Cindy, I think I could’ve written this entire post myself. Just got out of a 6 month whirlwind post-divorce relationship that has broken my heart far deeper than my divorce. this time I was showing up in this relationship purely as myself, representing no interests other than my own (meaning not my kids, not my economic security, not the expectations of my family and community). This entire thing was just for me: my heart, body and soul. I was showing up in a more deeply authentic way than I ever was capable of in my marriage. And so yes, it hurt a hell of a lot more.
I had actually shared that essay by Tamara with this particular lover, and it helped us explain to each other the powerful magnetic attraction that we had, so to see you reference it here as I am processing my way out of it is such a gift.
Wowowowow. I absolutely could have written this myself, I identify with everything you said. We owe it to ourselves to try, to risk the pain, to learn to be uncomfortable once and for all. And also, that nagging sensation in my marriage that I was dead… it’s time to live again. “Not necessarily better, certainly not safer…. but alive. And that is where life begins.”
This might be one of the most honest, intricate portraits I’ve read of what it actually feels like to re-enter the erotic arena after long dormancy, not just the mechanics of dating, but the metaphysics of ‘becoming’ again. That primal vertigo when the body remembers its aliveness before the mind catches up, when your psyche, like a sleeper jolted from hibernation, begins reorganising itself around want.
You describe not a return to romance, but a resurrection. And what I find especially poignant is the paradox you hold… how desire can both liberate and dysregulate, how it feeds on chaos and yet whispers of coherence. You were, for a time, the high priestess of your own sovereignty (ordered, proud, purposeful) and then came the sacred interruption: the text, the touch, the rush of being wanted. Not even loved… just seen with appetite. And suddenly the woman who had reclaimed her name through discipline and self-trust is now undone by the scent of potential, undone by hope. And who among us hasn’t been there?
You say you were a walking turn-on. What a perfect image of the erotic unconscious unbound. Jung would have called this a visitation of the anima in full riot, not content with mere flirtation, but demanding incarnation. Of course she was out of control. You were reinhabiting a whole dimension of self that had been starved into shadow. And shadows do not re-enter politely.
You are not wrong to be wary of how quickly this appetite can become architecture, how the rush of infatuation can rebuild a cage out of what initially felt like liberation. But here’s the thing: erotic clarity doesn’t come from abstaining or over-indulging. It comes from integration. And you are already mid-way through that metamorphosis. You have invited the wildness in and are now teaching it how to dance, not just sprint. That’s evolution.
And yes, there’s a reason the first heartbreak after divorce hits like a bomb. I was there. I felt it. It’s not just the loss of that person. It’s the loss of the self you briefly believed you could become through them. That’s what hurts, the shattering of a newly imagined future, a self who was just starting to unfurl.
But grief, too, is a kind of erotic fidelity to what you hoped, to what you felt, to what you risked. And that is important too.
Let me end with this idea… maybe the post-divorce woman isn’t “returning” to love at all. Maybe she’s inventing it for the first time, on her own terms, with her full story in tow, and with the courage to both savour the high and survive the comedown without abandoning herself again. Is this just dating? Not at all. That is magic.
And that is a story worth writing. Again. And again. And again.
And I’ll be here to read it.
P.S. And I must say, reading your words and seeing my own quoted within them, not as ornament but as a key that helped unlock something essential in you, left me deeply moved. To have my thoughts live on in someone else’s real, raw becoming… that is the most intimate kind of echo a writer can hope for. Not applause, not agreement, but resonance. A quiet “yes” across the void. I’m honoured you carried those words with you into this next chapter of your unfolding. Grateful beyond language to be quoted — not just cited, but felt.
Thank you for this comment which holds its own wealth of treasure. I'm so honored to be in conversation with you on these topics. We are forging new ways of being women in the world. We cannot do it alone.
Yes, the ~6-month post-separation whirlwind romance (the thing that gave me the confidence to leave my marriage) fucked me around in ways I had never experienced in marriage. I'm so grateful that it happened as I was able to see the kind of relating I want to have, rediscovered my desire, etc, but what a rollercoaster, holy hell. I knew it wasn't meant to last and yet I was still destroyed. The higher the high, the lower the low maybe.
