Later on, it hurt to hear how past partners, old friends, and former bosses talked about me. I wanted to jump in with my story to find a mutual sense of closure. But perfect closure doesn’t exist. I can’t control their interpretations and I’m not perfect. Life is messy. Everybody has their version of events, and the truth is more complicated than right or wrong.

If any past relationships cast me as the villain without taking responsibility, it reflects their journey, not mine-and that’s something I’ve learned to accept. They’re doing their best and I recognize the best may not be enough to maintain a healthy relationship between us. I choose to see both sides with multidimensional grace to understand, let go, and move on.

My partner and I are deeply in love and we have the best intentions for our future. But our best intentions aren’t enough. It’s a choice we have to make again every single day. Even marriage or kids won’t guarantee forever. We’re a great match, but it’s not realistic we’re going to be the same people for the rest of our lives. Growth is inevitable in a world where change is the only constant.

Understanding that commitment is a daily choice was the fairytale story I had to update. There’s a necessity to attend and celebrate the funerals of our old selves to evolve into who we’re meant to be. I strive to be my honest self with my partner and create the permissions where he can do the same, so we can move towards our highest purpose.

I’ve learned the success of a relationship isn’t measured by its duration but by its authenticity

Society privileges knowingness–we value control, clarity, direction, and concreteness. But we live in an infinite universe where there’s so much that we do not know. I can feel myself wanting to hook my future onto some kind of certainty because I want to feel secure, but life is inherently unknowable. As I commit completely to my boyfriend, I am also learning to find peace and resilience in whatever happens. I can’t predict tomorrow, but I know what I want–him by my side, and right now, that’s good enough for me.

Final Thoughts

I think often about how Eastern philosophy is primarily taught with poems because poetry offers flexibility in language. That’s how I feel about love. I can try to pin down specific truths about what love means to me and what love has shown me, but the feeling itself is often too slippery to circumscribe and encircle with words.

Dating in my 20s was a whirlwind of growth, lessons, and life-changing turns. I know a little more now, but I’m still stumbling around in my 30s and integrating these lessons. Perhaps that’s the point. To risk it all, feel it all, and wake up the next day to do better receiving and giving love however I can.

According to one of the universal principles of the law of attraction, everyone serves as a mirror reflecting your innermost thoughts, ideas, and beliefs. Expanding on that point further, research on the similarity-attraction principle shows that we tend to like what we know. Meaning, that our brains are often subconsciously wired to be drawn to what’s familiar.

Many of those raw stories were linked to my early childhood experiences. I was never taught to identify, understand, and healthily process my emotions so I detached and ignored them whenever I could. By doing that, I had https://lovingwomen.org/tr/blog/lehce-tanisma-siteleri/ no idea I was also blunting feelings of happiness, joy, and gratitude. My body grew numb to all of my emotions , missing out on the important messages my feelings were trying to tell me because of the chaos I was throwing into my mind-body-heart connection.

Embracing the role of the villain in someone else’s story can be empowering if it means staying true to yourself.