Valentine's Day emotions got me pretty high up and about early morning. Hopeless romantic. Guilty as charged. A dozen phone calls later screaming Valentine wishes in a few ears, a handful who didn't share my overenthusiastic screech-capade, (well when you are a sixty year old woman whose husband is yelling football jargon at the screen, your idea of romantic is pretty bleak. Sorry Aunty Delly!) my garden swing found me curled up typing away to my heart's content.
My friend heads up a "Single and Happy" club (yup, they actually go by that name, lol!), a group of eight ladies, who I've found in the downtown cafe to be regulars for the whole of Valentine's Week exclaiming exactly "why we don't need a man" ( the ferocity depending on the number of screwdrivers sliding down their throats). And hence, they inspired me to pen my own thoughts on this popular text.
You don't need a man. Total agreement! Need is an adult version of babysitting. Dependence is cowardice and idleness freelancing in its purest construction. No, you certainly do not "need" anyone as an independent, charismatic, capable, high-profile woman. Disagreement with this ruling sets the women's movement a good century back, certainly not where we want to be at!
I'm angling to pinpoint on the double ended sword. Those Saturday nights playing couch potato downing Pinot Noir a glass too many watching The Bachelor on repeat telling yourself that you are "Single and Happy" yet a fresh wave of tears threaten to sweep up everytime you remember your sister's babyshower and Caroline's engagement could only get better if you were to replace the sentence with "why I want a man". Humans crave Intimacy. Period. Our lives are built on varying degrees of relationships. Now when you take out the word "man" and merely supersede it with "someone who makes me incredibly happy" it proves to be a relationship no different than the one you have with your girlfriends or your mom or even your little Terrier Lassie. Maybe even better.
Falling in love is terrifying even to the pluckiest out there. Three reasons. Giving up control, the past and in a twisted sense of meaning, fear of adaptation. ( That needs some explanation. *Grin*)
A woman who's acquired independence sees giving up control a little less brutal than sacrificing her soul (lol). Which is understandable. Mothering the condo beside the lake, the six figure job, the Porsche in the garage in a man's world was no easy feat. She's been incharge of her happiness for a substantial part of her life and excelled at it too. Placing her happiness, her sense of duty to herself in someone else's hands along with juggling the knowledge that she might get hurt is the bane of her existence. Giving up this sense of control, trusting someone else with her happiness, her secrets, her vulnerabilities, her insecurities terrifies the world out of her and makes her run faster than a lighting bolt and logically the only breakthrough the Lovey Door. Letting someone in to witness you in all your naked glory (emotionally, psychologically) is weary. Still understandable.
The Demon Past. The demon that holds onto you the more you hold onto it, refusing to let go, haunting days and nights, twisting genuine gestures as enemy ploys resulting in a world-class paronoid mess, that's you. A paranoid mess that acts on your "intuition based on past mistakes," winding up shattering arms that could have held you on cold days, never pausing to give that special someone the benefit of the doubt nor willing to accept that your intuitions might not always be veracious.Treading with caution is wise while refusing to tread is sissiness at its best for it takes a lion heart to forgive, forget, move on and embrace the possibility of resurrection.
Fear of adaptation, the confusing parameter. Let me break it down for you. You've got a whole routine, a blooming business, take out Chinese Friday nights with the fam, Saturday nights with the girls at the club and making room for someone that challenges your norms and threatens to break down all the walls you've built around yourself is petrifying too. "I'd have a whole new life, dinner with his parents. No pressure. He would be sleeping over at my house, probably will leave the toilet seat up and my mirror steamy. How does he like his coffee. Will I have to make a separate batch for him". You've got a whole routine working out for you like clockwork, nothing out of the ordinary, after all you've been doing that for the past six years. It's comfortable, it's safe. And breaking out of your comfort zone spooks the daylights out of you. Taking a step towards accommodating another lifestyle seems like a thousand giant steps. Total thorn on the side.
"Falling" in love they said. Fearlessly plummeting into the unknown bottomless pit disregarding the depths of your descend, living the moment experiencing the dimensionless feeling of being cared for and caring back stilling every other constant in time. That could be "falling in love" in a nutshell. The only route to ever benefitting out of the exhilarating feeling is to let go of the three above fiend genesis.
It is said to have better loved and lost than not loved at all. My ranting doesn't subscribe to portray that happiness lies in a partner, for it's not; happiness lies in your metrics of happiness. But certainly a person bringing out the best in you is an agent of happiness and you owe it to yourself to realise the reason to let yourself give into love is not out of need but out of in a way your own selfish desire to be happy.
You never know, you might just be someone's missing rib. *Wink.**Wink.*
Drop your thoughts down below.
Loads of love,
Akido.
