Finding your YOU that leads to TWO
It doesn't matter who he is.
It doesn't matter how much you made him into in your mind.
There's only one question that matters … are you going to let someone incapable of loving you the way you deserve to be loved do this to you?
This waiting around.
This beating yourself up for what always takes two.Continue Reading
I see you.
Over there, sitting all alone with your head in your hands.
Oh you think no one notices you, but I do.
How could I not? Not where I've been.
Because when you've been there, you're the first one to feel it when you see all the signs. Broken heart, broken dreams, broken everything, or so it feels. How can it not feel like this when you feel everything as deeply as you do?
Why?
Why did it end? What did I do that was so wrong? What did I do to deserve this?
You want to know. You weren't ready. Not like this, not the way it ended and not the way you feel now.
If you can just find some reason for it – if you can just make some sense of it - you know you'll be all right.Continue Reading
There's nothing quite like seeing the guy who just broke your heart out with someone else.
It doesn't seem to matter how much time has passed; if you haven't moved on and he has, there's nothing that stalls your progress as quickly as that sight. Seeing him with someone else, in that place where you were supposed to be. It makes you experience that heartbreak all over again.
"It was supposed to be me", you think to yourself.
How does it happen? You want to know. Why her – and not me?
I, too, spent far too many hours of my life trying to find the answers to both of those questions. Because, after all, if we know the answer to that, then we feel like we finally have some control over our lives.
After all, we've all heard the all-too familiar story of the rare guy who's been in his fair share of long-term relationships, but never found a reason to commit – until suddenly, we get the news through a friend that he's found the "right" woman for him and his previous aversion to commitment has suddenly gone away.
You wanted this with him. Why couldn't this be happening to you?
Why weren't you enough for him?Continue Reading
You know exactly what I'm talking about here.
Because you've been down this path far too many times before. Of course you thought you could make someone love you. Haven't we all been there?
You, too believed, in spite of what everyone told you, that you could actually change his heart.
And no matter how much you knew deep in your heart you that it shouldn't be like this, you kept trying. Because you believed in miracles and you believed in love and you believed in the power of love to make the impossible possible.
Because that's what makes you so uniquely you.
Your beautiful ability to dream.
And hope. And try even harder. And believe.
And refuse to give up. And that's also why you feel so deep, why you fall so hard, and why your heart can be broken so easily.Continue Reading
Don't doubt yourself on this journey. It doesn't matter where you've come from or what you've been through. It doesn't matter how many times you feel you've repeated the same mistakes or how many times you've attracted the same type of guy. None of that matters.
What matters is how each experience brings you closer to what you're really looking for. With every heartbreak, with every disappointment, you learn and you grow. You get to know yourself better and you get a clearer sense of what you're willing to put up with and what you're going to be picky about.
You learn to be more flexible in some areas and less in others. You learn what feels good and what feels awful. You stretch, you constrict, you ebb and you flow. You see things more clearly; the fog lifts just that much more.
You start to learn that it really does matter that you know yourself well enough to know who it is you're really looking for. Your list changes to reflect the you you're discovering and learning to embrace in love. You revise it to reflect what is most compatible with the real you and not some version of yourself that you thought was really you. You begin to understand why being emotionally available and having the ability to commit to a real relationship are the number one and two must-haves on your list. You begin to see why how he treats you matters more than any item on your list.
You stop making excuses for anyone. You start rightly expecting him to pull his own weight and refuse to keep anyone around who brings you down. You stop expecting someone to complete you and make your life over and instead, you realize what you most want is someone who is a real person who you can have an honest, open, loving relationship with. You start living in reality instead of the fantasy that felt so familiar because you thought you needed to be rescued. You finally see that you don't need anyone to come and rescue you; you hold the key to your own happiness.
You stop beating around the bush and you start coming right out and saying what it is you're looking for. First to yourself, and then to him. You begin to really get that it's only by communicating honestly with any potential new guy that you can both find out quicker if you're on the same page or wasting your time. You stop pleasing. You stop placating. You stop being whatever someone else wants you to be. You stop living up to someone else's unrealistic expectations of you and start listening to that soft inner voice that knows you better than anyone else.
And this time, you actually believe it.
"I have a history of making decisions very quickly about men. I have always fallen in love fast and without measuring risks. I have a tendency not only to see the best in everyone, but to assume that everyone is emotionally capable of reaching his highest potential. I have fallen in love more times than I care to count with the highest potential of a man, rather than with the man himself, and I have hung on to the relationship for a long time (sometimes far too long) waiting for the man to ascend to his own greatness. Many times in romance I have been a victim of my own optimism." ~Liz Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
I love this quote – it just so succinctly summarizes the story of our relationships for so many of us; how we inadvertently set ourselves up for such heartbreak by falling in love with the potential of a man and a relationship with him, instead of looking at what is right now.
It is such a beautiful quality we possess; this optimistic, positive outlook that we apply to the men and relationships in our lives. We meet someone and see not just the person he is in front of us today, but we see so much of what he can be, so much of his emotional capacity that is not there yet, but could be if only he were loved by someone like us.Continue Reading
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