Conditioning...rinse, but do not repeat

Divorce, or rather, marriage has a way of conditioning us.

We begin to think that things are a certain way. And weird becomes the norm.

Not always.

But in my experience, when weird does become the norm, divorce eventually follows. Not always right away, but soon enough.

It's when we discover that we've been "fooled" into believing the weird is just how life is, just how life should be, that we throw in the towel.

No one wants to be the fool. Not me.

Looking back, after being divorced for just over a year, I laugh now.

How could I have accepted those strange things as the norm?

It's incredible.

And yet, the conditioning doesn't completely fade away...or maybe a better way to describe it is that the conditioning mutates into another freakish monster.

Let me explain.

I had been taught in marriage to accept that a man will not have eyes for just me, and that expecting a man to love me, and see just me was a wild and ridiculous notion.

What I had been taught was what was really ridiculous.

But in searching for love, post being fooled, the mutant took form.

It seemed impossible that I could find a man who would look at and love just me.

It's true, one gentleman (though I can't hardly call him that) I went out with would comment on the appearance of every woman who walked by, on every date. I felt invisible. He didn't see me.

The mutant belief began to turn into cement.

But.

Then there was him.

The one who taught me, is still teaching me, that he sees only me....that he loves only me.

Last night we were together, and a woman passed by where we sat, and I mentioned something about her appearance.

He hadn't noticed her.

A strange concept.

A beautiful woman could walk by without being seen?

Incredible.

But to him, he had a beautiful woman right in front of him. Why look elsewhere?

Another strange concept.

All those years of being conditioned to believe that men were a certain way, and that it was because I was not enough...all wrong...or rather, weird. That weird concept had become the norm.

And now that weird norm was being shattered.

There are men who actually want one woman. And who love the one they're with. And women can be enough as they are. They can even be beautiful. In fact, a woman will really blossom under such conditions.

Strange concept. Not strange. New.

A new concept I am really taking to. I think this is how it was suppose to be.

Maybe this is part of healing too.



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