What Do I Need from Romantic Love?
Suppose you’ve decided that romantic love is a worthwhile endeavor for you and your partner. Perhaps you both agree that it’s critical to your future prospects. Or perhaps you’re starting over and need to feel that connection that you lost as a teenager up for grabs.
If all of those things are true, then it makes sense that you’d want to be in an intimate, positive relationship that has material benefits and also ones that would make you feel good and secure.
But what does that look like? At 26, I was already heading towards myself, without knowing precisely what my future held. My wildest dreams had already mapped out a route that would take me through my next mission: saving the world!
I had my finger on the trigger of success, but uncertainty still sat between me and my next “big thing.” By the time I knew it, I’d already created two bad relationships and spent couple of years single — a shell of a man I used to know.
So how could I possibly guide someone else through their newly formed journeys? How could I provide objective guidance if I didn’t even know where I was heading?
I had read about and learned from so many different people… but I still wasn’t sure I had found my person… my soul mate. I wanted to know someone so badly, and I wanted to meet someone just like them so badly, but I was stymied.
It was the complete opposite of how I’d imagined spending my later years.
So I started creating imaginary friends and couples on my own. Some had clearly emerged from my own imagination, but there were others whose forms were far from exact portraits of my desires. After a while, I give up and decide it’s better to take what love comes and leave the rest =]
As time went on, I learned how to create friendships and relationships in such a way that they bolstered my purpose — instead of competing with it. It wasn’t a deep friendship or a romantic relationship or even a partnership. It was a mutual exchange that I could look within and greet with a sense of comfort. More importantly, it paved the way for future partnerships and relationships that would undoubtedly be better than the last.
Letting go and healing the past can be the key to rebuilding your trust in love and relationships.
Letting go of the past isn’t easy, but it’s necessary in order to build a future that’s more aligned with your authentic ideas, needs, and desires. Failing to explore the past can create a mistrust of love and an absence of all hope. In order to rebuild your trust, you need to understand its roots and the lessons that you needed to learn in order to emerge with a more compassionate and confident view of love and relationships.