Thriving while in a Relationship?

I was talking online the other day to an old friend and out of nowhere she asked me whether I felt I had centred my life around one of my ex-boyfriends, because I had been living with him in a foreign country? No, I replied, but was very curious as to what she was getting at. It seems that she is finding herself falling into that old icky trap of narrowing down her life now she is in a relationship, especially as, she too, is living in a foreign country where all her social contacts centre around her boyfriend.

But I think its something that can happen regardless of where you live. Time and time again, I ask myself: is it possible to really thrive while in a relationship? As unempowered as this sounds, when I am single, I take risks and chances that somehow I just don’t when I am with someone.  Or, as my friend said, “How did I, the adventurous fun girl become zombie relationship clingy freak?”

Its a really tricky dynamic, because naturally at the beginning of a relationship, the other person is very important and creating that togetherness is such bliss. But what do you do when you are uncomfortable with yourself, find yourself less likely to make plans with your friends so you can just be with him, not out of the joy of being with him but out of a clingy need to be close?

I think it comes back to this idea of projecting your goodness solely onto another person – you begin to make an connection that things are okay when you are with them always, ie putting your worth outside of yourself.

My advice to my friend? Just ease yourself into doing some of your own activities, even if its just going out for a coffee with a friend from work. Consciously focussing on putting your energy back into yourself, and looking at your life as a whole circle, not just as half of one. And of course, to not be too hard on yourself…

What do you think? Is it possible to fully thrive while in a relationship?

Hungry Like The Wolf…Question 2

Lonely Spooner

So a year ago my boyfriend and I got home from two years overseas together and I moved out on my own into a great pad. Our relationship had been very stale for a long time and our sex life was pretty much dead. I got a great job and I thought my life was very exciting. I stupidly had an affair with a guy who was clearly just using me but it was fun and exciting and I felt alive again! I broke up with my boyfriend and embarked on my single, fun and exciting life! I had a few short lived affairs with some ordinary guys and have been on some dates with some amazing guys who just don’t call again or seem to just want to be my friend. Now I think I want my ex-boyfriend back but everytime I call or email he kind of brushes me off or says he needs a ‘few more months to think about it”. Help! Will I be lonely forever!

To answer this question I have to refer to the great God of love advice, Bryan Ferry: “Love is a Drug and I need to score”. So when you break up with someone, there’s all these chemicals that are associated with them, which I’ve mentioned before. But also you get incredibly used to having someone there to care about you, to call you and see how your day was. Why would you want to go back to an ex-boyfriend and a relationship that’s already gone sour once? Yawn.

I think what you need to cure more than anything is your loneliness  – so it is time for you to go out, stop looking for men and start looking for yourself. It sounds cheesy but its true. You need to be a whole person before you can meet someone who will be that other for you.

Would you want to be with some guy that wants to be with you just to end his loneliness since breaking up with his last, dull girlfriend? I think not.

Imagine a co-dependent relationship being that of one circle, made up of two halves – they cannot we whole without the other. I think what we should aspire to is two complete circles, that meet and create an oval as they overlap. So…stop looking. Forget about finding your other half to make you complete, make yourself complete and I’m sure within a very short amount of time you will find someone who appreciates you in all your fabulousness.

Hungry Like The Wolf…Question 1

svadjalica

Why is it that I am very often attracted to gay men (I’m a hetero female)? I don’t know it at the time of attraction, but later I find out that they’re gay or at least bi-sexual. Why is my radar so wrong?

Interesting question. My first thought on reading this is that perhaps you really respond well when people have open, engaging energy? So, perhaps what is happening is that you are meeting these men and they are incredibly open to you, which of course you find attractive. However the sheer freedom of their openness is because sex is out of the equation. I know I can be incredibly warm & friendly, but then when I am attracted to someone say completely strange and ridiculous things just out of nervousness.

I don’t think this is such a radar problem, more that you are looking perhaps too superficially for signs of someone’s attraction. To be honest, in many circumstances the way you can tell someone is attracted to you is that they can barely look at you or accidentally seem to say almost brash or insulting things. I know it sounds frightfully Mr Darcy, but just be aware that people handle their attractions in all sorts of strange ways.

