Widowed or Divorced? The Truth About Starting Over and Finding Love Again with Dr. John Gray

If there’s fear, sadness, hurt, there’s also anger
 So there’s always these four levels
 Then under after you explore those, then you’ll get in touch with what do I want? And that’s where you know when it’s time to start dating again
 Thank you so much for joining us today on Second Act TV
 Today, I’m so happy to welcome back the best-selling author of the most trusted and well-known relationship book of all times, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, Dr
 John Gray
 John, thanks so much for being here again
 It’s a pleasure
 Always a pleasure
 Well, and incidentally, I do have your most recent book, Sending Behind Beyond Mars and Venus, which which is the update to your iconic bestseller, and we’ll we’ll have the link in the show notes below, as well as all your other stuff that that viewers can access
 What I would like to talk about today is actually pick up on a conversation that we had gosh roughly uh three or four years ago, and that’s starting over after the loss of a loved one
 you know, a topic that you bring not only your professional expertise to, but but a very very personal one
 And just to give some quick context to our viewers, you lost your wife, Bonnie, of 34 years
 I think it’s roughly eight years ago now or so
 Yeah, about eight years
 Well, you went through the grieving process that which you eloquently explained in our segment
 I’ll make sure that we that we link to all that
 And then you started well, you opened your heart up again for love
 You did find love and and you’re remarried again
 So this is the outcome that so many of our of our viewers are looking for
 What do they need to understand that they might not otherwise know? Actually, I wrote the book Mars and Venus starting over before my wife died, but it was book a very important book that people needed to experience
 I went through a divorce before I married Bonnie
 So I married Bonnie
 We had stayed together almost 34 years till she passed
 But before that, I was married for a few years when my heart was innocent and my heart was broken
 She fell in love with another man
 It was a big story
 But that was devastating
 And based upon going through that process, I wrote the book starting over for people who had gone through a divorce
 And I also said it’s very similar to losing a spouse
 So whether it’s divorce or a spouse, I’ll be referring to those ideas in terms of what I needed to know
 Now, when it’s when it’s a spouse, you didn’t choose to leave
 And so it takes it’s more sweet to heal, but it takes longer to heal
 When I say I’ve healed my heart with Bonnie, I miss her quite a bit
 And yet my heart fills up with my new partner and with my grandchildren, so I’m not missing her at those times
 But my wife also has a job in which she travels for her job
 I miss my wife, but I miss Bonnie as well
 Okay
 So, what I’ll just say is what I do at those times because I didn’t choose to lose her in my life
 My feeling is I just say to myself, I’m feeling sad
 I’m feeling lonely
 I miss Bonnie
 And then that’s painful
 I can still feel the pain
 Then I say, but why do I feel the pain? Why do I miss Bonnie? Because I love her so much
 And even just now just saying that even I wasn’t feeling much pain at all but just connecting to missing her
 Why do I miss her? Why is it painful? Because I love her
 And when you say because I love her, the love comes up and heals the pain
 See, instead of feeling pain now, I feel a little teary eyed and I feel love
 And that’s very important for people to know
 But whether whether it be from a divorce where you know it’s you’re not really missing that person, you might be even glad to be without that person
 The truth is someone did die and the dream died
 You bond with somebody and even if it’s a relationship that’s not working, you still had sex with them for a while
 You bond with them and they become like an appendage
 So when that person’s not in your life, even if you don’t want them in your life, they’re still a part of you
 You feel as though something’s missing in your life and it’s it’s a part of you and your brain thinks, “I don’t need love
 I need that person to feel love
” And until you find somebody else to bond with, you don’t get over it
 It’s very important for single women, more so for women, but also for men
 But women bond more because they have higher estrogen levels
 So my recommendation for women and for men is to start dating as soon as possible
 Now you do have to go through a grieving process and and I’ll talk a little bit about that
 But as you move through that, you also need to change your behavior and start dating people, but not from the point of view of okay, I’m going to fall in love
 I’m going to go have sex
 But you need companionship
 You need to feel supported so that you start attaching to somebody else
 So your brain will start connecting
