I dated someone earlier this year for a couple of weeks. Corona ended our relationship, he had to move back to his home country and I moved back to mine. “Perks” of living in a transient place such as Dubai 🙁

One evening we shared our biggest regrets in life, and he said “I know yours. It must be your marriage”. This assumption made me pause. While I certainly would make very different decisions if I could turn back the time, getting married to Blake is not the biggest regret in my life. Not even a close second.

At the same time, it feels like my biggest failure however. How could I get divorced after not even 3 years? What’s wrong with me that I simply could not make it work? How did I not see it coming before even saying “Yes, I do”. As painful as it still is to think about it, at least I can say that it has been one of the biggest learning experiences: 

Know what you want

When I met Blake, I was convinced that he was “The One”. He had everything I wanted: he was handsome, an entrepreneur, well-travelled, outgoing, witty, caring, a family person. From the very first time we met, I had this picture of us in my head. A power couple. Successful. Gorgeous children. Family vacations with happy grandparents. Vacation homes. Always busy, because we are building something.

While I overprioritized everything that makes us seemingly “successful”, I didn’t pay nearly enough attention to the things that actually make us successful in life. Maybe it’s a reflection of the world I lived in at the time. Dubai with its glitz and glam, many (by no means all however) friends and colleagues who define success in life mainly through their job titles and bank accounts, and being surrounded by (and part of!) “insecure overachievers”. Maybe I was simply not mature enough. Likely it’s a combination of all of the above.

What I missed were the much more important characteristics.

• Someone with close enough values to mine to build a life around them. 

• Someone who challenges me out of the best intentions. Someone with the intellectual abilities to challenge me in the first place.

• Someone who sees me as an equal. Truly. With all the consequences that come with it when it’s time to discuss who will be the primary caregiver and who might potentially have to tone down his career aspirations for a few years.

• Someone who is honest, even when it’s painful.

• Someone who has ambitions in life that go beyond the materialistic. Someone who knows his ambitions in life to begin with.

• Someone who wants to learn and grow not to post the latest podcast he listened to on Instagram, but because he’s intrinsically motivated to do so.

• Someone who listens – truly listens because he cares.

• Someone who can be a cheerleader in good times and a shoulder to cry on in bad times. Again, because he truly cares.

• Someone secure enough in himself that he doesn’t need external validation. I hate Instagram for feeding people’s need for this validation.

There will be many more thinks I need, which I’m not even aware of. At the same time, you don’t put together your partner based on an A la Carte menu. I’m far from being perfect and I won’t find a partner who is. But I hope that next time I will prioritize the traits in a partner that truly matter…which are neither the car he drives nor the number of his Instagram followers!

Butterflies stop flying in real life

Shortly after we got engaged – after just one year of dating – my Dad pulled me aside to tell me how happy he was, but that I should know that marriage was more than flying around the world in First Class.

I didn’t appreciate the full meaning of what he said until after our divorce. I was so in love with Blake, how could there be any problem? Looking back, I can’t help but wonder whether I was really in love with him as a person or with the experiences we shared. The first year of our relationship (pre-engagement), we pretty much travelled the world non-stop. We went to the most amazing countries, attended lavish weddings, tried the most delicious restaurants, discovered the cutest shops and visited the most beautiful beaches. There was so much to talk and laugh about! The year following our engagement was all about wedding planning. We had ups and downs, but overall were very excited. Life was good! After our wedding, the real life kicked in. There we were, a married couple with their daily routine. And somehow had not much to talk about. The butterflies were gone and we failed to replace it with a deeper connection. This connection that makes a boyfriend a life partner. Could we have built this connection if we would have invested more time in our relationship? If we were driven less by external stimuli and move by just “being”? I doubt it. But taking more time to get married would likely have shed a light on us not working out and the “being divorced” would have simply turned into “breaking up”

Trust these red flags

When I gave my girls the obligatory debrief of my first date with Blake, I couldn’t stop raving about him. At the same time, I slipped in a sentence along the lines of “as successful as he is, I don’t think he could challenge me intellectually. But hey, that’s what you ladies are here for”.

Big mistake! As someone who gets so much energy from discussing politics, anything academic, self-development, outlook on life … having a partner who either doesn’t value these types of discussions the way I do or doesn’t have the intellect to lead them the way I was lucky enough to get used to with my friends, colleagues and classmates at university, leads to real friction and this feeling of emptiness. I could see the challenge from the very first time we met. But I didn’t understand how big of a disconnect it would become. For both of us. He often felt that I put him down, which is of course not something I’d want to make the person I love feel.

A few further red flags followed: Him listening, but not really. I turned into this nagging girlfriend never wanted to become with my daily “I told you already, you are not listening” became. Him lying to show off and me secretly rolling my eyes, but not speaking up. His best friend’s wives who were mostly what I didn’t want to become.

I could see all of them, but told myself that they are not important enough to stop our engagement. Overall, I came to trust my intuition so much more than I used to. I don’t always understand it, but do believe that there is so much wisdom inside us, which we rationally can’t access. I won’t make the mistake to simply look away next time around and take much more time to explore whether these red flags are challenges we can overcome or real deal breakers for a relationship.

*****

The one question I don’t have an answer to yet, but which almost jumps out in flashing red lights when I read through my list of things I expect from my partner: Were my expectations unrealistic? Are we part of a generation that is simply expecting too much from their partners? A topic for another blog post!