My Journey to Healthy Love, CH 3: I met the love o' my life... and then got dumped.

I was 41 when I met the love of my life.

I still remember seeing Marco emerge from around the corner. All 6’5” of him… tall, dark and handsome.  (sexy Abe Lincoln! Shhh, don’t tell him I said that!)

I had just finished a breath workshop and I was feeling super high and giddy. A little too high and giddy.

We sat in lawn chairs and I asked if he could talk cause I was out of it. And so he did. I found him fascinating, intelligent, articulate, and strange. A good kind of strange. My kind of strange.

We ended up talking til late into the night. And that was kind of it, for both of us. In the first 7 days, we racked up countless hours of intense, deep, and adventurous conversation, staying up till all hours of the night, no matter how much I would insist on getting off the phone early that night. Not a single subject was raised that we didn’t find hours of exploration to dive into.

The conversations made us high. It felt like we were traveling to Jupiter and back. And yet, it was real, authentic, grounded. It was balanced. It was effortless. I was just being myself. And he was just being himself. And look at all the fun we had just being these two Koo-koo birds together!

I had met my match. “Holy sh*t. THIS is what that’s like!”

Oddly enough, despite having waited 41 years for this, despite having worked diligently for 6 years for this… I felt calm. Meeting Marco, feeling his energy and our energy together, was incredibly calming. I felt at home. I didn’t have to do all the things I once did… please him, save him, prove that I could be something he needed. I was just me. And that was the thing he loved most.

>>> Record scratch. <<<

Two weeks into our blossoming love-fest and all night talk-a-thons, we hit a major speed bump. Wait, that’s an understatement. It felt more like stepping on a landmine.

Our Higher Selves decided we were ready for the LOVE SUPER BOWL!

Imagine a SuperBowl.

Team A has the best offense in the game. But, Team B has the best defense. Team A has the best quarterback ever. But, Team B has the best linebacker, who has the most quarterback sacks ever. Team A has an insane passing game. But, Team B has the record for interceptions.

Team A & Team B are a perfect match, AND a complete draw. How does anyone win??

Team A was my ego. Team B was Marco’s ego.

No matter how adept my ego had become at hiding this or that (from myself even), my Love Super Bowl partner was the perfect foil! He saw it, and he sacked my ego time and time again. And vice versa… I was custom built to intercept all his ego passes.  We played our own Super Bowl for a good 9 months. At first, there was a rush, I mean, I was playing with my total equal! I’ve always loved a good spiritual bitch slap, and this guy was showing up and standing his ground! But we quickly got banged up and bruised. No one won this game, ever.

But the game was meant to be played, our ego’s were meant to be outed. We are both committed to authenticity and truth, so all the ways we were getting in our own way had to be outed!

In between our Super Bowl quarters, we would have explosions of our authentic selves, the likes of which we had never experienced… we would have ecstatic exchanges of love and acceptance. And our late night talks continued to take us to Jupiter and back.

But dang, that whistle kept blowing, our ego’s kept flaring, and back into the game we would go!

And, thank God!

Here’s what I was able to see about my ego through the reflection of Marco, that I was unable to see through anyone else, including myself:

• I had a big spiritual ego. 
• I was self righteous. 
• I had a ton o’ hidden judgments.
• I was playing small, in order to be liked (or safe).
• I was hiding behind a mask of nice, spiritual girl. 
• That mask was preventing me from real intimacy. 
• That mask was exhausting.

… To stay in this relationship I had to see these things, face them, and do my work to transmute them…

Here’s what I found out about my authentic self, hiding out behind that ego:

• I was more powerful than I imagined.
• I was safe to take up space.
• I was safe to feel and express anger.
• I was safe to allow myself to be seen, even the unsavory parts. 
• I was safe to be full-out authentic, and the result was always MORE (love, truth, beauty, etc…).
• I was lovable, even with all my human frailties.
• I was safe to love someone else totally and completely, even with their human frailties.

… To stay in this relationship I had to embrace these things …

It was a LOVE SUPER BOWL.

But what happens when you do the work that your relationship affords you? When you receive the gift? What happens when your partner does the same?

What happened when I worked on all the things that were holding me back in life (that this relationship showed me), and embraced all that which set me free? What happened when Marco did the same?

Well, we broke up ;-)

Stay tuned for the final chapter!