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I've already told myself NO DATES until at least 6 months after the divorce is final...if for no other reason than to allow me time to deal with any leftover grief or feelings, etc.

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Pic, I worry when you set up rules like this. You are making time limits on your heart, which does not have a limit.

However, becasue you have put this limit on yourself, let's examine it. You will not let yourself feel the romantic things until 6 months after a divorce is final. If you've been paying attention, many divorces do not get final quickly. They will take a year, two years, or three. And that's only AFTER filing.

My own divorce, from final decision to filing was 3 days. From filing to final was 21 days... we decided to separate before thanksgiving and were free by Christmas. It was a relief for both of us, we were free, and we did not have children to fight over, did all the property settlement pretty easily. And in OUR state the wait from filing to final was really short for divorces without kids. But in SOME states, I hear, it takes YEARS. And of course, even if it's not necessarily YEARS, it can sometimes take that long just becasue one or the other of you is being unreasonable, and the one being victimized by the unreasonable behavior realizes that they need to not just roll over & play dead any more, so they don't acquiesce and they make the judge decide (and usually the judge decides in favor of the reasonable one... so the only purpose of being unreasonable ended up being that it all gets delayed and the lawyers get more money in the end).

So... as of now, you have decided not to file. You are going to sit on your hands and wait, putting your life on hold in some falsely noble, slightly self-righteous, stubborn as hell insistence that SHE be the one to file. You know she won't file until she is uncomfortable with the current situation, and she is not uncomfortable with it, and SHE does not have any internal rule for herself to wait, so there you go... she's going to be happy, do as she wishes, and won't think to file till she's ready to announce a new engagement. You, on the other hand, have committed yourself to this purgatory of committed but separated, not allowed to move on (by your own internal rules) yet not able to turn back the clock (which you realistically know won't happen but still harbor hopes over)...

There is no better way to set yourself up to go insane than to make this commitment to keep from having a romantic connection with anyone ... for an indefinite period of time becasue you refuse to file ... for maybe YEARS even AFTER filing, depending on how she responds and how quickly the courts will process the case for you once you do file. It's a constant reminder of waht you don't have, can't have, everyone else has. If you want to set yourself up for depression, what better way than to ASSURE that you will not be able to move on?

When I talk to my bipolar cousin, one of the things we talk about is learning how to not let her set herself up for failure. The manic feelings encourage her to set up these rules for herself, in the belief that she is or can be stronger than the ordinary human being (it's a manic thing to be a little grandiose about her abilities that way)... and it's a little manic-y to create and stubbornly adhere to these little rules... It's not THAT manic... just a little... but for a person who occasionally has a problem with manic behavior to set up these rules for themselves, it's dangerous. It's a setup. Because it makes them feel controlled and good about themselves and thier ability to control themselves, during the higher moods. But what tends to happen is that they (she) refuse(s) to listen to others who say, "your rules for yourself are too strict", and so when it turns out that the rules ARE too strict, that the limits she puts on herself are causing her distress, she worries that she's failed herself, that she can't do this thing she set up for herself, that she has done something wrong. She gets herself all convinced that her way (or rules) are the RIGHT way, so when they start being too hard to sustain for long periods of time, she is disappointed in erself, which is a disappointment that doesnt' need ot happen. Failing ot be able to follow this or that rule just means she's HUMAN... and all her family & friends told her that the rule was too strict... yet she had herself convinced that SHE was better than the rest of us, she was different and superior and COULD live up to her own high expectations. And then when she finds out that she can't, becasue seh has a tendency to be a little overboard on the mood swing scale (unless over-medicated... she still is a little excessive from time to time)... she falls into a low part of the cycle. She blames herself for not being PERFECT, for heaven's sake.

I would like for you to not set yourself up for stuff like this. When you set up rules, arbitrary numbers to live by, saying that you won't have a relationship for 6 months after the divorce is final, and there is NO date for the divorce to be final... there is no date for the divorce to start... well, I worry that you're setting a rule for yourself that none of the rest of us would be able to follow... and when you find out someday that you're human, when the rule becomes hard to follow, when the self-imposed isolation becomes... isolating... you will find yourself in a self-imposed low that did not need to arrive.

I know it's nice to be able to put dates and times and limits on things, but in matters of the heart, it's not so good ot try to exert this type of control. It's not so good to intentionally isolate yourself from the possibility of love, by setting an arbitrary date far into the future (with no forseeable deadline even, because you've not even FILED).

If you filed, it would ease this a little... giving your 6 month limitation on yourself at least SOME possibility of arriving someday. As it is, your deadline, your self-imposed monk-dom... has no forseeable end. It's not good.

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