A Blog by the PheMOMenal Gabi

So you FINALLY met Mr . Nifty. The fella you’ve been on the path for, the fella that will help you land gently. The fella that will rub your back and hem your pants and give you that tough talk just when you need to pull yourself up by the bootstraps.

You introduce your kids, cause you know it’s the forever guy. They get attached. You practically cry when he helps pack their lunch or when they ask him for a hug or when they demand that he become their daddy at your house. You imagine him in an apron handing you a martini at the end of the day,with a smile.

Then…WHAMMO…you find out your “we” ain’t all that. Kinda like when you realized that Santa Claus isn’t real. And really, why did we all get enamored with a fat guy in a red suit anyway?

You thought you did all the right things. You thought you tested the waters and the beaker came back clean. And then, for whatever reason – maybe your life is too complicated, maybe you didn’t wear enough makeup or maybe you found out he had some sort of fetish that they only talk about in strange niche magazines, maybe you found out Mr. Nifty is really Mr. Knuckledragger – for whatever reason, it’s done.

And now? You get to break your promise to your kids. It’s not forever like you thought it would be.

But ya know what? Your kids are watching and listening and paying attention. And when I had to have the “Ya know how I thought I was getting married? Well, I’m not” conversation, my kids got it. They were sad. And mad at me. But kids know when you’re not in love, and they probably aren’t as disappointed as you think. Ok, maybe they are. But it’s alright. Painful, but alright. Because they get to watch you stand up for you – or move through it after someone hurt you. And that’s a lesson worth learning.

That’s the pep talk. In reality, it all sucks rocks.

But here’s the thing: our kids are going to go through the love of their lives 8 bazillion times. And their heart will ache just like ours does. But we have value. And we do count. And the best thing we can teach our children is that we get to decide how we want to be treated. We can teach them that we are just as groovy whether we get picked or not.

Drink heavily while you mourn the loss. Cry. Call friends. Go at it with a punching bag. Get a therapist. But know that no matter what you’re doing, you matter. We just can’t control outcomes. If we could, there would be world peace, no pee around the bottom of the toilet, houses that could be cleaned through osmosis and men who understood that we are, indeed, goddesses. Men would love us at least as much as the remote control.  Ok, that might be reaching a bit. But at least there wouldn’t be pee around the bottom of the toilet.

The post Mr. Nifty & the Lessons Learned in Dating appeared first on .