Is It OK To Date While Separated From Your Spouse? [EXPERT]

By Straight Male Friend Marcus Osborne for GalTime.com

Believe what you hear, divorce is hard. Actually, that's an understatement. Divorce is devastating. Other than perhaps the death of a family member, the severing of what was expected to be a lifelong union is about as emotionally crippling as any life as experience an individual will ever survive.

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Multiply that agony by ten if there are children involved. Even when the divorce is amicable, as mine was over a decade ago, the massive weight of the realization that the world you had built with your soon-to-be-ex and the end of your journey with a person who at some point was the closest person in the world to you is downright smothering. It's an awful, soul-crushing rollercoaster and every time someone sarcastically remarks how easy it is for people to get divorced or how so-and-so "just left their marriage," my head feels like it's about to explode. If you honestly believe that, you've never been through a divorce.

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There is, though, an emotional purgatory most couples need to work their way through before the final decision to end a marriage is made: the separation. So difficult. So weird. What are the rules? Are we allowed to see other people? Are we supposed to see each other a certain number of times a week? Do we tell people? Do we tell the kids? What’s the point? If one of us knows they want out, what’s the point of a separation in the first place?

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The oddity is that often during a separation the parties agree to be open to seeing other people, even though the door is supposedly open for reconciliation. How can that work? Do you tell people you're dating that you're just separated? Or do you tell them that the marriage is over, no chance of being mended and that the paperwork is simply a formality? Can Our Marriage Survive An Affair? EXPERT

I recall going through that period, knowing full well that the marriage was over and that, indeed, the paperwork was just the final punctuation. However when I would reveal to someone in whom I was potentially interested that I was separated, they invariably would shy away. As much as I wanted to shout out "Hey, that's really, seriously over@" I sort of understood where there was room for reasonable reticence on their part.

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