I was 21 when I met my husband. We spent the next 20 years as a couple. So when it all ended — despite everything I'd hoped for — I found myself facing a question I never expected to ask at this stage of my life: how do you start over?
Committing to someone while you're barely an adult sounds romantic. It's the kind of story a lot of people dream about. But almost no one talks about what happens when that story ends and you're left standing on the other side, unsure of who you even are outside of it.
I never had many relationships. After I met him, I stopped looking for anything else — and honestly, chasing new possibilities probably wouldn't have been healthy anyway. But because of dancing, I'm surrounded by plenty of men, and quite a few of them tried to get closer to me.
Most of them I wasn't open to. But there were a few I genuinely wanted to give a chance. And that's exactly when it hit me: I don't actually know how to get to know someone. Not the flirting part — that's easy. I mean when I truly care about the other person.
The pressure to please
For a long time I couldn't understand why this felt so different from simply chatting with a stranger. Small talk doesn't faze me at all. But then someone gave me a piece of feedback that stuck: I barely ask questions, while I pour out everything about myself. And I wasn't even doing it on purpose.
When I dug a little deeper, I realized it comes from a very real, very deep need to please. I know I'm unconventional in a lot of ways. I don't think about important things the way most people do — and something inside me insists I have to clear that up immediately with anyone I meet.
So I hand over everything I am, all at once. But what about the other side? The part where I actually find out whether the person sitting across from me is someone I could want in my life.
Zero control
How much of this can the rational brain even steer? Can it at all? Is this something you have to relearn from scratch? Or does curiosity simply arrive on its own, the moment that feeling — the one that's supposed to show up at the start of something — finally appears?
I've written before about Ildi, who isn't just a holistic therapist and kinesiologist in my life, but a constant source of support. She always opens my eyes, or shines light on angles I hadn't considered. When I asked her about the feelings and doubts stirred up by a brand-new connection, her answer was simple:
"I wish you'd stop forcing things you can't control."
Me, the control freak… well, challenge accepted.
Connecting in a different way
The whole "how you're supposed to do it, how it's usually done" part is hard for me for another reason: my intuition is incredibly strong. I can "read" people almost instantly, and often I get the answer before a single word is spoken. Not the concrete details, of course — what their childhood was like, what their past relationships looked like. That's a completely different layer.
The other person might interpret this as me not being interested, but that's not it at all. I simply work differently, I connect in a different form. One thing is certain, though: this is an area where I need to grow. Maybe I just haven't reached the point yet where I can open up again as a woman — because the energy behind that kind of opening is something else entirely.
Starting from WHOLEness
Being 40-plus, full of stories, baggage and old wounds, is brutally hard. Rebuilding your life from here is brutally hard.
I'm not coming out of a simple breakup. I'm coming out of half a life lived with someone else, resetting almost everything the moment I walked away — away from the safety of home, away from a foundation we had built together.
Everything is still taking shape. Once my little apartment is finished, once I can move in and truly arrive, that might finally be a solid starting point. I still have to wrap my head around it, because right now it doesn't feel real. For now it's just a lot of money I've paid and keep paying. It hasn't sunk in yet that one day there will be a home that's mine alone — where no one gets to decide what it looks like or what I do with it.
One of my friends said something when we talked about it: he was there the day I signed the contract. Let that stay with me. Let it ground me — because that was the turning point.
Maybe it will become a symbol, too. Maybe that's where something begins — something that finally lets me build a relationship not from a place of lack, but from WHOLEness.
Why is dating so hard after a long relationship?
When you've spent most of your adult life with one person, the skills for getting to know someone new can feel completely unfamiliar. It's not about flirting — it's about genuinely connecting again, often for the first time in decades.
What is the "need to please" and how does it affect dating?
It's the urge to hand over everything about yourself right away, often without asking much about the other person. As described here, it can come across as one-sided, even though the interest is real underneath.
How do you stop trying to control a new relationship?
Sometimes the answer is simply to stop forcing what you can't steer. As one piece of advice in this article put it: let curiosity arrive naturally instead of managing every step with your head.
What does building a relationship "from wholeness" mean?
It means connecting from a place of stability and self rather than from lack or need. Here, a personal turning point — like finally having a home of your own — becomes the foundation for that shift.
