This Man

So much, so much to write about this man.

Like an ocean wave, I attempted to wear him down, what I did was distill myself.

All the while demanding of him what I now know he cannot provide, and thinking it was I that was not worthy.

So long and so much learning I’m not sure I could document all that I’ve caused myself to learn by throwing myself against the rocks of this man, these men, myself.

When you look for love outside of yourself, and you choose those to demand it from that do not have the right wiring to give it, or even the responsibility, you’re gonna have a bad time, man.

He was coolly destined to teach me this.

The way he looks, the way his energy feels to me, what he is, were destined to lure me in and make me think he was the answer.

I wanted to acquire him. This is a learning I got.

All his gifts, I wanted to own. When I finally realized this after years of prostrating at his feet, I thought I had found the answer. I don’t need to acquire him, I can become him! Right?

When we are attracted to others it is because we want to be them. They have qualities we would like to emulate.

I was an incomplete being still forming, still healing, newly sober, an infant. It makes sense to me that I thought he was the Sun. It could have been anyone I suppose.

This went on for years…

I built a habit of loving him, of infatuation, using him, escaping from my life as a partner and a new mother into fantasy from which no amount of trying to deconstruct the truth around the reality of my fascination for him could save me.

Therapy, seeing him, not seeing him, cutting energetic cords, not cutting cords and trying to lure him in, building energetic brick walls around me, getting angry with him, accepting and just loving him for the wonderful being he is, nothing has seemed to quench this fire, this construct, this belief I have about this person.

I set about becoming the things in him I love in an attempt to stop the need to acquire. This helped, it was self-actuating and in the meantime over the years I have gotten to see him more and more of just a man with normal faults than someone on a pedestal. Rather than looking up I’m mostly looking dead on as an equal these days.

I’ve worked on arch type themes around him, daddy issues, the pattern of continually choosing men to be fascinated with who are unavailable, making me long and feel wanting and maybe not good enough. This is a pattern that I notice in myself often.

Unworthiness, when imbalance strikes in me that’s where I go.

I’m an alcoholic/addict so actually I do very black/white, up/down thinking sometimes. I am either the greatest angel to myself or most disgusting gutter tramp in my mind.

I realized I’ve been behaving towards these men as if I am a little girl; from my child like parts that learned to feel not good enough/unworthy by many different mechanisms in my family of origin.

When I do this behavior, this needy, unwomanly behavior, when I act as of I am less than them, when I energetically am trying to force from them the antidote to my unworthiness, it repels them.

Also if I’m being fair, I choose men that I can play out this behavior with, so I choose men who are intrinsically unavailable, distant, aloof; I want to MAKE them love me. I want them to SAVE me. Make me feel worthy; unconsciously obviously, I’m not THAT crazy.

I’ve succeeded in this behavior on a couple of occasions, but the underlying energetic dysfunction once I acquire them is so exhausting and is always there in the relationship and I realize that my grown ass woman parts are repelled by a man who is aloof, and distant, and unavailable. Because that sucks, yo.

Just like they are repelled by my less than savory behaviors’! Well, look at that!

Putting the big girl pants on…

I want someone to meet me. Partner with me.

I really do not in the end ever want to be with someone I have to talk into loving me, that I have to come get out of their shell, that I have to continually make the first move with. That part wasn’t even the real revelation for me, the revelation is that I have that choice.

Love should be a practice of meeting each other by choice. On the daily.

I want a heart centered grown up warrior that wants to play with me in these beautiful human forms while we have them! Am I right?!

I fully value relationships as teachers. I ultimately believe that relationship is my tool for growing.

I’m looking now to practice relationship rather than to jump right into enmeshment with the first willing and compelling stranger, (I love men more and more as grow older, so there are quite a few compelling specimens out there), but I digress.

I want to practice taking care of myself in relation to another human being and gosh it would nice to find someone who would let me do that and wanted to support each other through this experiment of being curious towards one another.

For example: Man and woman would have conversations about where we are coming from in the present moment, like how our wounding has gotten us here and where we are at now.

We would try to get to know each other and build safety and trust.

Which by the way I have realized is a MUST for the next go-rounds. What?! You might think this is a no brainer, but it’s taken me this long to get it.

I so often let myself fall into relationship too fast because I can feel and envision the intrinsic goodness and higher self of a man, (have I mentioned I’m an empath?), without building any foundation with which to trust this other human that I’ve never met before. I just let the passion and the attraction carry me away; I’m sure you have too, but I’m trying not to project all over you.

With trust and communication, I want to be able to take space when I need it.

I need a lot of space, at least I always have. I’m open to a love that doesn’t drain me causing me to need to withdraw and recharge. But we’ll see.

I’d like that space taking to be ok, that’s the experiment part for me. I’d like to be able to notice when I’m getting too enmeshed, overwhelmed and be able to safely ask for space and be able to take it. And maybe if I’m doing really well, allow the other person have that too

So much adulting going on here, eh?

I used to be fond of pointing out my previous experience of myself, in that I used to think I loved being alone, that I didn’t need anyone. I’m thinking this must have had something to do with being an addict plagued by a sense of self that required me to be separate and special and different, aloft or in the gutter.

Some years back after getting sober and working on my recovery that changed, suddenly I was experiencing visceral aloneness and separation; I needed people, liked them even, which is an experience I’m not sure I’d had probably since I was a child.

I thought I had grown to know myself better and I said things like “I’m not here to be alone this time around! I am here to be in relationship! Relationship is where I learn to evolve”. Hands on hips.

This may have all been true but I don’t’ think I was being entirely honest with myself, really am I ever? I think self-centeredness; attachment to desire and a terror of being alone was driving it.

At least somehow after the last 10 years I feel more like myself. There is a growing density of self-love that I operate from more and more that has to be a safer more sane way to operate.

I know I must be changing/growing, as I am developing a gratitude that the Men/this Man let me go, or I caused chaos that forced them to let me go, especially this man.

I may never have garnered all these tools I’ve learned and delved this deep if I hadn’t been suffering; if I hadn’t been, at least in the beginning harshly judging myself as not good enough for this man and forcing myself to grow up to feel like I was.

Thank God he didn’t love me the way I wanted him to, thank god he couldn’t let me in so I could acquire him as another notch on my belt. The growing that happened as a result has been more than any actual relationship I’ve ever had.

I put myself through hell at times in relation to this man. I realized it is not about him, it’s about all the men and it’s all about me and the beliefs I hold about myself in relation to, well, relationships with other humans!

Thankfully another layer of the onion has fallen away, and I didn’t have to destroy another man to get it.

Some months ago I began praying for this man and this pattern/belief about him and myself, not to come with me into the next phase of my life. Let be so, harming none and helping all for our highest good.

Think I’m almost there.