Finding your YOU that leads to TWO
If any of these sound familiar, it's time to re-think your situation.
We've all been there – in that relationship that your friends, family, coworkers, even that cashier at the grocery store have been wondering why you’re still in.
Sure, it started out great, with all of the thrill and fireworks of new and exciting love.
He chased you, won your heart, and told you everything you wanted to hear. He made you feel so beautiful, so alive, so wanted.Continue Reading
If you feel like you’ve been working so hard to meet the right guy, you’ve tried everything from night clubs to dating clubs to speed dating, well I’ve got some good news for you: It’s time for a break. It’s time to realize that you don’t need a man to define your life! You don’t need a man to have a world to fit into. In fact, it’s the opposite – your life is exactly that – yours.
I know you’ve heard this before, but it’s time to really get it. As much as we may know in our hearts that we’ve been going down the wrong path, attracting the types of guys that just aren’t able to give us what we’re looking for, we still find ourselves rejecting the guys who are actually healthy and ready for a relationship in favor of the excitement and drama of the roller-coaster ride Mr. Wrong takes us on.
So why don’t we stop this self-destructive behavior?
Well, the truth is that it’s a lot easier to keep doing the same thing over and over again than to stop and take a good hard look at ourselves, and do the work to figure out what’s motivating us to keep repeating these same patterns over and over again.Continue Reading
You probably could have guessed this about me, but I absolutely love love stories. I just found this one recently, and it’s definitely going in the inspiration box.
I'm not sure exactly why, but this one really had the tears welling up. It may be since I’ll be celebrating 10 years of marriage this year, so I can really relate to what the author is saying, but I can also still so vividly remember the early days of bluer skies and sunnier sunshine. I still cherish the memories of those days, with all of the excitement, anticipation, and sparks.
It’s true that as we move down the path of life with our partner, the love does change. It no longer includes the butterflies in the stomach before I see him, nor does it include the excitement of the long, sensual kiss in the doorway.
No, the butterflies have long since been replaced with the sweet anticipation of picking him up at the airport after a trip, after missing him for so long (even though it's usually only a couple of days). And the long sensual kiss in the doorway has now been replaced with “oh good, the kids are finally asleep…”Continue Reading
Have you ever had a song, one that you haven’t heard in years, just start playing in your head? It happened to me the other day, and I realized I was actually singing it softly to myself.
It was a song that used to be one of my favorites back in my single days, and it had been my mantra many times after a devastating break up. I’d long since forgotten it, but at the time, I would belt out the lyrics at the top of my lungs (often with tears rolling down my face) whenever I was driving and it came on the radio. It just described me and my love situation over and over again.
The song was Insensitive
You may not know the song, since she was a Canadian singer (it may just have been popular in Canada at the time), but the line that really got me was “I thought that you might have some advice to give, on how to be insensitive”.
So I found myself singing it out loud once again, only this time it was very different. Now I really get what I just didn’t get back then. That there wasn’t anything wrong with me.
I wasn’t too sensitive, and I certainly didn’t need a lesson in being insensitive. It was that he wasn’t sensitive enough to be with me! Or, to put it a different way, I just needed to be with someone who was sensitive to my needs, and if the guy I was with wasn’t, then he wasn’t the right guy for me.
But I didn’t get that at the time. Or even for a long time after. I just thought I was too soft, and I needed to toughen up. That I needed to be different than I was.
Of course, while I’m sure that Jann Arden wasn’t really looking to become insensitive, unfortunately for so many of us, this is exactly what happens. After one too many heartbreaks, we become cynical, insensitive, even bitter. And our hearts get hardened.
It starts off innocently enough. We meet a guy, the sparks start flying, and before we know it, we’re in way over our heads. Who can resist that kind of chemistry? The next thing we know, we can’t think of anything but him; he’s everything we've ever wanted in a guy. But the truth is, we’re so attracted to the idea of him that we haven’t had a chance to get to know the actual him!
You know what I’m talking about. He’s got that way about him; we can’t quite describe it, but it’s something about the way he carries himself, the ways he exudes that confidence, that charisma, that magnetism that draws us to him and makes us feel so special just because we're with him. We feel worthy. Chosen.
And we’re finally able to prove to everyone (and to ourselves) that we really matter. That we really can get someone to love us. That we’re loveable.
