the key...

Romantic love has been an on going theme in my life. In my early twenties I came up with a story set in post Civil War Pennsylvania about a single mother, about to marry a Colonel when her first husband, thought dead, walks back into her life. The Colonel is a good solid man who stepped in to take care of the woman and her daughter when he returned from the war. The woman is passionate and prone to scandal because she refuses to live by society’s standards. The night of their engagement party her first husband, a dashing young and mysterious man, returns raising the question, where has he been and what has he been doing? The mystery unravels and she is forced to make a choice between her heart, which could lead her abandoned again and her head where there is safety.

I love this story and perhaps one day I will write it. It feels a bit like a fabulous romance novel, a genre I only recently thought I could write. I love, love and romance so really it is a perfect niche. Also, how strange, that a theme that would run my life was a story I wrote almost twenty years ago.

Throughout my life, I have gone between bad boys and good guys. I’ve always felt more “in love” with the bad boys and date the good guys when I think it is time for me to “settle down” or I need to try something different but it never works. It goes completely against my heart and the “trying” doesn’t work. It is awful. Recently I’ve been wondering if it truly has anything to do with the man I pick or if it is really all about me.

This week, I started working with my life coach, Breck in hopes of getting to the bottom of this affliction. About an hour into the group session a woman spoke up with my same issue and Breck’s response to her was liberating. Hearing a male’s perspective was fascinating and I found a language for my little issue and the answer to my question.

The answer, the man has little to do with my issue. I know this is hard to hear and sounds pretty unbelievable but it’s true. It is all about me. I look at it like this, a devil can walk through my door but if I am fully empowered and in grace, will he have an effect on me? NO! But if I’m needy and lost –he will have his way with me.

I bring a huge agenda into dating. And this is no surprise when we live in an age of “The Rules,” “He’s just not that into you...,” “Think like a man, act like a lady...” I realize all these books have the intention of empowering women but they lead women astray with the idea that when you meet someone if you follow all the “rules” and they guy behaves a certain way then it will work and only then...how many “love stories” have you heard where both people met with perfect timing and everything worked perfectly from the get go? Very few.

The other part of my issue is when I do meet a man that I’m truly attracted to I abandon myself and shut down, not fully expressing myself unless I feel safe.

Breck said he’s never met a man who left a woman where the woman hadn’t left herself first –wise words. This is the key.

At the end of the class, Breck asked what I’m going to work on and I said, “Writing my book. And not having an agenda, not losing myself and being fully expressed in relationship.”

It will be an interesting spring.