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What It Took For Me to Be a Happy Single Person
I don’t mean content. I don’t mean not frustrated. I mean happy.
The short answer? Time. It took 30 long months. Months that seemed like they would never end. Months of questioning everything, including myself. And then came the answers.
I like timelines. They’re a solid metric of how our lives have moved forward or remained stagnant. As I was having my morning coffee, I did some math on my past.
I started dating my second husband 27 months after divorcing my first husband. I jumped into that relationship. I wasn’t happy being single. I had forgotten how to do it. Instead of figuring out how to be happy as a single person, I assigned the job of creating my happiness to someone else. I ended up firing that guy and went back to square one.
When I got divorced a second time, adjusting to being single in my mid-forties wasn’t easy. Being the divorcee was rarely ever fun even though I knew it should be. This is now the longest period of time that I have been single. I’ve settled in.
It doesn’t mean I’ve given up hope. This isn’t resignation. It’s not a statement of “I’ll just be alone for the rest of my life. It’s fine.” It’s recognizing my own happiness completely outside of any romantic involvement with someone else. This…