—
I didn’t set out on a spiritual quest where I consciously decided to refrain from relationships to develop a deeper understanding of myself. It wasn’t my intent.
I fell into it out of dissatisfaction with the types of interactions I was having in my quest to find love. It wasn’t all their fault. I had to shift my perspective on how I was trying to achieve what I wanted.
Prior to my sabbatical, I was in a long-term relationship that ended leaving me feeling lost as to how to give the best of myself to someone and receive their best in return. I learned many lessons in that relationship, but I was also traumatized by it. I was in no position to jump into another.
At the same time, I felt pressure to get involved with someone. I pushed myself to date and get to know people. My first date allowed me to see I was still personable and fun, but emotional commitment felt heavy. I felt actual anxiety at being responsible to another person.
Being in my late thirties and not married to who I thought was the love of my life, I felt time wasn’t on my side. I felt defective. In many ways, I checked all the boxes in my life but being unmarried with no children made me feel like I was missing something. It’s not something you want to admit to anyone, even yourself.
So, instead of licking my wounds or being introspective, I allowed myself to be pursued and let the male attention temporarily stitch up my insecurity only to be reopened and bleed all over when it went nowhere.
I didn’t recognize that I didn’t even know why I was dating. I didn’t know my real purpose.
I was dating for a man to validate my existence and mirror back to me that my ex didn’t see I was worthy of marriage. I was basically using men to make myself feel better about being rejected and the realization that I had bet on the wrong horse in my race to the altar.
I also didn’t acknowledge that I was different post-relationship than I was pre-relationship.
Before the relationship, I was self-serving and career-focused. I didn’t even think I wanted to be in a relationship. The relationship brought out many maternal instincts and domestic values. I enjoyed caring for someone else and having someone else to depend on. I thrived in a relationship and being a part of a couple. Where I once celebrated my freedom, after the breakup, it felt like a reminder of what I once had. I wanted to ease that phantom pain I felt every time I was reminded that person no longer wanted my love.
When I went back into the dating world, I expected to quickly find someone that I would just click with and continue where I left off, being someone’s significant other.
What I found were a lot of people who enjoy the doting, but weren’t signing up for the whole package. I didn’t know how to give parts of the whole without feeling I was missing out. I had the whole thing before. I couldn’t scale it back. I was frustrated.
For me, after being in a relationship, sex wasn’t just sex. It was intimacy to me. Spending time together, providing emotional support and really being attracted to them only confused me into feeling like there was an intimacy that didn’t exist. Perhaps, I could force myself to not feel anything, but I didn’t want to.
I wanted to freely allow myself to develop feelings and have them returned. I had no interest in convincing someone to want what I wanted.
Again, I was expecting them to show me they understood my worth.
Here was yet another person telling me I didn’t deserve everything.
Eventually, I withdrew.
I ignored male attention or stopped letting it progress when it was clear our goals were not the same. I stopped letting a man’s behavior towards me dictate or define my worth. I let his behavior be about him and his personal goals which didn’t suit mine. We simply weren’t a match.
Even while doing this, I still felt pressured to care more about satisfying their needs than my own. I felt pressured about missing that mythical window of getting proposed to because at a certain point men just wouldn’t want me. The joke of the spinster with multiple cats was hurled at me.
I was shamed for having high standards for myself or expecting more than what was offered. The shaming came from women and men.
I don’t doubt I experienced it before and succumbed to it. In actuality, that is how I ended up in my last relationship. This time, I allowed myself to gamble that this was something I had to figure out before I allow myself to get into another relationship.
But by giving myself time to really do some introspection, I was able to understand what I wanted and why. I became intimately familiar with my insecurities and identified the wounds I was trying to cure by being loved by someone else.
And not having sex allowed me to not be chemically wrapped in with someone else and blind to the truth of whether they actually fit my needs. I wasn’t trying to jam a square peg into the round hole of my heart just to feel better.
My mind gained clarity. My heart became detached. And I was able to see that the mirror I was using to view myself was dirty and I had no real understanding of what I offered.
Now, I’m not looking for someone to provide me with a level of satisfaction that I can’t achieve without them. I don’t need anyone to show me what I should love about myself. I don’t need anyone to care for, simply to prove I can care.
I want all those things. But they are in addition to what I have already seen in myself. They are not confirmation. They are what I already know I am capable of. The fairytale isn’t about being rescued by the prince. It is being loved by someone who just recognizes someone who will put in the same work to be happy.
Not everyone needs to abstain from others to know or understand this. Some people have it instilled in them.
But for the rest of us, taking time to invest in yourself can be the beginning of a beautiful relationship.
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