I Didn't Give Up on Love. I Stopped Giving Up Myself for It.

At 40 years old, I made the decision to walk away from a 10-year marriage.

Well, I say I made the decision, but the truth is, we both knew it was time.

We both knew the marriage was beyond repair. We both knew we were no longer compatible. And we both knew I was the one trying to hold everything together with duct tape and super glue.

But knowing something needs to end and actually ending it are two very different things.

Especially when you've grown up believing that a failed marriage means you've somehow failed at life.

And I didn't want to fail.

So I kept trying.

And trying.

And trying some more.

Until one day, I just couldn't try anymore.

Single at 40. For the First Time Ever.

Here's something you might not know about me.

Before my divorce, I had never really been single. I had been in two very long-term relationships, and both had ended.

So there I was, 40 years old, learning how to live alone for the first time in my adult life.

Holy shit. That was scary.

There were the obvious things to figure out. Managing finances on one income. Living alone. Navigating child custody and figuring out what our new normal would look like.

And then there were the things nobody really prepares you for.

The quiet.

Making decisions without another person to consider.

Figuring out what you actually like when you've spent so much of your adult life making decisions around someone else's wants and needs.

But here's what surprised me.

Once I started getting through the scary stuff, I realized there was actually a lot to enjoy about being single.

I could decorate my apartment exactly how I wanted.

I could create my own routines.

I could reconnect with friends.

I could go to a restaurant by myself or see a movie alone.

And can we talk about the unexpected benefit of split custody for a minute?

Waking up every other weekend without anyone else's agenda hanging over your head?

I'm sorry, but that's pretty damn wonderful.

Don't get me wrong. Sharing custody comes with its own emotional challenges. But having built-in time to recharge, do whatever you want, or absolutely nothing at all?

There was something really freeing about that.

And honestly, I wasn't in any hurry to give it up.

I remember telling people, "I'm happy being the dog lady."

Me and my Frenchie were doing just fine.

The Afternoon I Realized I Was Going to Be Okay

One afternoon, I took my daughter to the pool at our apartment complex.

Nothing special. Just a regular day at the pool.

I ended up talking with several women who lived in the apartments. Other moms, some of whom were also navigating life after divorce.

I remember exchanging phone numbers with one of the women so our kids could play together.

And I had this moment where I thought to myself:

This is great. I'm making single mom friends. We're doing single mom things.

My daughter had made a new friend who also understood what it was like to have two households.

I was meeting women who understood what I was going through.

And we were all just sitting there by the pool, happy as hell.

It sounds like such a small thing, doesn't it?

But I remember that moment because it reminded me that I wasn't walking this path completely alone.

Other women had been through this.

Other women were figuring it out.

And some of them were actually enjoying the lives they were building.

I started to realize that my divorce didn't have to be the defining failure of my life.

It could simply be the end of one chapter and the beginning of another.

And maybe that next chapter could be pretty damn good.

I Hadn't Given Up on Love. I Was Just Tired.

I think people approach dating after divorce in a few different ways.

Some are ready to jump right back in.

Some swear they'll never date again.

And some are somewhere in the middle, uncertain, scared, and not entirely sure what they want.

I was a combination of the last two.

After two long-term relationships, I was exhausted.

I had spent so much of my life loving hard, loving fiercely, and loving loyally.

When I committed to someone, I really committed.

I believed relationships required hard work. Compromise. Sacrifice.

And they do require effort. But I've learned that effort and sacrifice aren't the same thing as losing yourself.

Somewhere along the way, I had confused compromise with becoming whatever I thought the other person needed me to be.

I would bend and contort myself to make the relationship work.

I'd adjust my expectations.

I'd swallow my feelings.

I'd convince myself that if I could just try a little harder, be a little better, or give a little more, everything would work out.

And eventually, I lost myself.

I didn't know who I really was anymore.

I didn't recognize myself.

Hell, I wasn't even sure what my own voice sounded like.

So when I found myself single at 40, I decided I wasn't going to rush into another relationship.

I needed to figure out who CJ was without someone else in the picture.

And for the first time, I had the space to do that.

The Part of Healing Nobody Can Do for You

I think one of the most important things I did after my divorce was allow myself to feel everything.

I got to be sad.

I got to be angry.

I got to be resentful.