Now more recently I've been dating someone for only a couple of weeks and I'm already wrecked and it hasn't even ended yet! It's barely even started! I find myself wanting it all SO BADLY, following my desire unashamedly, wanting to be wanted and validated and seen in ways I never was in my marriage and wanting to also see the other person deeply, and the glimpses of that are both delightful and torturous because it's never enough. And I'm already afraid of it going away. And I am impatient. THIS one I really like. I look forward to maybe just chilling out one day and seeing where things go with someone...is that possible?
"I'm already wrecked and it hasn't even ended yet!" Yes, this absolutely. Why? Why? Yes, where is my chill? Will it ever come? Feel your comment so much.
I'm sorry, I don't have an answer--my solution was to just give up dating. Rejection in love/ dating is a very personal kind of rejection I think. It's one thing to apply to a job and get rejected, or to submit a story and get it rejected, it's another thing to have emotions/feelings/love/kindness rejected (as depressing as it sounds). Dating has also become very transactional and things like apps try to make it less 'personal' (it's not).
Great reflections - since leaving my 29 year relationship 6 years ago I've become committed to my own life force/eros above all else, and staying in alignment with the truth of how I want to be moving in the world. I trained as a dominatrix (more as a way to educate myself and normalize behaviors the church told me were inappropriate) and have been leaning, carefully, into non-traditional areas like conscious kink, going slow and with trusted people as a way to know and explore these parts of myself I want to be in relationship with without needing to necessarily conflate it with a romantic partner. Trying on these 'parts' of me has been so life-giving!! I do know I do NOT want a traditional relationship moving forward, while at the same time want a deeply committed monogamous lover who has his own house nearby. I think we are moving into the era of the Divine Feminine, for which the playing field is vastly different than what the patriarchy has taught us.
Love to hear your experiences of working with the different parts of you. Yes, it is overwhelming to determine what we truly want, what is aligned for this next version of ourselves, and I think there must be a good bit of trial and error which can involve heartbreak even if you know it is guiding you in your path to what's to come.
Cindy, thank you for writing this. I resonate 100%. For a year I chose solitude and was content. And one day I noticed that longing in me - and I got curious. Started dating, and although I haven't been through a "heartbreak" yet post divorce, I can see why it could be even more heartbreaking than divorce because when you're divorcing, it's possible that you've been emotionally disconnected from your stbx for a long time. But your first relationship post divorce when you acknowledge the longing to feel, to be touched, to be desired and to really connect - and let desire and attraction lead you? I can see how that can be gut wrenching if it ends.
I'm navigating this as a 43 year old - didn't date much before I married at 28. And although cmy desire, awakened longing for touch and to be seen are intense, I'm learning to contain it. And I believe this is a gift - So although I could choose solitude to feel safer and in more control, I'm choosing color. I hadn't felt alive like this for a very long time - I became very good at suppressing my own desire and longing in my now expired marriage.
So I'm dating and experimenting. It IS intoxicating to feel wanted, seen and desired.
Sometimes I let that be the focus, knowing this man I'm seeing now is not the greatest match. (But he's sexy and charming!) I'm learning my lesson. I wouldn't have it any other way.
I really liked your account. I've never been married, but my mental health was so decimated after a devastating breakup years ago, my mental health still feels too fragile to date.
Cindy, by chance, have you watched The Valley? This essay led me to it and it was a fascinating window into Divorce Man, a phenom I'd love to see more people explore. But your post made me think of it because my impression is it's very often the case that divorce is a freeing moment for women and a more straightforward loss for men, and this essay gets at that, too: https://www.gq.com/story/the-valley-bravo-divorced-guy
I haven't watched The Valley though this most definitely makes me want to. I do think the experience of divorced women and divorced men is vastly different. I wonder sometimes if it is due to the agency women exhibit when they decide to leave (we know the stat is 70% of divorces are initiated by women). Therefore they feel like the writers of their own future while men can sometimes feel like this future was forced upon them.
For what it’s worth, I recommend the show. I came to it cold after this essay, and I never saw the series that apparently proceeded it, but it is a fascinating portrait of marriage, and honestly pretty relatable, even with all the Botox on display and such. A nice little junk read for your mind too.