 Otherwise, you’re still going to feel part of you is going to feel abandoned and alone because you can’t get love
 And it’s not intellectual, it’s biological
 Well, you bring us to to an interesting point, which is, you know, so many say, “Well, it’s just it’s too soon
 You’re too you get so much criticism first of all, when you lose someone and and you start dating again, you know, what’s the like it’s anybody’s business
” But what you know, criticism
 Oh, absolutely
 Absolutely
 Your kids as well
 My kids were very upset with me
 Well, that’s another good question
 You know, I I actually was going to get to that later, but since you brought it up, the guilt that comes up and I don’t I’m not saying you felt guilt
 I’ll ask you that
 But all the stuff that’s in your head before you even start again, you know, how do you deal with that? How do you know you’re ready? Well, the way you know you’re ready, you’re never going to know you’re ready because you’re not going to get ready because you’re still attached over here and you’re not going to feel safe
 See, the whole thing for women particularly is feeling safe to step out of that boundary till they want to
 You’re not going to want to for many women
 Women take much longer than men and for some men even they take longer
 I knew in my mind the philosophy is get on the horse as soon as you can
 But first there has to be a grieving period and some people don’t know how to grieve
 So a brief story on a grieving is journaling a lot
 What you do is you journal all the good qualities of your partner or if you’re not feeling all the good qualities because you got a divorce, you you have to journal your feelings of abandonment
 And even if you’re the one who chose to divorce, you still feel they ruined your life
 Okay? It’s like nobody leaves a relationship if they think it’s all working
 So, so you have to you have to connect with that part of you that was in love through forgiveness and realizing we just couldn’t make it work and and I’m going to move on
 So, it’s getting in touch with your soul’s desire to not be alone, to be connected
 What that would be is a whole journaling process of writing out what you’re angry about, writing out what you feel sad and hurt about, writing out then your fears
 Will anybody love me again? Will I be happy again? and will the same problem happen again? How do I know if it’s the right person? Do I really need this? These are all fears that everybody has
 And everybody also has anger
 Anger is I don’t like this
 I’m mad about this and I’m mad
 You’ve been disappointed in on an emotional level
 You’ve been betrayed
 You gave your heart to someone and it didn’t come back to you
 So, there’s a feeling of betrayal
 And some people are too nice to feel that
 But what I have to do with my clients is make sure that I go with what emotion they can feel, which is often sadness or hurt or they’re in complete denial and they go, “I’m glad to be out of that relationship
” Okay? But you need to process that there is a feeling of abandonment and rejection
 And you have to give yourself permission to feel angry, to feel sad, to feel afraid, and to feel sorry
 That’s where you make amends
 You have to reflect on okay what were my mistakes in the relationship
 It’s very hard particularly for women to feel trust in a man again that you can open your heart that you can get naked with somebody and you can open your heart to them and let them affect you
 That’s what relationships are
 You’re letting somebody influence you and in a more profound way than anybody else can
 Uh and and that’s that vulnerability happens when you have sex which is why you don’t want to jump into sex right away
 But so you set your mindset when I do start dating, it’s not going to be I’m going to have sex right away and I’m not going to get naked right away
 I’m going to be very clear
 I’m just looking for some companionship, some friendship and and maybe something can happen
 But I highly recommend that you don’t go out and have sex and and or think or in your mind you think, “Oh, men want that
” No, men also want companionship, too
 And and some men as they get older, sex is not as important to them
 What they’re looking for is companionship as well
 Well, you’ve brought up a lot of points right now which really lead us into one of the main topics that I want to focus on and that is that there are two people
 What does the person who is dating a widow or widowerower really need to understand about this process? Because when like at the top of the show here you were explaining how much you you miss Bonnie, you know, the the love I love her
 I know that somebody like me who is insecure attachment
 I I that would be really hard for me to deal with
 You know what what is it that people like myself or people in general need to understand about dating a widow and witterer? Well, what you’ve just touched on with the in insecure attachment is you want to feel number one
