Love After Divorce: Is It Possible?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I thought it would last forever. \u201cHappily ever after…the first time around\u201d is the ending of every wedding fairytale, right? But that\u2019s not the way things went. And watching my marriage bubble get busted left me wondering if I could ever find true love after divorce.<\/p>\n

I was 36. I had known my (then) husband for over 16 years. He had been an important part of my world for over a third of my life. And suddenly everything was just…gone. <\/em>I was divorced, alone, marked (or so I believed) by my failure at marriage.<\/p>\n

\"Coach<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019m an intelligent person. I went to excellent universities. I have a graduate degree. And I believe I\u2019m a practical, grounded person.<\/p>\n

And yet, here I was, 36-years-old, I spent 16 years of my life in this ill-fitting relationship (11 years of it in marriage)…and then divorced.<\/p>\n

When I got married, I had most of my life ahead of me with my hopes and dreams for my future. And yet, I had not seen this coming.<\/p>\n

I was broadsided by my failed marriage and was left with all these questions that were left in its wake.<\/p>\n

How did this happen? <\/em><\/p>\n

Why didn\u2019t I see it coming? <\/em><\/p>\n

What was my role in the demise of my marriage? <\/em><\/p>\n

Will I ever be able to find true love after divorce, or have I missed my one chance?<\/em><\/p>\n

I needed answers. I knew my sanity and healing depended on getting them. But it went beyond that. My future happiness and any relationship I might have also required that I have the answers.<\/p>\n

So I went on a quest to find out why my marriage had dissolved. I was determined to learn how to get love right this time.*<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Because this was before the time of podcasts, webinars, and YouTube videos, I went back to school. I took a course on relationships and joined a group of marriage-minded people<\/a> who wanted to improve their relationship skills.<\/p>\n

After participating in this group program, I hired the relationship coach who had taught it. I wanted the one-on-one attention that would help me delve into my personal blind spots. And I wanted to gain greater clarity about the kind of man I needed to attract.<\/p>\n

What I had already learned was that, if I was going to find true love after divorce, I had to go to work on myself <\/em>first. No amount of focusing on the other person (who wasn\u2019t even in my life yet) was going to guarantee me relationship success.<\/p>\n

The other thing I had learned was that finding true love<\/a> takes a lot of work. I had to work on myself — my thoughts, my dreams, my behaviors, my \u201cissues.\u201d And I had to learn how to be in a loving relationship.<\/p>\n

That meant learning from my past<\/a> (my broken marriage, that is) by looking at it with new eyes. If I was determined to find true love after divorce, I had to do the work. I had to work on my self-knowledge. And I had to own my personal role in why my relationships hadn\u2019t worked in the past.<\/p>\n

Five years after starting this journey, I met my now-husband. We got married the year after we met, and we\u2019ve been married for almost 18 years now.<\/p>\n

This \u201ctrue love after divorce\u201d wouldn\u2019t have been possible if I hadn\u2019t embarked on that journey into myself. Was it a lonely journey? Sometimes. Was it a frustrating journey? A lot of the time. Was it an enlightening journey? Always.<\/p>\n

I know you <\/em>want that experience of true love, too. You wouldn\u2019t be reading this blog if you didn\u2019t. So here are my questions for you:<\/p>\n