I would recommend you very wholeheartedly do the experiment below. Stop looking for signs of attraction because its just a never ending not fun story that always messes with your head – trust me, I know. When there is someone you like, take a deep breath and focus all your energy back to yourself and into your body, and then really watch and observe them to see if its someone you actually like, not just someone to break the loneliness.

And if in doubt with your gaydar, just find a friend who can read these things (we all know one) and ask them to check it out. It’s better than dropping hints about Dorothy to every man you meet.

Best Break Up Song of 08/09?

Ephmera… some general thoughts on attraction

Its a strange thing, attraction. There are a multitude of scientific theories out there which could it explain why we are attracted to who we are attracted to. I’m by no means a scientist, so all I know is most of them come down to smell or DNA. Or psychology points us towards a “perfect neurotic fit” whereby you manage attract someone who is will match all your neuroses (im)perfectly.

From my perspective, and experience, the thing that baffles me the most is how transient & changeable attraction is. I have had crushes on all types of strange people. And all different people have appeared to be attracted to me as well. I guess the thing that can be difficult is differentiating pure attraction (a crush) to someone you actually want to potentially give a huge amount of your most precious time to. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become much less attracted to arrogant men – something that used to charm me somehow.

As I always say, the Other is simply a reflection of ourselves. If you were to make a list of random attractions you have had a different ages, say one for every five years since teenagehood, including complete fantasy crushes, I think you would gradually see a distinct pattern of reflection. For example, when I have been abandoning my creativity I seem to be attracted to crazy artists. Or with these arrogant men, when I think about it, they tend to emerge when I am having doubts or lacking in confidence. So make that list and own your side of it!

A few of the questions of our question page are asking about this whole general theme, I’m going to write specific answers to each of them in another post.

The thing that is most vital, though, I think is to consider why you are asking so much about ‘guys who are interested in me’. I know I never reveal exactly who it is that I like, and from what I understand from my male friends, often it is exactly the same for them. So consider that perhaps the people who you think ‘are attracted to you’ are just the ones who are brave or stupid enough to ‘make a move’ as it were. I spent my entire teenage years thinking I must be really unattractive to men because the only people who seemed ‘attracted to me’ were either really drunk or creepy. Because I was looking only at the visible.

Activity:

Ignore your ego, and stop looking for cues as to who is attracted to you. Actually, stop looking! This is my number one piece of advice. Instead, as an experiment, try NOT looking for two weeks and just spending everyday devoting copious amounts of time to yourself. Imagine you have a perfect boyfriend who is away on holiday. Even if you meet a guy who you think is attractive, just ignore the feelings as part of the experiment. He’ll still be there in two weeks. Think about what makes you happy, what music you like, watch films you enjoy. Go out with your friends, devote time to them as well. Do all the things you would do if you had that boyfriend who was away on holiday. (No, not stalking his facebook all day and night). Do this for two whole weeks and tell me how you feel at the end of it.

Oooh questions!

I was very happy to get such an incredible response to my last post.

Today I will provide some short ideas in response to a great bunch of questions I received from a reader:

1. How do you deal when you see him with his new lady for the first time after the breakup?
Well, essentially it depends on how you feel. Chances are you feel a huge range of mixed emotions, probably not very comfortable ones if it was him that broke up with you. First of all, it’s completely natural that you feel strange, weird and possibly physically sick. Importantly, you don’t have to be mature about this. If you feel like going home and crying – do that. It’s not pathetic, its just a natural reaction to a completely overwhelming situation.

Secondly, this should be a very clear sign to you that it is time to move on. I think sometimes when we are with someone, or attracted to them, we attach a massive sense of importance about our sense of worth in relation to them. So it’s like chemical connection, of course because when we see them we feel so good and its easy to begin to think about our lives in relation to them. But when you are no longer with someone, particularly if the break up has been sudden, all this goodness that we have projected onto them suddenly expires. Just remember – all the golden glowing goodness you saw in them is simply your own goodness projected onto another.

