Dating After Divorce “Walls”

By: Kenneth Stepp 

People build walls to guard something. Some for defense, some for offense. But walls are always around something. Most are emotional. The offensive ones are designed to keep something from happening. The defensive ones are designed to keep something from happening again. Walls exist. 

Some of us really just want to make it one day at a time without something bad happening. We build emotional walls to protect us from people who may cause a bad thing. Like falling in love. We build them mostly, without knowing we are doing it. One day we are pondering love. The next, we are ice-cold. Nothing could penetrate that. An ice wall. It is a barrier that keeps us from the things that subconsciously we perceive as hurtful. Or potentially hurtful. This robs our future of love, commitment, and the hope of a relationship. I often write about my journey. This, is truly mine. 

Becoming single was both scary and exciting. I fell madly in love with the first girl I met. My rebound relationship. Someone I could not keep. Someone that chose not to be in my life. Long since gone. I pine. Why? If I knew the answer to that maybe I’d know how to walk away. But walk away I must. Real love is out there. I know this to be true now. I am not the one rejected. i am the one found, wanted, and desired. Opening myself once again. I crack that window carefully. Am I safe? Can I be whole? Can we be of one heart? Is it possible? Can I cross the chasm from lost love to found love? I believe it can be. One can only dive in and see. Have you been here? Is it that simple? Merely a decision? 

Questions are always going to exist in the emotional world of singleness. Things happen that can never be explained. Today. I surrender my fears, my past, and my walls are going away. My past must be a place I no longer dwell. I’m a keeper. I am worth it. I am worth loving. I can be someone’s future. And they can be mine. Love is only fleeting if ignored. If nurtured. If embraced. If cared for and accepted. It can grow where it is planted. I love. It’s what I do. It’s what I’m good at and meant to do. For this reason, I receive love, I accept it, I embrace it. To chose the lost over love found is a fool’s errand indeed. One this time I will choose more wisely. To stare into her eyes and see love staring back is Heaven to me. 

“It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power” – Alan Cohen 

Have you taken an inventory of your walls? Like me, they are keeping things out or in that don’t belong. Surrender. It can only better your life. Walls were never meant to be permanent. They were meant to protect us while we heal. Not be something that is part of who we are. Who we are is on the other side either way. Walls are always barriers between us and our destiny. Unless we lower them, they will suffocate the life out of us and rob us of what we can become and with whom. Everyone has a forever out there. Let them in. What do you have to lose that is worth more than that? Nothing is the honest answer. Love is the most powerful force ever. It will win. Don’t discover love after the fact. Dive in. Learn to swim freely and unashamed. Your partner is on the other side of your wall. What are you doing about it? 

www.stepplife.com 

Founder, American Angel Works