the BLOG
This morning my close friend came over to my house and we laid out our yoga mats, following a video on her phone together and getting in a bit of movement. It brought me out of the brain fog I’d been walking around in all morning after a night of restless sleep. She brought her work things over and we co-worked on and off, then went to the first day of early voting in Texas. This somewhat regular occurrence for us has meant the world to me over the course of our friendship. We sent a happy birthday video to another friend of ours, and laughed about something I’ve already forgotten.
Last Fall, I started what felt like a novel journey at the time, but ended up being one of the bravest things I’ve ever done: a nine-month break from dating, from guy friends, and from seeking male attention of any kind. I was 15 months out from an amicable divorce at the end of a relationship that lasted a decade, realizing not for the first time that I’d never taken time in my life to be intentionally single. I instinctively felt that a choice like this would be a gold mine of self-discovery, and I wasn’t wrong. However, my Man Pause gave me nothing I thought I wanted and everything I didn’t know I needed. Yes, this women’s intimacy expert surprised herself over and over again with what she learned. Here are my greatest lessons from this experiment-gone-incredibly-right, and my tips if you’re considering your own Man Pause.
By the time I finally stopped to listen, I barely knew who she was.
My body and I were alienated from one another, me having missed the messages of stress and overwhelm she had been sending me for years. Instead of slowing down to hear her, I was more concerned with the emerging cellulite that came with each baby, the way I barely recognized myself after they were born, and the anxiety around simply not knowing how to feel confident in a swimsuit anymore.
I didn’t feel like myself, and the only thing I knew to blame, or fix, was my body.
There are some mornings (okay, most of them) where I wake up and the first thing I think of is whatever is stressing me out the most. I’ll wonder, Are this month’s business numbers shaping up? How are my daughters still asleep? Are they okay? Is X person frustrated that I haven’t gotten back to them yet? How am I going to finish X project on time? Why does my body feel so heavy right now? Are my clients okay? What is today’s plan for social media? For email? For content planning?
… and on it goes. Until it doesn’t anymore.
The strangest thing happened after my divorce, when I started dating again and I know many other women, including my clients, have experienced the same: there was an expectation maybe in the air, in myself, and in the men I met that my kids were, for lack of a better word: inconvenient.
Dating as a single mom is one of the most emotionally complex things I have ever done because it brought up a lot of my preconceived ideas about mothers and sex, and my conditioned beliefs around what was “appropriate” for us in romantic relationships, especially when it comes to our children. Plus, I felt like an insecure teenager all over again and afraid to admit that in my thirty-something adult body. I needed solid boundaries, a lot of permission, my inner guidance, and someone with experience to show me the way.