So… do not be embarrassed at however you react. Listen to your emotions, then be disciplined and put all that energy you once projected onto the Other back onto yourself. Spend some money on something completely frivolous for yourself and then do not be alone. Go and spend time with people you love, even if just for an hour to get your mind back into the present, He or She is now officially the past. Don’t let yourself be there with them.

A note: please also resist the urge to pick the new one apart, remember the sisterhood/brotherhood! You may be prettier, smarter, a better dresser, probably a better kisser. But this doesn’t matter – your ex is not a prize! The new girl/guy is no better than you and you are no better than they are, just for being with someone.

2. How do I stop myself from thinking I am the best thing that ever happened to him, and he will want me back, not now, not tomorrow, but he will.

See my note above. The important part of this question is ’stop’. I say, why fight with yourself. There are no rules that you must follow in life. If you really really want to think that, think it as hard as you can and eventually, I promise, you will make yourself laugh with the sheer absurdity of the thought. But don’t fight with yourself about it.

And, come on, do you really want him back? He ended it with you. If you were back together, you would be emailing me every day telling me you were scared he would leave you again. Imagine a year of that? Ick.

Maybe he will want you back, but trust me – you won’t want him by then. It’s Swingers theory, and its never wrong.

3. How do you stop feeling like you will always be alone?

Guess what, honey? You will. I’m kidding but this is kind of the basis of existential crises. You will absolutely always be alone. Accept that and you will realise that the person you are with is just a reflection of your own goodness.

But yeah, I know what you mean. We are of course socialised to be with someone. And it is nice to have someone to call and have to care about you. But…as every fridge magnet will tell you – the most important relationship is just the one you have with yourself. The stronger that one is, the more likely you will find someone to match you as a partner, not just as a distraction from being alone.

I Just Came to Tell You that I’m Going…

So he’s leaving you.

Oh shit.

Whatever the circumstances, the fact is that you will have to deal with that slimy feeling somewhere deep inside you. “He doesn’t want to be with me?”  was something I once said for days on repeat after the first time I was broken up with. Well.. actually, no, he doesn’t. And for whatever reason, whatever childhood trauma or work problems or jealousy or whatever that you analyse the reason to be, the bottom line is that this person does not want to be with you.

Now I am a pragmatic – even after my most recent, amazingly sudden break up, I came back to myself remarkably fast. But…the hardest thing to shake if someone has broken up with you is the little voice of your ego. The Ego will shout at you, whisper or rant – whatever it takes to get your attention. And, if you haven’t properly mourned the relationship, it could be months later but you still feel like crap about some idiot who couldn’t see how lucky they were to be with you.

A point I would like to raise here that some of the ‘relationships’ that have affected me the absolute most have been very brief, even unconsumated ones. Let yourself feel whatever you feel. Do not dismiss how you feel as being trivial. Ever.

I really believe that attraction and connection is a way that we connect to our innermost selves. Sometimes just the connection you have with someone is a very brief moment that just touches you somehow. This is lifeforce flowing through us, and when you think about it, that is one of the most intimate possible experiences you could share with someone.

There was once a guy I was incredibly attracted to but never expressed how I felt. I’m not sure why, but I just never could. I suspect it was the same for him, but I don’t know. Even now, years and years later, I still dream about him from time to time. He moved me in some way, literally stirred my soul. So who is to say that he is not more a soulmate than a guy a dated on and off for a year but now never think of?

So don’t beat yourself up if you can’t quite get over someone. My practical advice? Keep busy, try to channel all that energy back into you and feeling fabulous, go out and flirt, and inevitably – have someone else’s hands touch you. This is the surest way to move on.

Be gentle with yourself. After all, this is your heart we are talking about!

Very First Post

So due to popular demand, I am putting my vast knowledge (and experience) of being with men into this blog. A lot of people ask me questions and opinions about love. While I don’t profess to be an expert, I have been out with many, many different types of men and also seem to be a magnet for others stories… So I guess I have a lot to share.

Please send me your questions, and in the meantime I will post stories and bit and pieces.