Strange that Tamara mentions Eros and Hedone. As I dug deeper in the past, I found Eros has two types of arrows, one of gold the other of lead. The gold for love, often unrequited, the other for aversion. Both causes suffering as Eros is NOT a kind god but a trickster causing unwanted drama to both mortals and the gods.
Yes, and that’s exactly what makes Eros so fascinating to me. He’s not Cupid with a Hallmark bow, he’s a divine saboteur. Not here to comfort, but to CONFRONT. The gold and lead arrows could be just symbols of love and aversion, but they are symbols of the chaos desire can unleash, how it can illuminate or dismantle. Eros doesn’t hand you what you want; he hands you what you need to unravel, to feel, to transform. He doesn’t coddle your plans, he sets fire to them. And somehow, that destruction is also a beginning. If you read my essay, or my work in general, you’ll understand what I mean.
I probably knew what you meant before reading your reply. Eros fits well with the Sturm und Drang motif or something similar.
I replied to Cindy and you replied to me. I had never read Cindy or you before but now curious. However, because of my igornce, are you Cindy’s alter ego?
Ha! No, I’m not Cindy’s alter ego — though I’ll take it as a compliment. We may share a reverence for intensity, but we are two separate storms. I suppose that’s the beauty of this kind of writing: it draws those attuned to a certain frequency of thought and feeling, even if they enter from entirely different paths. Welcome into the swirl, curiosity is always an excellent first step into the storm.
She quoted me in her essay and I read it, as well as the comments. And I responded to you.
Thus, I invite you to check her publication and her work, as well as mine.
I must be careful. I’m constantly in storms both emotionally in love and desire and intellectually as in the turbulence of Chaos Theory. Sometimes I’m in chaotic orbit around a strange attractor, sometimes I am the strange attractor but often, like binary stars paired in a swirling dance of death.
Cindy, I think I could’ve written this entire post myself. Just got out of a 6 month whirlwind post-divorce relationship that has broken my heart far deeper than my divorce. this time I was showing up in this relationship purely as myself, representing no interests other than my own (meaning not my kids, not my economic security, not the expectations of my family and community). This entire thing was just for me: my heart, body and soul. I was showing up in a more deeply authentic way than I ever was capable of in my marriage. And so yes, it hurt a hell of a lot more.
I had actually shared that essay by Tamara with this particular lover, and it helped us explain to each other the powerful magnetic attraction that we had, so to see you reference it here as I am processing my way out of it is such a gift.
Wow, I am so glad this resonated so much. It is so tender, isn't it. Sending you love and holding space for your healing.
Wowowowow. I absolutely could have written this myself, I identify with everything you said. We owe it to ourselves to try, to risk the pain, to learn to be uncomfortable once and for all. And also, that nagging sensation in my marriage that I was dead… it’s time to live again. “Not necessarily better, certainly not safer…. but alive. And that is where life begins.”
This might be one of the most honest, intricate portraits I’ve read of what it actually feels like to re-enter the erotic arena after long dormancy, not just the mechanics of dating, but the metaphysics of ‘becoming’ again. That primal vertigo when the body remembers its aliveness before the mind catches up, when your psyche, like a sleeper jolted from hibernation, begins reorganising itself around want.
You describe not a return to romance, but a resurrection. And what I find especially poignant is the paradox you hold… how desire can both liberate and dysregulate, how it feeds on chaos and yet whispers of coherence. You were, for a time, the high priestess of your own sovereignty (ordered, proud, purposeful) and then came the sacred interruption: the text, the touch, the rush of being wanted. Not even loved… just seen with appetite. And suddenly the woman who had reclaimed her name through discipline and self-trust is now undone by the scent of potential, undone by hope. And who among us hasn’t been there?
You say you were a walking turn-on. What a perfect image of the erotic unconscious unbound. Jung would have called this a visitation of the anima in full riot, not content with mere flirtation, but demanding incarnation. Of course she was out of control. You were reinhabiting a whole dimension of self that had been starved into shadow. And shadows do not re-enter politely.
