Fantasy Take Two

What if I had my fantasy

Already, yet eventually my handsome prince

Turned to a frog…normal…really,

Then hopped out of our pond,

Leaving space for a new prince.

What will this man look like?

Will he be smart, loving, funny?

Will he do hot sweaty yoga?

Will he share books with me?

Will he like the crossword puzzle?

Wait…that was the old prince

And look what happened to him.

How can I re-write this sequel?

By finding myself a patient man,

Confident, social, optimistic, grace under pressure

And this time, when he becomes

A frog, as they always do,

I will nonetheless adore his warts,

His bald head and wrinkles too.

Because love really isn’t a fantasy.

It’s the practice of daily appreciation.

And maybe, just maybe, it wouldn’t

Hurt if each frog had his,

Or her, very own lily pad.

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Again, it was Six Word Fridays that inspired me with this week’s topic of fantasy.

Of course, I’d love it if you’d share your fantasies with me…

I love a good love story

Another beautiful postcard moment.

Justine didn’t mention something in her article yesterday.  She has a new Guy that she is very passionate about, the one in the postcard, the father of her adorable daughter.  She took a risk ending a relationship that was not bringing her joy and now she has the life that she knew she wanted when she left her marriage.  I love a good love story so I want to share hers with you all.

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An Advocate for Divorce?

Today my ex asked me a thought-provoking question, with your blog are you now advocating for divorce?  Of course, I asked myself this question before I started it.  I certainly don’t want to give people the impression that divorce is a cool thing to do.  Nevertheless, I will not criticize it as a personal or social failure either.

I think that the breakup of a marriage is a very heart-wrenching decision, yet like most difficult life decisions, it does have an upside to it.  For people who are going through a divorce or even contemplating one, I’d like to demonstrate that it doesn’t have to be a disaster that scorches the earth around it.  It can be done with compassion, poise and love and, in the end, lead you to a beautiful new place in your life.  By focusing on the positive aspects of my divorce, I am finding a way to make peace with it, enjoy my new stage in life and also move on.

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A Love Affair

The only drawback to having such a great relationship with my ex is that people don’t always believe that our marriage is over, particularly people that I am dating.  When I sent my first blog post to a recent ex-boyfriend, who himself is a friend (is this confusing?), he commented that I was fooling myself.  I thought he meant that there was really more hostility between my ex-hubby and me than I was willing to admit.  No, he meant that I was fooling myself that the marriage was over.   He claims that every time my ex and I look at each other, especially when the kids are around, we look like we are engaged in a love affair.

For about a day, I mulled over this observation and somewhat seriously thought that maybe I should reconsider our breakup.  I won’t enumerate the reasons why it only took a couple of hours of family time to figure out that my ex boyfriend was wrong… but also right.  He was mistaken that we should reunite as a romantic couple, but he was correct that we are having a love affair.  And I’m sure that our gazes reveal that.

Instead of looking at my husband with resentment, frustration and disappointment, like I often did in our last few years of marriage, I now look at him with appreciation and tenderness.  This is not because of anything that he has done to change his behavior, like I had always hoped he would (don’t we all want to change our partners just a little bit?).  Basically, once he was out of my daily living space and no longer my romantic partner, my expectations of him changed.  A simple, yet earth-shattering, revelation came to me.  I had spent years trying to control him and make him do what I wanted and not do things that bothered me, and it hadn’t worked.  How the hell did I think I was going to influence him now that he was no longer living with me?  When I switched my focus away from what I disliked about him and onto the very real ways that he is a dedicated father and still adoring ex-husband, the love affair that we once experienced rebloomed, like an almost dead plant that with a little extra tender loving care comes back to life.

What my former hubby and I are acutely aware of, and what my ex-boyfriend seems to ignore, is that this caring relationship is predicated on the fact that we are apart from each other.  I am proud of the ways in which I turn the other cheek when he does those little annoying behaviors that once drove me so nuts and instead notice the kind ways in which he cleans the kitchen after having dinner with us or paints our daughter’s toenails or lights up when he sees the kids.  If truth be told, I’d like to be this woman in my next great love affair.  I’d like not to nitpick and accept my lover as he is, not how I want him to be.  I’ve made strides in that direction, but alas, I also know that the nature of intimate relationships is that we don’t always let things go and we do have such high demands on our partners, particularly if we live with them.  But for now, I am content with the platonic love affair that I do have with my ex-husband, and I am grateful that I have an ex-boyfriend to boot to point that out to me.

Robert’s cell

We seem to have developed a bit of a ritual lately: Friday night family dinners.  The kids love having us all together, my ex loves my cooking and I love that he cleans the kitchen afterward way better than I would (we’re still in a domestic duty rut, I see, but sometimes you just have to play to your strengths).  It’s a win-win for us all.

Last night, though, I received a text message that sort of stirred up past patterns.  It was from an old junior high friend who lives in California, a male friend.  It’s kind of cute and kind of silly but Hugo immediately assumes that all men are interested in me, even though I have lots of male friends, you know, the platonic kind.  So he starts making some snarky comments about the guy, which I ignore until I realize, oops, that he is jealous.

I remind him that it is none of his business who I correspond with, and then I remember a very funny moment.  During the first year of our breakup, before he had dated anyone, I was playing the field, as it were.  My ex would sometimes get his hackles raised at the thought of me with someone else, an understandable reaction, I suppose.  But one night he was feeling particularly accusatory and started in on me.

“Who are you seeing these days? It’s Robert, isn’t it?”

“Robert?  Who is Robert?” I replied, without an ounce of coyness.

He kept at it for a while and then finally admitted, “I saw Robert’s cell on the fridge.”  Well, I just about died laughing.  Robert was a kid in my son’s kindergarten class and his mother, whose name I couldn’t remember, had given me her cell phone number.  I had jotted it down with the notation “Robert’s cell.”  When I explained this to him, at least he had the presence of mind to laugh at the absurdity of it.

“Yep.  You caught me.  I am dating a five-year-old boy.”