Scared and starting over

iVillage Member
Registered: 11-13-2007
Scared and starting over
2
Tue, 11-13-2007 - 12:40pm
I am a single mom to 5 kids(three are still at home)...I am really starting over here. I left my marriage 10 years ago to a man I married when I was 16, we had been married almost 17 years, things just were not good between us and I was not in love with him and he was not in love with me anymore. A year after my separation, I met a man that I thought was my soul mate, we were together for almost 9 years. He became abusive over the last 7 years of our relationship and I finally left him last year this time.
I don't know where to start with this dating thing, not sure how to go about trusting someone again. How can I bring someone new into my life and my children's lives after what we have all been through. How do you trust someone the way I had trusted him until the abuse started. I have been in counseling, they say all men aren't alike, I just have a tough time believing that. Any suggestions?
iVillage Member
Registered: 11-13-2007
Tue, 11-13-2007 - 1:35pm

I'm pretty new to all this, but i also came from a surprising abusive relationship (i say surprising because it didn't show up until later) and what i've taken from that is to be very careful in the beginning with how fast and hard you fall.

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-13-2005
Tue, 11-13-2007 - 4:10pm

The best thing you can do now is get strong on your own and build such a rewarding and happy life that you become diligent about who you let in. I think counseling is in order so you can seek the reason you ended up with an abuser and put up with his behavior - that would be like extra insurance. I wonder if there is something from your childhood that may have caused you to seek his attention? Maybe not. Just a thought.

We welcome you and hope you stick around and read and participate in our posts. You will see that many women here are in very positive relationships after being in bad ones.

I guess one strength you have is that your first relationship was not really harmful - it just fizzled. Perhaps if you start reading a lot of good relationship books you can learn more about what you want and what it takes to find and keep a good one? That helped me a lot.