Hello, all:

Im not much on therapy as a means of easing troubles. I like to bottle it up, and then let the pressure build like a steam kettle till it spews forth in the form of heavy drinking and sobbing under a neighbor's porch swing, but I digress. Since you fine people are like the perfect family: always there if I need you, but I dont need to make up excuses to get you to leave my house; I will unload some burdens upon you.

The little lady, whom I have been with for 7 years, called it quits last night. She feels we're too different, our work schedules differ so much we never see each other, and she has "fallen out of love". Im trying to be positive, it has been up and down for a year or more, anyway. Just like it takes two to make a relationship work, it takes two to break it up. No real fault can be laid on either side, though. We were both always faithful, no verbal or physical abuse to speak of, blah blah. I guess we just grew apart. I will be staying in the house for a month or so, then out the door. We could sell the place, it's ours, afterall. I am washing my hands of it, though. She can afford it pretty easily on her own, and the market for selling houses is pretty horrible now. I hope to remain friends, and life-I am sure-will go on.

My only worry is how to cope with being a batchelor again? Of course, dating is the furthest thing from my mind, and it will be a while before I can think of being with another woman besides the one I have been with for such a large portion of my life. Anyway, how many here on the DL have gone through divorce? How do you cope with living alone again? How did--when the time came--you cope with being thrown into the dating game again? Ugh, I do not look forward to that aspect of single life. Perhaps I will be a confirmed batchelor, devote my life to career, MA training, and posting goofy responses to serious thread questions on the DL. Hope all is well out there in the community, Im off to see the lawyer, the Wonderful Lawyer of Divorce.

-Wu