You're looking for love in all the wrong places
Have you ever had feelings for someone, then your heart was broken when you find out they are not emotionally available?
Maybe you keep finding yourself in weird love triangles where you are posed as the home wrecker but you kind of like it.
It's also so painful because you know you can't get that person.
Last week I had a very insightful call with my Tribal Fire side group (this is a regular circle that I host for high achievers and thinkers who are on a journey of self-healing and self-discovery, where we support and guide each other and experiment with new techniques and methods).
In that call one of the members (Let's call them Oscar) was sharing that they just got out of a weird situation where they have developed strong feelings for a person (Let's call them Gabe).
Gabe is already in a relationship. The moment Oscar started to try to get closer, Gabe, just shut down, disappeared, started taking ages to reply to him, started ghosting, etc.
Oscar was pretty broken up about it. While we held space for him to have an emotional release, I couldn't help but think two things:
- Why would you put yourself in a situation like this when you already know the other person is not emotionally available?
- What are the expectations that you've built for yourself and that you imagined so that now it's so painful for you to continue without this person in?
The deeper question here is:
Why are you not okay being by yourself?
Too many people get into situationships that are emotionally codependent, where they feel like they need the other person to feel whole.
That's when things become dangerous.
That's where toxicity starts to show up.
That is where we start showing up and acting from a place of fear instead of from a place of love and courage.
That’s another mistake that Oscar made: he let this just go and evolve without stopping to flag the situation and have an honest conversation with Gabe about the feelings that he was experiencing.
He was afraid that if he was honest with Gabe, Gabe would shut down or not respond positively,
Which is exactly what happened in the end
I've seen this scenario play out so many times.
Every time we act out of fear, the very thing that we fear happens.
Let me repeat that again.
Every time we take an action from a place of fear, the very thing that we fear happens.
Two further questions for you here to reflect on:
- What will it take for me to be okay being by myself and not feel so broken if someone's going to exit my life? Yes it's going to be painful, always, and you're going to grieve and you're going to miss that person. That's okay but it doesn't mean that you are crushed and you're all in a mess when it happens.
- What will it take for you to start taking action from a place of love and courage instead of from a place of fear?
The way I was able to answer these questions for myself was by looking at relationships as experiences and adventures.
Meaning every person comes into our lives to show us something and teach us something about ourselves.
We are ever expanding and drifting through the cosmos, meeting different souls and people who come into our lives where we get to share experiences together and we get to learn from them.
Some people stay for a while and some people are not meant to stay in our lives.
Deep in my heart I know that I will be okay no matter who I associate with and whomever exits my life.
Having this faith in yourself that you were going to be okay and having faith in the universe that it's always going to look after you helps you start to take action with love and inclusiveness and compassion and kindness to others without letting fear stop you or paralyze you.