He tells us everything we want to hear. He takes us places we’ve never been before. It’s exciting.
But then, after a while, we find that we’re left a little wanting when we’re with him. We’re not sure what’s going on, wondering where things are going, feeling a bit insecure. We just haven’t connected the dots to see that it’s because we’re drifting far from our true selves again. For a guy. Again.
But we keep our head in the clouds and we don’t see anything, except that this guy has made us feel alive like we’ve never felt before, and we’re just not ready to give that up yet. We just want to keep believing that this time it will turn out differently.
Until it finally comes crashing down around us and we find ourselves back in the land of reality checks where we’re forced to acknowledge the truth, what it really was (and wasn’t), and how it really was the same thing all over again.
And that’s when it happens.
It hurts so bad that you resolve to never let yourself feel that strongly ever again. That fragile, blown glass heart of yours that’s been shattered and pieced back together again too many times starts to become harder. Tougher.
But there’s good news.
This time, there’s one thing that’s different. You’ve got me. I’m here.
And I’m here to tell you what I was fortunate enough to have some very special people tell me right when I needed to hear it the most; the words that saved my own fragile heart from becoming hardened:
There’s nothing wrong with you.
Nothing. Nada.
Sweet, tender, soft, loving, sensitive you.
He just wasn’t the right guy for you. He’s not a bad guy but he’s not the one for you. No matter how much you wanted him to be. He’s not.
All those feelings you had, all those wonderful times you shared, they were real. To you. And maybe to him, too. But the reality is, he didn’t have it in him to give you the respect, the attention, the sensitivity, the love that you truly deserve! The stuff that real, loving, equal relationships are made of. And it doesn’t matter why. It doesn’t matter what is or isn’t going on for him. It won’t change a thing.
So after you’ve had your cry, called your friends whose silence or comments only make you feel worse, spent your days in bed not wanting to get out, played every one of your favorite break up songs, and gone over every possible scenario of what happened and how you could have done things differently to keep the relationship going, it’s time to hear what I've got to say.
You are beautiful, you are worthy of true love, and you are wonderful.
And you aren’t too sensitive.
Please don’t ever become hard. Please don’t ever become bitter. And please don’t ever become insensitive.
That’s no way to live. For anyone. And especially not for you.
So embrace your sensitive you. Embrace your tender, soft heart that just wants to love someone and be loved back. Embrace that sweet romantic self that, however naïve it may seem, just wants to believe in true love. In what he said. In what he told you. In how you thought it was between the two of you.
Because when you love like that, it can hurt. There might be heartbreak. But that’s the kind of love that reminds you you’re truly alive.
You feel, deeply. You sense, wholly. You believe, completely.
And don’t change a thing about those qualities. Because you will meet that guy who’s been looking for a sweet, tender, soft, loving, sensitive woman like you his whole life, too, and those beautiful qualities you hold will not be lost on him, but will be cherished as the gifts of love they truly are when they're shared with the right person.
And I can guarantee he won’t have anything to teach you about being insensitive.
A while back I wrote a post about loving your life by always finding time to do what you love. In this post we’re going to go into that a little deeper, because it’s such an important topic.
Bringing love into your life starts with you – and it starts with loving your life.
And what makes you love your life? Passion.
The kind of passion we’re talking about here is the kind that makes you feel excited, alive, and enthusiastic. The kind that puts a skip in your step, and gives you smiling eyes.
The kind that makes you want to get out of bed early to spend time doing it, and makes you late for work because you lost track of time. The kind that gives you a zest for life.Continue Reading
I just revisited my hometown for the first time in over seven years. I haven’t been back since before my children were born, but the memories that came up for me brought it all back as if I had just been there yesterday.
The sights, the sounds, the scents, the feelings, the emotions. The memories of a different time and place – and a very different me. And a reminder of just how much everything changes.
I hardly recognized the little town where I grew up. It used to be way out there – a little suburban town far away from the big city. But now it’s become its own big city.
With so many new roads and bridges, new huge shopping centers and office buildings, even a new high-rise that’s the first of its kind there. Old houses that I remember have been torn down, and new apartment buildings and condominiums built in their place. And construction still going on everywhere.Continue Reading
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