Dating after the breakup of a relationship or semi-relationship? by Odilia Rivera-Santos

First, admit you know nothing about dating, and take a deep breath. Love is magic and happens in mysterious ways too advanced for our feeble mundane brains to control or understand.

You might meet the love of your life on a bus or at the laundromat, or on a dating site. The serial killer you've been warned about, when you go on a dating site, also takes the bus and does shim's own laundry.

Dating sites are interesting for a five to ten-minute read. 

They are well-orchestrated representations of the life a person hopes to lead: joyful, surrounded by great friends and family and financially prosperous as well. There is often an expensive red sports car in a man's profile, which is meant to connote danger, wealth, adventure and excitement. 

Then, there is the list of healthy personal attributes to which many of us aspire.
In creative visualization exercises, we are asked to write about what we would like to have,as if these things, people, personality traits, had already arrived to stay. 
I will have to check with Shakti Gawain's book about this, but I'm pretty sure that's how it works.
The healthy personal attributes list is great if they are not too far removed from where you are presently. And is the person or are you willing to work on yourself to get there?

Before you venture out onto the dating scene, consider sprucing yourself up a bit. 

Here are some pre-dating exercises before you dive back into the dating game. 

1. Write a list of your healthy personal attributes
2. Write a list of areas requiring work on your part. If you think you're perfect, use my rule: if three people, who don't know each other, have said it, explore it because 'it' might be true.
3. Write a plan of action regarding how you will address your special issues. Are you willing to go to therapy or a support group? Friends can listen but they can't play the role of therapist in your life.
4. What do you have to offer?
5. What are you looking for in the dating experience? 
6. Write a description of your perfect partner -- the one you could imagine living and traveling with. 
7. Make sure you clean up emotional baggage from your last relationship or semi-relationship.


If you enjoy your own company, and understand the difference between being alone and being lonely, you may be ready to date again.

Love Post For Men Who Hate Women by Odilia Rivera-Santos

You are a love chaser and when you catch up to love, you become an asshole.

Are you addicted to drama? 

1. Is the woman who broke up with you, the one you cheated on and lied to constantly, now the woman of your dreams?

2. Are you only 'happy' when your relationship is full of junior-high-school drama? 

3. Do you stir up trouble because you consider stability in a romantic relationship boring?

4. Do you continue to chase the old girlfriend as you begin a new relationship?

These are all issues better handled in therapy than in the world. In the world, you are showing up as an emotionally- abusive insecure man who doesn't believe anyone could really love you.

love pOst / the breakup by Odilia Rivera-Santos

I think it's important to have a sense of humor about love and the ways in which we all fail even when we try very hard to make a romantic relationship work. However, I know breakups can be devastating and shake up a person's self-esteem and self-confidence.

Here are some tips for getting over the end of a relationship

1. Change your perspective about the relationship; instead of saying the relationship failed, you can just say the relationship lasted for the amount of time it was meant to last.

2. Accept that the end of your romantic relationship might also mean the end of a friendship. Your former lover/partner/boyfriend/girlfriend has a right to choose whether to stay in contact with you.

Respect the other person's wishes. If the person says he/she wants no contact, let go.

3. If you cannot let go of the relationship and keep rehashing details and arguments, consider going to a therapist or spiritual counselor. You might need help moving on.

4. Instead of analyzing the other person's behavior, motives, and personality, consider your own behavior, motives and personality. What do you want to do differently in your next relationship?

5. Get rid of all the souvenirs from your relationship and really clean house, literally and psychologically.

Dating One Oh One, in search of a spiritual connection by OdiliaRivera-Santos

Being in tune with another human being requires that we, as individuals, undergo individual tuneups.

Strengthen the ability to focus on one thing at a time.

We have many mini-lives inside the major life. What keeps us moving forward is the need to feel we have accomplished something.

Set Personal Goals, which help with motivation and humility because they serve as a tranquil reminder of the finite amount of time we have on the earth.

Work as an Extension of You

Being engaged in work in an authentic way. Doing work that matters, not just a gig. Work can amplify the positive or negative tendencies of a person's character.

Sit down. Shut up. And do nothing

Just Being without the need to prove anything to anyone or keep busy for busy-ness's sake. 

Nature

Go somewhere sedate: a museum during off hours, a park or a meditation class.

Enjoy nature in whatever way possible -- buy a plant, go to the farmer's market, stare at a tree.

Sensory relaxation to balance out the overload, especially for those of us who live in the city.

It is about opening up the spiritual channels for something different.

A partnership can only be romantic if there is a certain sense of self-satisfaction on both sides.

You have to love you first.

Did you hear that?

It was a butterfly with the hiccups

Transnationalism for Dummies by Odilia Rivera-Santos

http://latinaauthor.blogspot.com/2014/04/transnationalism-for-dummies-by-odilia.html

Reading and telling and showing at The New Museum on April 19, 2014. 4:00-5:00

Writings on colonialism, being hemmed in and let out, sensualist excursions from Puerto Rico, the island of my birth, to the concrete silent, gray, black and white world of the mainland.

Brincando el charco.

Leaving Puerto Rican

Playing social worker

Being and being nothing and becoming someone unrecognizable.

Poetry

Stories

Art scrawled on walls.

Dating Juan Oh Juan / the First Date and Polite Conversation

By Odilia Rivera-Santos

5. The first date and keeping it light. You're at a lovely, dimly-lit cafe, here are some items to leave off the conversation menu

- a vivisection of your worst personality traits or those of your former lover/partner/spouse

- a list of all the regrets you have about your prior relationship

- how you've established a great rapport with your new parole officer (wait until the second date)

Love When You Say Love
 www.editorialtrance.com

Love When You Say Love by Odilia Rivera-Santos