DATING
...& OTHER F*CKED UP STORIES

January 2020. Here I was - a virgin. A dating virgin, that is! I had never been on a date in my life. Oh, it’s not what you think. I’m not some tragic workaholic millennial who never made time to date. No. Actually, I was in a relationship for 17 years. 7 of those years we were married. High school sweethearts. We were all that each other ever knew. We had never been with anyone else sexually or even emotionally.

 

By 29 I had captured a slice of that Great American Dream. College degree, Dream Job, Married, House, Dog, and a Child. I was checking off the boxes as though it was a to-do list. Going through the motions, but forgetting to live in the present. I made every Jewish mother proud and married a lawyer. I was doing exactly what was expected of me as a modern woman - yet I was dead. A walking zombie of myself. I had accomplished all of these wonderful things, but I was lying to myself for years. I thought these items on my list were key to happiness. Turns out in the process of doing what was expected, I lost myself. Or, perhaps, never even found myself. My relationship held me back from growth. I was a bird frantically trying to escape the cage I had willingly put myself in. Don’t get me wrong, my husband was a kind person, in fact, we are still friends to this day, but we did not enable each other to grow. We held each other back on multiple levels. There was no passion in our relationship. We no longer shared the same interests. What you want when you are 16 is very different from what you want in your early 30s. It was rare we would go out together. I was alone, single, without any of the perks of being single.

 

 

Then one day, I woke up…

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 ...And changed everything.