I wonder why time loves to play tricks on us. I wish I had known all I know today about love and relationships at least a year ago, I’m curious if it would’ve made any difference.
A year ago I made a silent commitment to myself and to my romantic relationship at the time. I swore to God two things after I got back with my ex: 1) that would be the very last chance I’d give the relationship after 3 years of torturous break ups and make ups… and 2) I’d put in a 200% of intention, energy and effort to make it work like I never had before.
Well, all I can report about it is that my performance was outstanding —and in my opinion, flawless– but unfortunately it only had a 2-week chance to show off, because my now (again) ex walled off and disappeared without explanation, as usual, after 15 days of amazing intimacy. While I was thinking ‘I made it‘, he was feeling ‘I want out‘, and off he went.
If you’ve been following my blog and FB page, you know I write about this ex a lot –if you haven’t, well now you know. And that’s because, honestly, nothing has ever been more painful to me than not having been able to crack the code to make that relationship work. If you ask me, I can tell you we are both really great people who deserve a wonderful future filled with love, joy and closeness, but now I understand that apart from the type of future we deserve, we also have a painful past in common: none of us learned what intimacy is, how it works, and least how to maintain it. None of our families could model it for us, and instead they trained us to be emotionally dysfunctional. He was a love-avoidant man and I was a love-dependent woman… quite a couple.
So after a year of the relationship’s ending, I’m still obsessed with fully understanding what happened between us because I’m definitely not willing to go through anything as painful as that again. I can’t resign to not know, I can’t afford to naively move on and replay the unhealthy patterns with someone else. I don’t want to just blame him for the failure, or most well-suited in me, blame myself for not having been good enough to make him love me. I went through those lies thoroughly, several times, until I was sure it was safe to leave them behind, and now all that’s left in the landscape is the truth, finally.
I’ve learned to recognize the value of popular wisdom, or cliché, across this journey. How foolish we are when young, dismissing golden keys to intimacy like the importance of loving and knowing oneself, the need to rescue our inner child, or the value in learning to love unconditionally. I actually started listening to these words out of desperation, when I was lost in the middle of a turmoiled relationship that seemed to be sucking the life out of me.
So, after four years of cultivating recovery, I’m starting to harvest a little bittersweet awareness. Unfortunately, the world is not designed to raise whole people. The system is incomplete and so are we. The world is only left-brain focused: logical, rational, linear, methodical, measurable. And so, we’re missing out on the other side of the coin, the non-countable like feelings, creativity, connection, intimacy, and of course, love. We’re practically encouraged to grow up to become mentally proficient, while staying emotionally incompetent. We’re incomplete and it hurts.
This is exactly what happened between my ex and me. This is what happens between most couples and among most families, indeed. We’re all hurting, for we’re not whole. And this painful inheritance has to stop… it has to stop.
The only way in which we can make it stop is by consciously choosing to transform ourselves into the whole people we were meant to become, but the system failed to deliver. And the only way to become whole is by first acknowledging that we aren’t and second, by studying, learning and practicing the right-brain skills that we missed out on, till we master them enough to become emotionally functional. Moreover, we should care about doing this because first of all, it will make our own lives so much better, easier, more enjoyable; but above all, because it will change the world. It will make the world a real warm-hearted space for those of us who are here and for the generations to come.
There’s no way to make time go back that I know. I wish I had known this years ago, I know that my story would be totally different now. I would’ve saved myself and others from so much pain and confusion. But I can’t change the past, I cannot even change others, I can only change myself and bless the world, hoping it will want to change for the better too.
My dear Men, there’s plenty of space in this planet for the whole version of us. May we consciously choose to expand and work on reclaiming what belongs to us: our hearts, and along with them, our birthright to experience long-lasting, safe, and fulfilling intimacy among us.
And so it shall be…
With love & respect,
MaLe Corona <3
