Ah Venus. What more appropriate planet in our Galaxy to kick off this series on dating and relationships, or lack thereof, since this planet is named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty? Right? Uh huh.
The second planet from the Sun, Venus is the second brightest object after Earth’s Moon. It has a similar size and mass to Earth, so they are often called “Sister Planets.” Like Uranus that I spoke about in the previous post below, Venus rotates in a retrograde fashion, in the opposite direction to the sun. It has no satellites, meaning no moon! Yes, Venus is not in a relationship with any satellite. It has no co-dependent, symbiotic-like thing hanging around it to keep it company as Earth has Moon. And Venus seems to be doing just fine on its own in its own ironic way.
Venus is the hottest planet in our solar system with temperatures of over 870 degrees Fahrenheit—its atmosphere is made of carbon dioxide and extreme greenhouse effect heats up its surface. This is well hot enough to melt lead, people.
A weird little quirk about Venus is that a day on Venus, at 243 Earth days, lasts longer than its year, which is 224.7 days. A 243-day day. Well Dang!
If you weighed 115 pounds on Earth, you’d weigh 104.3 on Venus. If your birthday was today, August 5, and we use the year 1970 again, you would be 74.7 years old, and your next birthday would be September 24, 2016.
It’s telling that a planet so known for its symbol of love and beauty is also uninhabitable, with long long long long uber windy searing hot unbreathable days, and not even a Moon to gaze up at. Double Dang.
I could gaze longingly out the windows of the Lil Log Spaceship as I skirt around a symbol of love and beauty before jetting off to somewhere safe. Or, I could figure out how to completely alter myself so I could inhabit this hot uninhabitable planet.
Or, I could spend some time alone in the Galaxy until I figure out: What do you really really want, Kat? Who are you so you can know who you want in your life?
And most important: What’s next in your own life story, Kat? Don’t you want to ask yourself that, too? And then find out?
Because if we become involved with someone too soon after being involved with someone else, we risk not finding out what’s next in our own stories but instead once again become entangled in someone else’s story.
So if I want to visit Venus, I will be equipped with the materials I need to explore its surface on my own terms. And if I cannot figure that out, I won’t go until I do.
(And nowhere in this post am I referring to the “Men are from Mars; Women from Venus” stuff—my post here has nothing to do with that.)
To start off this series on dating and relationships, I must tell you that being Lonely isn’t the end of the world. Sure we can melt on Venus, or be blown by raging winds, or slog through a 243-long day, but if we have to go there alone to discover what’s next in our stories, then we survive it. Because we must. Because we should. Because being alone is NECESSARY for us to move on and forward and tally ho!
If you are fresh out of a relationship and immediately jump into dating, how is that healthy? Where is the retrospective? Where is the respect for that previous relationship—and if there is no respect, then why not? Where is the grieving period? Yes, grieving period. You are experiencing the death of something. I don’t care if you are telling me, “But it was a terrible relationship! We crashed on Venus and melted to smithereens!” If you were in a relationship, you must grieve its end. Even if only to grieve the “Idea” of that relationship.
If you were in a relationship that often made you happy, you must grieve the companionship, the intimacy, the veritable Two that becomes One. If you were in a relationship that was often stormy and chaotic, you must still grieve the moments of exciting madness.
If you felt you were a better person in this relationship than without it, then your grieving will be acutely lonely and sad. If you felt you became someone unrecognizable—someone you no longer wanted to be—in a relationship, you still must grieve, even if you are grieving over how something that seemingly held such promise ended with such messy crapitude.
I don’t care if you tell me you hate the person you were with and would cheerfully sock them in their big fat nose—if you do not deal with the grief to the end of a relationship, the death of something, and you rush headlong into dating, or worse into another relationship, you are setting yourself up for a world—a galaxy—of troubles. Yes yes yes, there are exceptions to every Rule in Life, but those exceptions are just that: Exceptions. Exceptions are rare.
Exceptions sure hurl us into a lot of trouble, don’t they? How many times do we hear, “So and so did this and such and it worked out perfectly! They’ve been together 5 million Venus days and each day is better than the last! Oohhhh, I want that! If they have it, there’s a chance I can, too! Ohhh!” Yeah. Trouble. Because sometimes those Exceptions lead to Expectations that lead to Justifications that lead to Oh Shit What Have I Done? And yes, okay, sometimes they can lead us to magical wonderlands in a galaxy far far away.
You willing to take that risk with what’s next in your story?
Do please believe me that taking time to lick your wounds and consider just what happened to you and to your partner is imperative for the health of your next relationship—if you decide ever to go there again! Ha! And you will. One day. And that One Day should be after you are strong and healthy. It should be after you consider YOUR OWN role in the “Just what happened here” planet.
Nope, I am closing my ears to your saying, “But my partner was a train wreck! He/She was *fill in blank with putritude*!” Well, even if you only have to answer to my, “Then why were you with them? What attracted you to the putritude train wreck?” Because as adults we do all make our own choices, don’t we? You can tell yourselves you were fooled, or blind with love, or blind with lust, or unaware, or lied to, or whatever justification you need to feel better about yourself, but reality is that there were two people in that relationship and neither one of you is was were perfect. Yes yes yes I understand there are some people who are Bad News and good decent people are swept away by events and personalities that surprise and fool and trick—another Exception. If that happens, then the healthy person quickly extracts themselves from that situation, right? Right! If not, then why not?
