Marriages don’t last. When I meet a guy, the first question I ask myself is: is this the man I want my children to spend their weekends with?
– Rita Rudner
Recently I was speaking at an event where my topic was Why Your Business Needs a Podcast. When the event was over a young lady approached me to talk about my podcast Blending The Family. She is dating someone who has kids and she does not have kids.
She wanted to know what advice I could offer her. What I will offer to you in the next three columns will be a blue print of creating positive steps of creating your blended family.
There are some of you who will get out of one bad relationship and then jump to the next one.
For example, after my divorce there were two areas that needed work.
The first was figuring out how to build time around my son Connor. We truly take our time on this planet for granted. My thoughts were that Connor and I would be in the same house until he left for college or finding his own path.
The second was how do I work on me?
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One of the first steps to work on me was, to continue going back to a therapist. This might sound odd but I went back to the same marriage therapist my former wife and I were going to. Odd in the sense that of going back to the person who was not able to help fix the marriage. Not really her job and the marriage was already broken before we ever walked into her office. There were still issues I needed to workout such as depression.
Take time for yourself!
This takes me to how to build a successful new marriage A.K.A Blended Family.
When my wife Ann and I were talking about our future she asked if I would be willing to go to a couple’s therapist? Maybe I am an strange guy but have enjoyed going to therapist. Is that strange?
For me it was difficult at first both dating and marriage to voice my opinion with Ann. In my first marriage I did not have if any say.
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We both did not want to make the same mistakes as we did in our first marriage. Going to the therapist was about how each of us communicated in our own way. Being able to open up to each other is key. For me it was difficult at first both dating and marriage to voice my opinion with Ann. In my first marriage I did not have if any say. Talking during those sessions about our past issues really helped put our marriage on the right track.
Your big take away and your first step after a divorce is taking time to find ‘YOU.’ This is a perfect opportunity to take the hobbies you had to put up on a shelf and now dust them off and simply go have fun.
Even though you might not want to hang with your friends at least surround yourself with positive ones. You really need to focus on your goals and if you have children to also focus on them. No negative people telling you how bad your former spouse was. Move forward.
It took me over 6 months of being mentally down to finally realize that (as my mom would say) my former wife was renting space in my head. I needed to find my passion to help me stop with the renting of space in my head.
I created my first blog to help getting the emotions out onto paper (or typing onto the screen).
Next time we will talk about the steps after divorce when it comes to not just dating but dating with kids.
I got divorced recently. It was a mixed marriage. I’m human, he’s Klingon.
– Carol Leifer
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