Reservation for one: Good Feng Shui in my heart space.

I think much of my romantic life as a young adult had been a response to the fear/feeling that I’d be alone. I think I made the mistake of interpreting the knowing as a fear rather than deep intuition. My fear response made me do my best to be a great partner. I’ve done very well as a partner in most of my relationships. The biggest issues I’d face would be when I encountered moments of failure or risk of failure. The fear would seep back into my actions and make me do dumb shit like try to get her[s] back when I knew I didn’t really want her.

Now don’t get me wrong I had a genuine admiration and deep love for a couple of the women I’ve been in relationships with. I had a moment in the past couple years where I started to believe that love, with applied discernment, was inevitable. So my approach towards dating became more focused on practicality and vision alignment. I’ve been in relationships with people of both ends of the spectrum of: Deep Alignment, Low affinity ←- → to Low alignment, high affinity. As I have developed a clearer vision and goals for myself I don’t care to measure. Which is a huge breakthrough for me.

A new thought about my romantic life has emerged: I don’t enjoy dating anymore. 

Memories of my younger self thinking about being alone sound appealing.

Don’t get me wrong though I’ve had a deep yearning for a strong romantic partnership for a long time. As a writing exercise I would write out my ideal day. And it's typically involved waking up to my ideal partner with a detailed description of who she is. But as I listen to a recording of me reading the overall life description, I feel like fast forwarding through the mentions of partnership. 

I meet a lot of really amazing people and my friends are all lovely people as well as high performers. So I’m not easily impressed but I can find something interesting about everyone. As I’ve cultivated communities of talented individuals, maintaining the community supersedes my interest in romance. Romance changes dynamics and the loss of romantic relationships tends to feel a bit more permanent. 

But that's fear and naivete talking. Atleast I think? This logic seems sound but it permeates through my attempts at cultivating romantic relationships. Whatever it is transmutes into doubt. I have doubted my ability to show up and maintain interest. I have doubted my ability to serve my partner and their needs. I have doubted the ability of my partner to meet my needs. 

In my day to day [when I’m feeling good] I don’t doubt myself though. I get myself everything I want. I take myself wherever I want to go. I can take really great care of myself. So yeah when I imagine living alone in my mountain home it sounds damn good. Peaceful!

What brings doubt is adding on the responsibilities of family and a romantic partner. I don’t know how to heal that and it makes me sad. I find myself at an inflexion point of two paths to happiness both with their own risk of being wrong. One, I choose to live a self-sufficient life with an absence of romance while still engaging with the community. Two, I choose to keep open to the opportunity for romantic love. Hopefully building a long lasting partnership and family.

There was a time where I was convinced that romantic love would help heal the wounds I have that create fear and doubt. But they are deep and while I’ve had mirrors who have helped me process I don’t feel it's fair to use another person in that way. I’m some cases my intuition is saying that I’m probably healing something for them as well so it balances out. But I’m not interested in using a relationship as a tool for my own self development. So without other answers and options, I continue to collect the tools and resources that I’ll one day take to my mountain. I won’t be alone. I’ll have a couple dogs. Maybe I’ll bring my woman up there too. I believe in myself to make the most responsible and honest decisions as I approach junctures of life altering decision making.

But for now I find excitement in my creativity being used to build an exciting life for myself. I find peace in that the fear of loneliness is unnecessary. As if I continue loving myself I’ll always be in good company.