Love & Expectations

I haven’t seriously dated or had any major romantic connections in about 2 years. Friends were trying to set me up with anything with a pulse and my family was hinting that I was pushing my biological clock. And if you’re wondering what that meant, so am I. :)

Anyway, hanging out only with ex-es, gay best friends, girlfriends, and the people I do business with is probably not helping my romantic prospects. So one of my ex-es pointed out one day in extreme frustration – that while I was always counseling those who come to me for advice to risk their hearts openly, I was not walking my talk. I thought about that seriously, but that was not really the case.

You see, the last serious relationship I had was with a guy I love deeply as a friend and while we were together, we had a difficult and traumatic relationship - one that was destined to push us both to another level of growth, and grow we did. So after exiting a level like that – it was difficult to enter into anything else that lack that depth.

Now, I wasn't doing a complete Rapunzel in the last 2 years though, I did date a couple of times but they pretty much fizzled out quickly and somewhere along the way, I fell in love with someone that was everything I could ever ask for in a partner – but this ideal was just that, because this person was simply just unavailable.

But then I learned how to love someone, without expectations, and without the need of being loved back. And in that beautiful experience, some deep and profound wisdom was unveiled to my heart on the topic of love.

Love. Is there a more divine emotion than this? Yet in manifestation, we find it bastardized as a word by so many, devoid of its essence and a washed-out counterfeit of the original.

While I was deeply entrenched in my relationships, I was one of love’s worst offenders. So after being alone for 2 years, I saw with more clarity how many of the things that couples inflict on each other cannot be further away from the true meaning of what love is.

So this is the one of the things I learned: I messed up many a relationship because of my expectations of my partner, and who I needed them to be. But true love has no expectations. You love that person exactly for who he/ she is and require them to change nothing to deserve your love.

You love them just because loving them gives you immense joy.

Blame games just don’t exist when you really love someone, and the experience of Namaste is real – when you honor the divine in someone else, seeing the best in them and appreciating their beauty without needing to fix them.

My relationships, all of them, really messed up because I was always coming from how my partners were never good enough, never doing enough for me, and never being there for me; etc. Truth is, it has nothing to do with them – but everything to do with me. I was projecting all my issues on my partners, and using, yes USING them to justify my own lack of success & progress in my life.

This is actually how it was: "I" was never good enough for me, "I" never did enough for me, and "I" was never there for myself. And because of all that, I hated myself. That's the painful truth. But because I can't face that I was the one victimizing myself this way, I projected it onto the person most intimate with me.

It was sick. I was sick.

I used my partners as my punching bags and my back doors. And at the bottom of it all, I treated them poorly because I hated who I was being. And maybe, I hated them too in some bizarre way because I don't see how they could actually love me.

What I hated most was recognizing at some core level in my being that I was too chicken shit to fix myself – so I fixated all the issues on something outside of myself. It’s a denial game and one that is both unfair, dishonorable and leads to nothingness, personal devastation, and continuous destruction of my own self-esteem.

How many relationships right now are constructed to exist this way? A vicious cycle of tearing each other down. Don't confuse this for love.

That is not love. That is fear.

So if you’re in a position where you’re making someone a victim of your issues, recognize that and take courage to make some personal changes because there’s no other over it than to grow through it. You owe it to yourself.

And if you’re in the position where you’re a victim of it, know that you are choosing that if you are tolerating it, and recognize that you are not coming from love either. Because if you are not loving yourself, how then are you able to love anyone else?

I learned that everyone gets something out of each other when we choose to be in relationships – and whether you are playing the victim or the oppressor; what you’re settling to get, is really what you think you deserve.

It was such a big issue I saw in myself and such a shock when I recognized it, that I took time out to re-acquaint and love myself first because I couldn’t bear to hurt another person again being the way I was being.

It's such an elusive poison in so many relationships, and people get together to hurt each other, because they forget that love and happiness is not something you get from another person – it’s something you GIVE to another person.

But you need to give it to the most important person in your life first before being able to receive it from anyone else – and that is to give it to you.

XOXO