 They don’t want to be second base to somebody else
 And I understand that
 And some people kind of when I’m give this example because my wife when I married her, it wasn’t before I married her, but after I married her, she said, “Do you love me more than your wife?” It was like, so I’m going to give people the answer
 I didn’t like figure it out
 It just came true, but it is true
 Is what I told her is is I will always love Bonnie
 you know, we spent actually I knew her for 40 years
 She’s a big part of my life and a part of me
 It doesn’t mean I don’t love you
 What I actually said is after going through the grieving process and healing my heart, my heart is much bigger than ever before
 It really is
 If if I as a writer, I want to give examples for this other than my marriage
 If I’m writing in a book and I the computer just sometimes it mysteriously just eliminates a chapter
 Okay? just like where did that go and I can’t get it back in my mind I’m thinking I’m really struggling with I don’t like it that much I might get rid of it but if I lose it suddenly it’s the best chapter I’ve ever written anytime you lose something it becomes more important to you it’s like sometimes I loan things out and finally I get them back I miss them a lot I didn’t get it back but then I don’t use it we we value more the things we lose because as human beings we can’t keep our hearts open all the time but loss if you grieve the loss will open your heart more
 So, I told my wife honestly, I said, you know, I’ll always love Bonnie, but grieving the loss of Bonnie has opened my heart up more
 So, you’re going to get a much better husband than than Bonnie, and I love you more
 I can’t because I can love you more
 See, there’s a place in my heart, I’m just so much more of a loving person now
 You know, I love my children more, my grandchildren more
 Everything opened up by by grieving a loss
 anytime you do a we go through a difficult time and you get through it, you become stronger and your love becomes stronger if you process it
 So that’s the process
 So she knows I love her and we do a reassurance exercises all the time
 Uh which I think whether it’s starting over or not is really good for women because when you just said your insecure attachment, every woman is insecure attachment and every man is avoidant attachment
 That’s all just talking about differences between men and women without pointing out that this is women and this is men
 And and it does reverse for some people
 If men are too far on their on their female side, they’re not making enough testosterone, then they will start having anxious attachment
 So there’s a little exercise for women who are starting over at a certain point when insecurity comes up
 I call it the reassurance exercise
 Four times a day, the man pursues the woman
 It’s like a little game
 You pursue her to give her a hug, an 8-second hug
 She doesn’t initiate it at all
 He initiates that
 And then after one of those hugs, she initiates the reassurance exercise where she says the following
 Do you like me? He’s It’s a script
 You just follow the script
 He says, “I like you
” He says, “Yes
” She says, “Do you love me?” “Yes
” “How much do you love me?” With all my heart
 Do you think I’m beautiful? And you will feel his heart will totally open up
 He just needs a little foreplay for his mirror neurons to open up
 See, men do not feel their love all the time
 We can’t
 We don’t have the hormones for it
 We can love our partners, but we don’t feel the love
 Women can actually be mad at their partner and feel the love because they have high estrogen
 Well, and and I think you also mentioned that because we’ve talked about anger uh quite a bit here, processing that
 And and the point is that a lot of people there is anger towards the person that that left that died
 Yes
 Then that’s really hard to express anger at somebody who died because you tend to put on a pedestal
 Your brain will tend to you’re missing them
 You’ll tend to look at them as perfect and they weren’t
 And so it’s confusing, but we just need help to know that if there’s fear, sadness, hurt, there’s also anger
 And so you give yourself permission to express it
 But you may not want to go tell other people you’re angry, but you can journal it
 That’s the whole point of this exercise
 So there’s always these four levels
 Then under after you explore those, then you’ll get in touch with what do I want? And that’s where you know when it’s time to start dating again
 You’re grieving through and I want to feel love
 I want to do this
 I want this
 I want this
 I want this
 That awakens your motivation to start dating again
 Now I I think everybody has to go by their own feeling
 But if you wait more than a year, you’re taking too long
 Way too long
 You know, we’re talking we’re not talking about having sex
 We’re not talking about getting married