I got to blame my ex.

And believe me, I also spent plenty of time blaming myself.

I let myself work through all of it.

But eventually, I had to stop looking at everything that had happened to me and start looking at what I had contributed to my relationships.

Not because everything was my fault.

It wasn't.

But because I knew that if I wanted something different in the future, I had to be willing to look at myself.

And there was plenty to look at.

I had trust issues. Big ones.

I had confidence issues.

Body image issues.

Self-worth issues.

And I had a habit of losing myself in relationships because I thought that's what loving someone meant.

Some of those things came from past experiences. Some came from beliefs I'd carried around for years.

I spent time understanding where they came from, but more importantly, I started asking myself what I wanted to do about them.

Because here's something I've learned.

You can spend years figuring out why you are the way you are.

But at some point, you have to decide whether you want to keep living that way.

I didn't.

I wanted to let go of the past.

I wanted to stop carrying resentment into every new experience.

I wanted to feel confident in myself, not because someone else loved me or approved of me, but because I genuinely liked who I was.

I also started recognizing patterns in how I responded to other people.

How quickly I assumed someone else's frustration was about me.

How often I tried to fix someone else's mood.

How easily I could turn a difficult moment into something personal, even when it wasn't.

Those realizations weren't always comfortable.

But they were important.

I didn't want to keep repeating the same patterns and expecting a different experience.

I wanted to get back to me.

And slowly, I did.

Then Along Came Brian

Here's the funny thing about all of this.

Even when I was happily declaring myself the dog lady, I still believed in love.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I believed there was someone out there for me.

I just wasn't interested in turning my life upside down trying to find them.

And then I met Brian.

I've shared our story before, including in my book, The Midlife Awakening.

But there's something about our relationship that I think is worth talking about.

We're almost five years into our relationship now. We celebrated our second wedding anniversary in September.

And we've never had a fight.

I know. Some of you are probably rolling your eyes right now.

But it's true.

And I don't share that because I think we're some perfect couple who has figured out the secret to marriage.

We're not perfect.

We just approach our relationship very differently than we approached relationships in the past.

We've both been through difficult relationships.

We've both loved and lost.

We've both been hurt.

And we've both done a lot of work to understand ourselves.

When we met, neither of us was trying to be someone we weren't.

We talked about our pasts.

We talked about our mistakes.

We talked about what we wanted in a partner.

We talked about the good, the bad, and the ugly.

We weren't trying to impress each other. We genuinely wanted to get to know each other.

And I think that made all the difference.

When You Understand Yourself, Everything Changes

Here's a simple example of what our relationship looks like.

I have a habit of leaving cabinet doors open.

I don't do it intentionally. Sometimes I just move on to the next thing and forget to close them.

Brian knows this about me. He knows it's probably related to my ADHD.

So what does he do?

He closes the cabinets.

That's it.

He doesn't complain. He doesn't make a comment. He doesn't turn it into a conversation about why I can't remember to close a cabinet door.

He just closes them.

And I think that's such a simple example of what happens when you truly accept someone for who they are.

Now, let's flip that around.

If Brian comes home from work and I can tell he's having a rough day, I don't immediately jump into trying to fix his mood.

In a past relationship, I absolutely would have.

I'd notice something was off, assume I needed to make it better, and probably end up frustrated when my efforts didn't work.

I might even start wondering if I'd done something wrong.

And before you know it, we're arguing about something that had absolutely nothing to do with me in the first place.

Now?

I recognize that Brian is allowed to have a bad day.

Maybe work was frustrating. Maybe the internet is acting up again. Maybe he's just not in the best mood.

That's okay.

He doesn't need me to fix it.

And I don't need to make it about me.

We can support each other without taking responsibility for regulating each other's emotions.

That's something I had to learn.

Learning to Recognize Where an Argument Could Live

Another example?

Moving heavy furniture.

If you've ever tried moving a couch through a doorway with another person, you know how quickly that situation can go sideways.

In the past, if I was struggling to move something and my partner started taking deep breaths or getting frustrated, I might have immediately assumed they were mad at me.

I'd get defensive.

I'd start fussing because I felt like they were expecting more from me than I could give.

And suddenly, we're arguing.

But was the other person actually upset with me?

Maybe. Maybe not.

