What if I told you the way to find the love of your life is to dig deep and start healing your own wounds. How would you respond? Does this resonate or do you want to resist it/reject it? Maybe this worries you because you think you are too broken? Possibly you are in the camp of all men suck/all women suck? All these perspectives are valid if you are seeing the world this way.
The question is do you want to find the love of your life? What are you willing to give up to find them? Will you give up your long held beliefs about you and the people you have dated? I had to give up a lot in order to be ready and I even gave up on dating seriously for almost two years.
The two years I spent with myself taught me a lot about my own challenges when it came to finding love. I had an advantage: I love to do the deep work of healing even when it is uncomfortable. You don’t have to love doing the deeper work, you do have to be willing. It doesn’t have to be torturous. I will give you a hint, you need to be open to seeing how you have been either stuck in your thoughts and feelings, or you have been blaming your ex-partners for the feelings that you have about yourself and them.
There are many roots to the work I did, I will focus on one. I found I was trying too hard. My energy when I went out was all about the search for someone who would like me, with little attention to what I would like. When I met someone I was attracted to I spent time wondering what they were thinking about me and not what I thought about me or what I thought about them.
This way of thinking led me to respond to the person out of anxiety and worry. I didn’t interact with them as myself, I was my tense self. I spent much of my time over the two years alone learning how to be myself when I was feeling tense and uncomfortable. I practiced noticing when I was tense and worried about what the other person was thinking. Then calming my system down and focusing on my thoughts and emotions, not what theirs might be in the moment.
This process led me back to dating eventually. This time I focused on meeting people that were interesting to me and with whom I thought I might enjoy having a coffee/tea. I won’t go into the details but I decided to go online and meet people so I could travel. I filled out an online profile as honestly and uncomfortably as I could in that moment. I met Jenny about a month after I signed up. To shorten the story I moved from Georgia to New Hampshire to be with her and her son about one and half years after meeting her. I have never been more clear about myself and my relationship as I am now with Jenny.
If you want to move past dating the same person in a different package over and over again, it is time throw away your rule book and dig in. This article is not about the how, it is about the why. We want to find the loves of our lives but our pain is stopping us from see who we are right now. It is hard to have passion and deep love for someone else without learning to know and trust yourself. I have learned with Jenny to take emotional risks and tell her when I am unhappy or struggling in our relationship without blaming her. That vulnerability makes it easier for us to have those hard talks that keep a relationship intimate and sexy.
So, if you are saying “Yes” I want to be ready for the love of my life, then let’s get started. I have over twenty years of experience as a Mental health therapist, fifteen as a Wisdom coach. I have trained as a trauma therapist and can guide you through those challenging emotions and feelings, to clear those stuck places and open up to yourself and what you want in life and love.
Greta Jaeger, Wisdom coach and therapist
404-259-1335
Http://www.gretajaeger.com