I\u00a0was married for the first time in 1969. I was a teenager and it was no surprise\u00a0that it was a debacle. I knew nothing about relationships or the real world. I was\u00a0fresh off the ballet stage. I\u2019d lived in a bubble with a group of other dancers\u00a0and my life had been extraordinary in a singular sort of way. I\u2019d had my own\u00a0flat in Monte Carlo when I was 17, I ate delicacies from all over the world and\u00a0I attended lavish parties and galas thrown by the rich and famous. I\u2019d been an\u00a0item in a scavenger hunt, I was feted at the lavish home of Harold Robbins, a\u00a0powerfully successful author and I\u2019d danced in the White House and met the\u00a0President. Being normal was something I knew nothing about.<\/p>\n
When\u00a0I left the ballet at 19, being on my own was next to impossible. Most adolescents\u00a0experiment with relationships in their late teens and early twenties but I\u2019d\u00a0had no opportunity to build boyfriend radar. I was ignorant about day-to-day\u00a0survival so I married someone who gave me constant attention. He was outspoken and\u00a0complimentary and he appeared to be shiny, but it didn\u2019t take me long to find\u00a0out that he wasn\u2019t. He turned me on to drugs, he was controlling and
Narcissistic and dangerous and he was looking for arm candy, someone he could\u00a0dress like a doll and order around. Who better than an innocent, shy, ballerina\u00a0with an athlete\u2019s body and a need for direction?<\/p>\n
At\u00a0first, he seemed like a protector but eventually, I needed to be protected from\u00a0him. Countless women have found themselves in the same position. I ended that\u00a0relationship by escaping and fleeing into someone else\u2019s arms who swept me away\u00a0and hid me on a houseboat in Sausalito. I heard from a friend that my husband\u00a0was irate. He vowed to find me and do harm to the man who rescued me. I was\u00a0plagued by dreams that I was trapped and couldn\u2019t find my way out until a\u00a0friend told me that my husband had found someone else. He soon became my\u00a0ex-husband and I was relieved when I went to court and got my real last name\u00a0back.<\/p>\n
My\u00a0time with my rescuer was limited and when I found myself on my own again, I\u00a0dated several inappropriate men. \u201cYour picker\u2019s broke,\u201d a friend once told me.\u00a0He was right and I\u2019m sorry to say that the condition he described was still in\u00a0play when I met husband #2. It was great for a while. Relationships often begin\u00a0with hope and playfulness but this blog is not about the ecstasy of falling in\u00a0love. It\u2019s about finding the courage to walk away when it\u2019s necessary and find\u00a0a way to make friends with yourself. I was watching an online interview with\u00a0end-of-life expert, Ondrea Levine, who said, \u201cWhen my husband died, we\u2019d been\u00a0living in a remote area in New Mexico so I had to learn to hold my own hand.\u201d<\/p>\n
Life\u00a0is tricky, especially when it comes to relationships. I was when disheartened\u00a0when I woke\u00a0up\u00a0on my fiftieth birthday with no one sleeping in the bed beside me. That\u00a0morning, Grace Slick, my favorite client\/rock star I ever worked with,\u00a0literally sang into the phone, \u201cWelcome to the half-century club.\u201d She thought\u00a0it was funny. I thought it was tragic. I needed to have a close community and I
needed to be my own best friend. That meant being honest with myself and giving\u00a0myself what I needed. I realized that if I treated someone else like I often\u00a0treated myself, I\u2019d be arrested for assault and battery.<\/p>\n
In\u00a02016, I decided to teach writing in my home. It was the perfect way to\u00a0counteract the solitary life of a writer. It made me feel fulfilled, so when pandemic\u00a0hit, I took my classes online and the same people showed up. Today, I have a\u00a0wonderful circle of friends who find my company uplifting as I do theirs. I had\u00a0a birthday gathering in January and at one point, I looked around at everyone\u2019s\u00a0faces. I loved each person who was there, they loved me, and I vowed to
remember that evening whenever I was doubting my choices in life.<\/p>\n
Last\u00a0night, I was happily sitting on my bed watching TV, cuddling my cat and\u00a0knitting, when I realized that if this were the seventh century, I\u2019d be called\u00a0\u201ca spinster.\u201d A woman that I used to know scolded me one day about not putting\u00a0out the effort to meet someone. \u201cWhat are you doing to find a man,\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u00a0joined an online dating site,\u201d I said, \u201cbut I didn\u2019t like it. I decided to let life\u00a0takes its course and if someone comes along that gets my attention, I\u2019ll be\u00a0open to it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201dshe\u00a0said in a loud voice. \u201cYou\u2019re not open. If you were, you\u2019d have someone.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u00a0walked away feeling judged. When someone throws shade on our choices, it can\u00a0make us feel \u201cless than.\u201d Being alone can carry a stigma that we aren\u2019t\u00a0complete without a partner. As a result, I\u2019ve developed the bad habit of comparing\u00a0my life to the way I imagine other people\u2019s lives to be, \u201cimagine\u201d being the\u00a0operative word. Where did I go wrong? I wondered. Why can\u2019t I find my person? Am
I unattractive or unworthy?<\/p>\n
Comparing\u00a0and doubting never end well. There are many ways to go through life and what\u00a0matters is that we accept where we are. In this moment. And to keep in mind\u00a0that everything changes, one of the few things we can count on. I\u2019ve lived\u00a0alone, I\u2019ve had numerous relationships, I\u2019ve been married twice and they all\u00a0have their pros and cons. Everything does, and I understand that my task is to\u00a0make my life work no matter what cycle I\u2019m in. It\u2019s all so unpredictable. My
parents were deeply in love and when my father died, my mother lived alone for\u00a0twenty years. A friend of mine was happy to be alone and when an old friend\u00a0invited her out for coffee, she ended up getting married.<\/p>\n
Some\u00a0of our most profound and rewarding insights in life happen when we\u2019re alone. On\u00a0the other hand, some of our most profound and rewarding insights happen when we\u00a0have a deep connection with someone. An extreme example is Viktor Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist who\u00a0was in a concentration camp for three years. He said. \u201cThe last of the human freedoms\u00a0is to choose one\u2019s attitude in any given set of circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u00a0doesn\u2019t matter what you choose and what you don\u2019t. Life is going to happen in\u00a0unexpected ways and the only way we can prepare for it is to be our own best\u00a0friend and build a loving community all around us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u00a0was married for the first time in 1969. I was a teenager and it was no surprise\u00a0that it was a debacle. I knew nothing about relationships or the real world. I was\u00a0fresh off the ballet stage. I\u2019d lived in a bubble with a group of other dancers\u00a0and my life had been extraordinary in a singular […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2480,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2481"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2482,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2481\/revisions\/2482"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}