The problem was that I had already decided what their frustration meant.

When Brian and I move something heavy, I don't approach it that way.

If I'm struggling, I tell him.

If I notice he's getting frustrated, I don't automatically take it personally.

We communicate. We figure it out. We keep moving.

Sometimes it's really that simple.

Even something as basic as deciding where to go for dinner works differently.

If I don't know what I want, I tell Brian I don't know and he can pick.

And because we've talked about these things, he knows I actually mean it.

I'm not secretly hoping he'll guess the restaurant I have in mind.

If he doesn't know either, we laugh about it and figure something out together.

There's no guessing game.

No hidden expectations.

No need to turn a simple decision into something bigger than it is.

And here's what I think I've learned from all of this.

When you truly do the work to understand yourself, you start recognizing the patterns that allow you to avoid spaces where an argument can live.

That doesn't mean you can control every situation or that disagreements will never happen.

It means you become more aware of what you're bringing into those situations.

You stop assuming every frustration is directed at you.

You stop expecting someone else to manage your emotions.

You learn to communicate what you actually need.

And when both people are doing that work, it changes the relationship.

Intimacy Is So Much More Than Sex

There's another part of our relationship that I think is just as important.

Brian and I prioritize each other.

Every single day.

We make time to talk about our days. We share what's happening at work, what we're thinking about, what we're excited about, and what might be bothering us.

We make time for each other physically and emotionally.

Because intimacy is about so much more than sex.

It's about connection.

It's about knowing your partner.

It's about genuinely wanting to understand what's happening in their world.

And it's about continuing to choose that connection, even when life gets busy.

I think that deep connection changes how you experience the little things.

Closing a cabinet door behind your ADHD wife doesn't feel like another annoying task when you genuinely understand and love the person you're sharing your life with.

It's just something you do.

And giving your husband space to work through a frustrating day doesn't feel like rejection when you know his mood isn't a reflection of how he feels about you.

It's just part of loving another human being.

We've both been in relationships where arguments, misunderstandings, and frustration took up far too much space.

We don't want to live that way anymore.

We want to communicate.

We want to stay connected.

We want to support each other's individual goals while creating shared goals for our future.

We're building a life together.

But we're also still two individuals who genuinely like who we are.

And I think that's a big part of why this works.

You Don't Have to Lose Yourself to Love Someone

Looking back, I'm grateful for the time I spent single.

Not because divorce was easy.

Not because I wanted my marriage to end.

And certainly not because I think everyone needs to go through a divorce to find themselves.

I'm grateful because that time gave me something I didn't realize I'd been missing.

The opportunity to get to know myself.

To make decisions based on what I wanted.

To discover what brought me joy.

To recognize the parts of myself that needed work.

And to realize that I could build a really good life on my own.

That afternoon at the apartment pool, surrounded by other moms and watching our kids play, I wasn't thinking about finding another relationship.

I was thinking about how nice it felt to belong somewhere.

To have friends.

To have my own life.

To be happy.

I didn't need Brian to come along and make my life good.

My life was already becoming good.

Brian became someone I wanted to share it with.

And because I'd spent time learning who I was, I didn't feel the need to become someone else when he came along.

He didn't either.

We've grown together, but we haven't had to abandon ourselves to do it.

You can love someone fiercely without abandoning yourself in the process.

You can respect someone else's needs without making them your responsibility to manage.

You can support each other's dreams while still having dreams of your own.

And you can build a life together without losing the individuals who are building it.

So if you're navigating divorce, rebuilding after a relationship, or simply realizing you've lost pieces of yourself trying to make someone else happy, I want you to ask yourself something.

Who are you when you're not trying to be who someone else needs you to be?

What patterns keep showing up in your relationships?

And what would it look like to start understanding those patterns instead of repeating them?

You don't have to have all the answers today.

But you can start getting curious.

Because sometimes the most important relationship work happens when you're not in a relationship at all.

And sometimes, the most important person you find after a breakup is yourself.

If you're in a season of questioning your relationships, your identity, or what you want from the next chapter of your life, my book, The Midlife Awakening: Redefining Success, Love and Purpose On Your Own Terms, explores what it means to stop living according to everyone else's expectations and start building a life that feels right for you.

And if you're ready for some support figuring out what comes next, let's talk.