You are not wrong to be wary of how quickly this appetite can become architecture, how the rush of infatuation can rebuild a cage out of what initially felt like liberation. But here’s the thing: erotic clarity doesn’t come from abstaining or over-indulging. It comes from integration. And you are already mid-way through that metamorphosis. You have invited the wildness in and are now teaching it how to dance, not just sprint. That’s evolution.
And yes, there’s a reason the first heartbreak after divorce hits like a bomb. I was there. I felt it. It’s not just the loss of that person. It’s the loss of the self you briefly believed you could become through them. That’s what hurts, the shattering of a newly imagined future, a self who was just starting to unfurl.
But grief, too, is a kind of erotic fidelity to what you hoped, to what you felt, to what you risked. And that is important too.
Let me end with this idea… maybe the post-divorce woman isn’t “returning” to love at all. Maybe she’s inventing it for the first time, on her own terms, with her full story in tow, and with the courage to both savour the high and survive the comedown without abandoning herself again. Is this just dating? Not at all. That is magic.
And that is a story worth writing. Again. And again. And again.
And I’ll be here to read it.
P.S. And I must say, reading your words and seeing my own quoted within them, not as ornament but as a key that helped unlock something essential in you, left me deeply moved. To have my thoughts live on in someone else’s real, raw becoming… that is the most intimate kind of echo a writer can hope for. Not applause, not agreement, but resonance. A quiet “yes” across the void. I’m honoured you carried those words with you into this next chapter of your unfolding. Grateful beyond language to be quoted — not just cited, but felt.
Thank you for this comment which holds its own wealth of treasure. I'm so honored to be in conversation with you on these topics. We are forging new ways of being women in the world. We cannot do it alone.
Agreed! Women supporting women is not a cliché, it’s what I believe in.
Yes, the ~6-month post-separation whirlwind romance (the thing that gave me the confidence to leave my marriage) fucked me around in ways I had never experienced in marriage. I'm so grateful that it happened as I was able to see the kind of relating I want to have, rediscovered my desire, etc, but what a rollercoaster, holy hell. I knew it wasn't meant to last and yet I was still destroyed. The higher the high, the lower the low maybe.
Now more recently I've been dating someone for only a couple of weeks and I'm already wrecked and it hasn't even ended yet! It's barely even started! I find myself wanting it all SO BADLY, following my desire unashamedly, wanting to be wanted and validated and seen in ways I never was in my marriage and wanting to also see the other person deeply, and the glimpses of that are both delightful and torturous because it's never enough. And I'm already afraid of it going away. And I am impatient. THIS one I really like. I look forward to maybe just chilling out one day and seeing where things go with someone...is that possible?
"I'm already wrecked and it hasn't even ended yet!" Yes, this absolutely. Why? Why? Yes, where is my chill? Will it ever come? Feel your comment so much.
Also the part about looking at every passing man’s wedding ring finger 😂
I'm sorry, I don't have an answer--my solution was to just give up dating. Rejection in love/ dating is a very personal kind of rejection I think. It's one thing to apply to a job and get rejected, or to submit a story and get it rejected, it's another thing to have emotions/feelings/love/kindness rejected (as depressing as it sounds). Dating has also become very transactional and things like apps try to make it less 'personal' (it's not).
Great reflections - since leaving my 29 year relationship 6 years ago I've become committed to my own life force/eros above all else, and staying in alignment with the truth of how I want to be moving in the world. I trained as a dominatrix (more as a way to educate myself and normalize behaviors the church told me were inappropriate) and have been leaning, carefully, into non-traditional areas like conscious kink, going slow and with trusted people as a way to know and explore these parts of myself I want to be in relationship with without needing to necessarily conflate it with a romantic partner. Trying on these 'parts' of me has been so life-giving!! I do know I do NOT want a traditional relationship moving forward, while at the same time want a deeply committed monogamous lover who has his own house nearby. I think we are moving into the era of the Divine Feminine, for which the playing field is vastly different than what the patriarchy has taught us.
Love to hear your experiences of working with the different parts of you. Yes, it is overwhelming to determine what we truly want, what is aligned for this next version of ourselves, and I think there must be a good bit of trial and error which can involve heartbreak even if you know it is guiding you in your path to what's to come.
