Years After My Divorce, I Was Ready to Try Again

It has been eight years since my marriage ended.

About a year after the papers were signed, I slowly started dipping my toes back in the dating waters. A movie here, a dinner and drinks there. But nothing clicked, and I still needed time to heal. We’re all on our own timeline.

As a Catholic, I also wasn’t ready because my marriage had not been annulled. I finally started that process. In 2017, I received my annulment and was free to start looking seriously.

That’s around the time that C (we’ll call her) came into the picture. We are officially dating now. It’s my first post-divorce relationship that’s lasted any significant length of time. Me and C have been dating for eight months. Well, maybe a little longer. Let me explain…

Two years ago, C and I met online.

She lived an hour away, but we had some mutual interests so we started chatting. A month later, we decided to meet in person.

I was 20 minutes late to our first meeting.

Road construction blocked me on the way. I didn’t have C's phone number so I couldn’t call to tell her I was running late. As she waited, she told herself she’d finish her beer and if I hadn’t showed up by then, she’d leave.

I navigated my way through the traffic detours, found a parking spot, and literally ran to meet her at the tavern. When I walked through the door and spotted her, she wasn’t finished with her drink yet.

We hit it off in conversation. She’d never been married, but she didn’t mind that I had. We shared similar passions. She was pursuing a master’s degree and writing her thesis on Catholic nuns. We shared a similar sense of humor (she forgave my bad puns) and a love for books by Richard Rohr and Thomas Merton.

Outside the pub that night, I handed her my business card. Cheesy, I know, but it was the only thing I had with my phone number on it. She texted me the next day.

One night a few weeks later, I walked C to her car after dinner. Under the parking lot lights, I kissed her for the first time. My heart was pounding and my legs were shaking. She was the first person I’d kissed since my ex-wife. Me and C decided to officially date.

But after a couple months, I grew restless. I could tell C was a good person and I enjoyed her company.

But I’d been single so long, I just wasn’t used to sharing my life with another person.

So I broke it off.

Life feels easier when you’re in control. I had controlled my days and my destiny for years. Letting someone else in meant I had to relinquish some of that autonomy. I had to risk. And that can get uncomfortable.

In his book Scary Close, Donald Miller writes:

“But love doesn’t control, and I suppose that’s why it’s the ultimate risk. In the end, we have to hope the person we’re giving our heart to won’t break it, and be willing to forgive them when they do, even as they will forgive us. Real love stories don’t have dictators, they have participants.”

Months passed. I reached out to C again on Facebook messenger. Slowly, we started chatting again. Then we went to a movie. We started hanging out more.

The more time we spent together, the more I was faced with the question: Was I giving up the possibility of something good by choosing not to be in an “official” relationship?

Was I choosing the old ways of easy comfort when something new and potentially wonderful was on the horizon?

Over time, I came to realize something that seems obvious but is not always easy to admit—that the past was the past, and I had to accept that. I was never going back to the life I had, or the man I was, when I was married. Everything had changed. And that change was good. After surviving divorce and the following years of recovery, I was stronger, hopefully wiser, and God had new things in store.

If I started dating C again (if she’d have me back), what would happen? Would I get hurt again? Would I be able to love C like she deserved? There was no way to know.

As Donald Miller says:

“Love is an ever-changing, complicated, choose-your-own adventure narrative that offers the world but guarantees nothing.”

But I was also starting to see again what Mrs. Gibbs meant when she says in the play Our Town:

“People are meant to go through life two by two.”

So on a humid night last June, me and C sat on her back porch and, over ice cream, I told her I wanted to try dating again if she was willing.

I didn’t know where it would lead. But I was willing to take the leap of faith.

Lucky for me, so was she.

Today, we’re praying for our relationship, and enjoying every moment for its time. Just two people willing to launch out into the glorious unknown together. Isn’t that what all relationships are?

Maybe you’ve been wounded. Maybe you’re scared to try love again. Maybe you just like being on your own for now. We’re all on our own journey, and that’s okay.

Wherever you find yourself, consider these words from C.S. Lewis:

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”