The Bruised and Battered Love: Relationships After Divorce?

I was sitting with a friend in the Gryphon Tea Room yesterday, having scones and orange pekoe tea, when she said something that stunned me. She said, "When you're divorced, it you dig deep enough, there's always that tender spot." I thought about how we can wall it off, compartmentalize, steer away from it, how we can hate the one that left, feel the pain, how we try to shake it off, but curled up in the corner, hidden out of the light, is the bruised and battered love. What do we do with that? So wrote Vikki Stark in her October 22, 2010 Psychology Today article titled "The Bruised and Battered Love. When couples separate whether through matrimonial divorce or common law severance, there is to varying degrees feelings of loss, anger, sadness, abandonment and yes, even hatred. This is hardly the foundations for moving forward in life let alone in a new relationship. Exacerbating the situation further is the fact that the starting point for the now broken relationship was already in trouble as the majority of people are not prepared to share their lives with someone else according to our relationship expert, and tonight's guest Dr. Jackie Black. According to Dr. Jackie, most of us lack the self-awareness or emotional intelligence to be in a proper relationship with ourselves yet, off we go into the wild blue yonder of sentimental romance. When the relationship fails, our original views of the perfect union do not change and so we continue to carry the baggage that is unrealistic expectations, doomed to repeat our behavior and ultimately relationship tragedy. So what do you do? How do you see beyond the obfuscated haze of sadness and disappointment to take a long, honest look at ourselves? How do we learn from our past heartbreak so as not to repeat history? Tonight we find out.