If the partnership had beautiful, and mind-blowing, moments, then the grieving and retrospective will be fraught with entanglements. Because you’ll miss those things, and you’ll want to feel them again, and you’ll want to feel them again NOW NOW NOW! I urge you to stop. Take a moment. Take bunches and oodles and millions of moments. Take some deep breaths. Learn to live alone for a while. Learn what it feels like to rely on You and You Only. Learn to be independent. Become strong. Become healthy. Find out What is Next in Your Story, without entangling yourself in someone else’s story—until it is Time.
Now, of course you want the support of your trusted friend(s)—who doesn’t? But even they can only help you so far as you are willing to help yourself.
Consider the reasons you were with your previous partner and then extract what worked about it—file that away for future reference. Then consider what did not work about it, extract that, and file that away in another file for your future reference. Be brutally honest with yourself. We humans have a funny way of denying reality and focusing only on what we want to hear/believe/see that feels comfy cozy to us. You must be so brutally honest with yourself that it hurts—deeply hurts—to consider. And I don’t mean just about your previous partner, but brutally honest about yourself, too. Perhaps you really did do all you could do and you tried with all your big beautiful heart, but, does that mean you did not have some responsibility in the demise of your partnership? Only until you are brutally honest will you flesh out what’s really going on in the head and heart and desires of You.

The good, the bad, and the ugly should be examined.
Diving headlong into another relationship before you’ve grieved the last one, before you’ve extracted the “Whys Hows Whens Wheres” of it all, will set you up either to look for what you are missing from the last partnership, or set you off to find something/someone completely different/opposite. Neither one of those missions is healthy, strong, independent-thinking. When you are ready to date again, you should be dating not with the idea of finding someone to replace the other person. Or finding someone to fill some hole in you. Or finding someone who will make you feel different from the last person. Or finding some warm body to keep you company.
Being with someone just so you are not alone is exactly the wrong reason to be with someone! It’s a sucky shitty reason. And it is certainly a Not Fair reason to the people you involve yourself with.
My last relationship was very intoxicating. And I grieved it. Not for days or weeks. I grieved for months. I stopped telling myself, “I should be over this. I should this. I should that.” Instead, I let myself feel all the horrible sad feelings. The tender moment feelings. The powerful intimate moment feelings. I let myself feel rage, too. Depression. Anxiety. Loneliness. Fear. I allowed myself to feel all the terrible awful things that we want to deny. Because we try to Feel Good all the time. Because we are told to Suck It Up. Because we are told to Get Out There Again! Because we are told strength means something different from what it really does mean: Strength means we must first feel weak and then build ourselves up again. Strength means facing all the shitty crappyness and feeling all the shitty crappyness without denying its existence so hard that we shove it into the Black Hole where we think it’ll disappear forever. Oh, it’ll find its way back up in some quasar supernova explosion—and in the most unexpected and un-wanted moments and times of our lives. It’ll find its way to you when you think you are happy again because you want to be HAPPY! so bad you won’t allow yourself any discomfort. *Shaking my head no*
There were many things I missed about Being Two. My Lil Log Spaceship became so quiet I could hear my own anxiety-ridden heartbeat. I wandered about as a ghost would, sad, lonely, scared. Suddenly, I had to figure out everything on my own. Suddenly, all the bills were mine. Suddenly, there was no sex, no intimacy, no kiss, no touch. Suddenly, there was no one to talk to. Suddenly, I ate alone, slept alone, did every single thing alone. I grieved. I assessed. I contemplated.
But, my friends, I did not jump out there and start dating just to fill up a hole left by someone else. And I’m still not dating. And I will not date until I know I am Ready. And by Ready I mean when I am completely strong again; when I feel like Myself again—myself as a whole independent mind and body. I will know when I get there and I will not rush this. I cannot. I should not. And neither should you.
The other day I looked into the mirror and thought, “There you are.” Because I am discovering myself again. Yes, I am Lonely Woman, but this Lonely Woman life is exactly what I need to find Me again. And once I am ready to date again, I will make choices that are healthy and strong. And the men I date will be healthy and strong. If they are not, then I want to be able to know that quickly so I’m outta there. You must be a healthy and strong person yourself so you can recognize one who matches you in strength and independence. You must find Respect. So you find Self Respect first.
So, my dear ones, though I am not dating right now, I have dated in the past. And, I have been talking to, and listening to, people who are or were dating, and in my next post in this series, I am going to explore some Dating Do’s and Don’t’s. Some of these were real eye openers—just when you think people would have common sense, and decency, and showers (haha!), well, they do not! Ha!
My next give away is Kat’s Choice. That means I get to randomly choose something to send to you. Yup, you just have to trust me . . . and of course you can! Can too! I’ll choose the names to draw from comments, “likes,” and from FB comments/likes, as well. Thank you!
No repairs or whatever today since this post ran a little long, but next week I’ll have more on simple repairs/tools, etc.
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