One reason people stay in troubled relationships is idea that being with someone is better than being with no one. They fear being alone, they fear they won’t meet someone else who wants to be with them.
If you can overcome that fear, embrace that you are good enough and open yourself to opportunities, then anything becomes possible:
When I met this man, I fell in love within ten seconds. I was instinctively drawn to him. I was completely unable to maintain my boundaries and fell completely head over heels in love. It was very intense, short-lived. He woke me up. There’s something that happens, some synchronicity of time, of place, the person touches your soul and you wake up.
Cathy was with her husband for twenty-nine years and says it was a troubled marriage from the start. Over the years, she built a protective cocoon around herself and shut herself down both emotionally and sexually. When I interviewed Cathy she described rediscovering her sexuality as her most significant accomplishment since her divorce. She calls the man she refers to here her ‘pilot light lover,’ a phrase coined by Gail Sheedy in Sex and The Seasoned Woman for a man ‘who maybe a married man disguised as a single or a great lover but unsuitable life partner.’