Hi everyone,

I put my title as a question because I have posted a lot on my attempts to find a new relationship. This is something I have really started to think about, because I look at this topic in the forums, and it has a massive amount of posts compared to any of the other ones.

I’ve come on here quite often and talked about my difficulty with starting dating again. I’ve dated a few women, fell for one of them, and avoided getting involved in what could have been a bad relationship. I know starting over again, after being with someone for almost 20 years, is going to have it’s hiccups. But is that previous relationship still affecting how things are going when I try to find a new one?

I look back on my marriage now and I know it wasn’t a good one. We bickered way too much, and her infidelities made me harbor resentment, even though I said I forgave her at the time. Now that I really don’t have much to do with my ex, I feel like I am much calmer. Everything with her was high strung tension and the drama was always extreme if something didn’t suit her. Overall, I feel that I am a better father and person since she has left me.

Our marriage finally came apart because I found out she had been cheating on me for at least a year. It wasn’t the first time. Two years into our marriage she did the same thing. We went to counseling and stayed together. I fought too hard for that marriage. Now I think of all the pain that it caused me staying with someone who would readily cheat on you not once, but several times. I start to wonder if my self confidence was so low that I would allow myself to live with someone like her.

I’ve had some short relationships and I don’t know if my marriage hasn’t affected how they played out. I’m starting to feel that I am too eager to move forward with someone and I am scaring them off. I spoke quite a bit about one woman that I truly cared about, but was I too much for her?
After my marriage ended, my emotions came flooding to the surface, and I was more in touch with them than ever in my life. I’m more open about how I feel and I’ve talked more freely about how I feel. Sometimes I think that it is a bad thing to do. Not like it’s bad to say how you feel about something, but the timing of it. I wonder if the trauma of going through a very bitter breakup and emotional upheaval it brought about, is causing me to want to build something better with someone, too quickly.

I’ve basically stopped looking online to find someone to date right now. Having reflected on what happened in my previous relationship, it made me think that I need to feel more complete in other areas of my life.
How do you guys feel about a topic like this? I’d like to hear.