His Point of View

Since I graduated from college I have noticed a lot of young people who have had a divorce.  In this case, by young I mean under the age of thirty years old.  I have even met a few ladies who were divorced before they reached age 23.  I do know that people get married for the wrong reasons, including in my opinion due to: pregnancy, loneliness, pressure from family/friends, or just because they were in a relationship with a person for many years and it seems like the next thing to do.  It is only reasonable that a person will want to exit stage right once they figure out that their decision to marry was made using poor reasoning.  I am not blaming anyone for making the decision to marry or to divorce.

My question to you people who may have been divorced before the age of thirty is how has it affected your life?  Has the fact that you were once married affected negatively or positively your present dating situation?

Have you found that people consider you to be “damaged goods” because of the perception that a divorcee may have relationship or emotional problems as a result?

For those of us who have never been married, what thoughts do you have when you meet a divorcee on the dating scene?  Many people tend to  blame the opposite sex for relationship problems when they hear that a couple broke up, so do we really give divorcees a fair shake when we meet them?  Really you will only hear the side of the person you are dating so you may never really know who or what caused the divorce so there is an element of uncertainty.  But the reality is that most adults have been in a long term relationship,  and if we are single now that means the relationship ended for some reason and it may have been some one’s fault.  Yet people stigmatize each other for being single as a result of a divorce much more than a person who is single after a 5 year relationship that did not include marriage.   Other than the paperwork, why is a marriage that lasted one or two years viewed so much more different than a relationship that may have lasted 5 years or more that never had an official ceremony?

I do not think that I treat the divorced women I have dated any differently than I do the women I have dated who were never married.  I think the perceived or stereotypical faults of a person who has been a party in a divorce can exist in any person who has exited a long term relationship.  Long term relationships do change us and the end of such a relationship will cause change in us as well.

(image from http://www.mississippifamilylawblog.com/Divorce.jpg)