Cindy, thank you for writing this. I resonate 100%. For a year I chose solitude and was content. And one day I noticed that longing in me - and I got curious. Started dating, and although I haven't been through a "heartbreak" yet post divorce, I can see why it could be even more heartbreaking than divorce because when you're divorcing, it's possible that you've been emotionally disconnected from your stbx for a long time. But your first relationship post divorce when you acknowledge the longing to feel, to be touched, to be desired and to really connect - and let desire and attraction lead you? I can see how that can be gut wrenching if it ends.
I'm navigating this as a 43 year old - didn't date much before I married at 28. And although cmy desire, awakened longing for touch and to be seen are intense, I'm learning to contain it. And I believe this is a gift - So although I could choose solitude to feel safer and in more control, I'm choosing color. I hadn't felt alive like this for a very long time - I became very good at suppressing my own desire and longing in my now expired marriage.
So I'm dating and experimenting. It IS intoxicating to feel wanted, seen and desired.
Sometimes I let that be the focus, knowing this man I'm seeing now is not the greatest match. (But he's sexy and charming!) I'm learning my lesson. I wouldn't have it any other way.
100% this. I'm in the heartbreak right now. But I know this is not the end of my adventures. It is just the beginning. Our stories sound so similar!
I really liked your account. I've never been married, but my mental health was so decimated after a devastating breakup years ago, my mental health still feels too fragile to date.
Cindy, by chance, have you watched The Valley? This essay led me to it and it was a fascinating window into Divorce Man, a phenom I'd love to see more people explore. But your post made me think of it because my impression is it's very often the case that divorce is a freeing moment for women and a more straightforward loss for men, and this essay gets at that, too: https://www.gq.com/story/the-valley-bravo-divorced-guy
I haven't watched The Valley though this most definitely makes me want to. I do think the experience of divorced women and divorced men is vastly different. I wonder sometimes if it is due to the agency women exhibit when they decide to leave (we know the stat is 70% of divorces are initiated by women). Therefore they feel like the writers of their own future while men can sometimes feel like this future was forced upon them.
For what it’s worth, I recommend the show. I came to it cold after this essay, and I never saw the series that apparently proceeded it, but it is a fascinating portrait of marriage, and honestly pretty relatable, even with all the Botox on display and such. A nice little junk read for your mind too.
Strange that Tamara mentions Eros and Hedone. As I dug deeper in the past, I found Eros has two types of arrows, one of gold the other of lead. The gold for love, often unrequited, the other for aversion. Both causes suffering as Eros is NOT a kind god but a trickster causing unwanted drama to both mortals and the gods.
Yes, and that’s exactly what makes Eros so fascinating to me. He’s not Cupid with a Hallmark bow, he’s a divine saboteur. Not here to comfort, but to CONFRONT. The gold and lead arrows could be just symbols of love and aversion, but they are symbols of the chaos desire can unleash, how it can illuminate or dismantle. Eros doesn’t hand you what you want; he hands you what you need to unravel, to feel, to transform. He doesn’t coddle your plans, he sets fire to them. And somehow, that destruction is also a beginning. If you read my essay, or my work in general, you’ll understand what I mean.
I probably knew what you meant before reading your reply. Eros fits well with the Sturm und Drang motif or something similar.
I replied to Cindy and you replied to me. I had never read Cindy or you before but now curious. However, because of my igornce, are you Cindy’s alter ego?
Ha! No, I’m not Cindy’s alter ego — though I’ll take it as a compliment. We may share a reverence for intensity, but we are two separate storms. I suppose that’s the beauty of this kind of writing: it draws those attuned to a certain frequency of thought and feeling, even if they enter from entirely different paths. Welcome into the swirl, curiosity is always an excellent first step into the storm.
She quoted me in her essay and I read it, as well as the comments. And I responded to you.
Thus, I invite you to check her publication and her work, as well as mine.
I must be careful. I’m constantly in storms both emotionally in love and desire and intellectually as in the turbulence of Chaos Theory. Sometimes I’m in chaotic orbit around a strange attractor, sometimes I am the strange attractor but often, like binary stars paired in a swirling dance of death.