 We’re talking about if you’re a woman creating a space for men who are interested in you who you would never marry, let them take you out
 You don’t often women feel, well, if I’m not going to put out for you, I don’t want to uh lead you on
 You’re not leading any man on
 When he made pays for your dinner and you smile, you gave him a gift
 Women have to understand men and women are different
 Whenever you appreciate what a man does for you, you’ve given him a gift
 If you owe him nothing more, you know, women are reciprocal
 You do something for me, I want to do something for you
 What you just did for him is nothing other than how you responded to what he provided for you
 Now, what if you were c this is this popped in my head
 If you’re counseling someone on the other side of that, would would you recom I mean would you want them to date someone who’s not who’s not there who is is is just dating to get out there to get practice? I mean, if they’re looking for a committed relationship, are we talking about a man who’s with a woman saying, “I just want to Yeah
 I just want to, you know, you have to be upfront about it
 I’m not interested in a serious relationship, but I am interested in companionship and friendship in that context
 Everything’s clear
 Nobody’s going to feel cheated
” Right
 Well, you said you brought up something that at least in my head was was not clear
 Now it is
 Is that when you say dating quickly, it isn’t like you said, it’s not for sex
 It’s not for the one, but it’s for the companionship
 And you don’t have to feel guilty
 Well, I mean, you don’t have to feel guilty about it all
 And you can practice your new skills because if it was a divorce, you clearly don’t have the skills
 No matter how much you think the other person’s the fault, you don’t realize how you’re contributing to the problem
 Because women, that’s why my most recent book that’s about to come out is how to be happy with or without a man
 If you can’t be happy without a man, then when you’re with a man, he’s going to feel the job of making you happy
 And that’s too much
 His job isn’t to make you happy
 His job make you happier
 You have to come from a place of more fullness within yourself, but allowing him to give you more
 But there still is this dynamic of you receive, he gives
 But first, you have to have a life so you’re not too needy on him
 In in closing or wrapping this up today, when you you you’ve gone through this, you know, you you lost
 Well, you were divorced
 Went through divorce
 Huge huge thing
 I didn’t know how to go through it, but I learned
 And this one was the most painful thing in my life
 However, I’ve only grown from it
 My heart is bigger
 And within two years, I found the woman of my new woman of dreams
 And what I would say about that is being more mature, I knew what I needed from a woman
 Okay? I, you know, I, she’s not perfect
 Bonnie wasn’t perfect
 Although, when I married Bonnie, I thought she was perfect and then problems show up and everything
 This I’m older
 I’m wiser
 This woman, I saw her, I realized her imperfections, and I realize what I need
 So, what what could say I settled? But I all my friends want to know why did you pick her? because she gives me just what I need, which is the the kind of love that I need, she was able to give me
 And I don’t expect perfection
 And I’ll say the joke about it
 I don’t think this is true for everybody else, but I’m getting my karma back, which is every complaint my my wife had about me, I could easily have about her
 She travels, okay? She’s not here all the time because she works
 And Bonnie would sometimes complain I travel too much
 Mhm
 Also, she’s a bit messy cuz she’s, you know, she’s not like a homemaker like Bonnie was a homemaker
 The house was perfect and beautiful
 I made it a mess most of the time
 So, Bonnie’s her complaints to me with don’t leave your socks here and you left here here and you got too much stuff here
 Those will be our issues that we had
 Well, my house is filled with her mess
 I have my mess and I have her mess
 But loving her is loving myself and gradually I’m I’m learning how to declutter my life
 It’s a gradual process
 I I love the way you just explained that because what this you brought reality into this conversation
 That’s why I always like talking with you because you are willing to be v
 Are you being vulnerable, John? Is that what’s authentic? I’m authentic
 Authentic
 Yeah
 That’s the good thing about being older and wiser
 It’s like all this complaining and criticizing and judging and trying to change somebody
 None of it works
 Just love your partner
 And for women, love him, but learn how to ask him to do things for you
 Well, John, thank you so much
 I always appreciate your time
 I I will link to all of your information, to all of your books and your website
 You have tons of courses, webinars
 You always have wonderful information
 John, thank you
 And I look forward to our next conversation on Second Act TV
 Thank you