It seems in the relationship cycles, we do one of two things, we either keep repeating patterns that we have always repeated or we grow through our relationships, release what no longer serves us and attract deeper and deeper intimate connections.
In my own life, my very early relationships were rather emotionally sabotaging. About 80% of the time when I had a crush on a guy, it later came out that he was not interested in girls. The other 20% were emotionally distant or elusive or there was some other sabotaging behavior that I seemed to attract that would keep me from having to become intimate with myself.
When I was 25, I met my first true love. His name was Peter and he was 20 years older than me. Our relationship didn’t last long because I knew I wanted kids and he had a 21 year old son and a vasectomy. I never asked Peter to change for me, never gave him the chance really. Had I been older and already had kids, things would probably have been different. Even though my time with Peter was brief, he showed me what love looked like and helped me to understand for the first time in my life that love was about acceptance of how one shows up, not of what you need to sacrifice to have love.
About a year after I left Peter, I met a man who became my husband and the father of my children. I was attracted to him because he was a real people person and was very amiable. He has an Engineering Physics degree from an Ivy League school and is one of the most intelligent and gregarious people I have ever met. We connected intellectually and socially but never really connected spiritually. He had a very emotionally difficult childhood but never really talked about it. I’m not sure he knew how. I was one who looked at all of my issues and delved into myself. While I was delving into myself , he delved into his work and other forms of escapism. In the process, we grew apart because we were a scientist and a spiritualist. We could not connect on the deep spiritual/intimate levels because we just couldn’t connect in ways that were meaningful.
Sometime about halfway through our marriage, I met my best friend and probably the love of my life. This person had lived the life of a spiritual recluse and had not had a woman in his life for about 5 years when he started talking to me. This was an internet friendship and even though I didn’t meet him in person until about 5 years later, my relationship with him was the deepest, most intimate relationship I had ever had. We never had a sexual connection (well I did but he said he didn’t) but when I was going through the hardest point of my life, he was there every single day, talking to me for sometimes up to 8 hours a day.
In 2007, after I filed my divorce papers, I decided to go visit my best friend in Ireland. When I got there, since he had not been touched by a woman in about ten years, he was very rigid and was not used to someone like me who loves to touch and is very affectionate. I tried to refrain from my natural tendencies but it was too much. Eventually, after the first day of holding back, I told him I was going to touch him, hold his hand, put my arm around his waste, hug him and kiss him and just be me. If he was uncomfortable with that, he was just going to have to let me know because it was driving me crazy trying to refrain from being me. Even though I was very affectionate during the entire trip, he never told me to stop.
About 6 months after I left Ireland, I was in the car one day listening to John Gray talking about Mars and Venus in the Bedroom and he said that he had been a celibate monk for ten years. When I heard that, I got really excited and said a prayer that my friend would find a woman to be attracted to who would help him get in touch with his heart. Within 3 weeks of listening to that and having that wish, his ten year stretch of celibacy started to end and he told me that he had a crush on 2 women. I knew before he told me that if it happened, I would have to step out of his life for a while because I was in love with him and would have my own work to do. I knew I could not be his confidant when he was exploring the wonderful world of women, it would just be too much for me.
Even though I knew I would have to separate myself from him for a while, I was still reeling from the attachment I had to him and couldn’t shake it. A friend of mine who I had known for about 4 years called me from England because he had never seen me be so distraught before. We talked for a while and for the next few months went about our business. I didn’t realize it but he had been going through some of the same things in his relationship and a few months later, we connected and eventually became lovers.
We had been friends for several years so there was already a deep intimacy there. Even though we were not close in proximity, we spoke to each other on the phone every day, sometimes twice a day for several hours. With David, I experienced an intimacy like I had experienced with my best friend but the sexual attraction element was evident from both sides. The beautiful thing about the relationship with David is that both of us have a committed relationship to ourselves. We both stand on our own and meet the other in the middle. Since we can both stand on our own, there is a depth of intimacy and trust that is so deep, it creates a stillness and spaciousness where everything is an expression of our love for ourselves. It makes no difference how our relationship presents itself, we will always love each other. In so many ways, David has been the manifestation of the absolute perfect relationship, the relationship I have always wanted (although it would have been nice if we lived on the same continent.) That relationship taught me to be completely content with myself and to allow spaciousness in a relationship. Until I became intimate with David, I had always experienced some form of “need” in relationship and he helped me to move out of that.
Recently, I told David that even though I love him dearly, I wanted to find someone closer to home. I told him I wanted someone I could do things with and be with and not have to pay $1000 in airfare to cross the Atlantic to see him. I wanted him to find someone too because I do love him and want him to be happy. He did find someone and although he still experiences a much deeper spiritual connection with me, he enjoys his new friend and they have a fantastic time together. We still talk regularly and still tell each other we love each other, because we do. Now there is just a different element to that expression and I almost feel like our relationship has become even more intimate and deeper since it has shifted.
That gave me the opportunity to look at my own perceptions of relationship. I noticed that although I was meeting people, I didn’t have any attachment to how they showed up. Then I realized that it wasn’t that I was looking for someone closer to home, I was looking for someone closer than breath! For the first time in my life, I felt completely satisfied to have me all to myself. I’m not saying that I would not welcome something like my best friend deciding he wants to spend the rest of his life with me or if someone unexpected came along. What I am saying is that for the first time in my life, I am not projecting my own desire for intimacy on someone else and am just enjoying spending time by myself and with my kids. I have finally reached a point where I have that depth that I have shared with a couple amazing men but on a constant basis… because I always have me.
I always thought I would want to find someone to spend the rest of my life with and fall in love like they do in the movies. We buy into that idea. What I never expected is that I would reach a point in my life where it made no difference whether I was in a deeply intimate relationship with someone else because I would find that intimacy within my relationship to myself.
