I saw a post in a Woman’s Business forum about how dating was derailing female owned businesses. I felt validated. And then I felt ashamed.

Somewhere in the last 2.5 years of being single, my heart got squimish. She remembered how much process and disappointment there had been. How as an empath, she had been dragged down. How her work became emaciated each time she gave herself to love.

I saw in my feeling of validation, that I needed to change my paradigm around partnership. So, I started to practice in quiet moments. I imagined seeing my man, and my whole nervous system relaxing into trust. I felt his capacity to hold and embrace me. I felt my capacity to savor his freedom and encourage him towards his passions. I felt the fullness of my desire for him. I felt the richness of our love making. And I felt the relief of knowing we both had resources that supported us and held us accountable to loving.

I felt gratitude, expansiveness, and an invitation to thrive.

Before I had felt push and pull. I had felt being asked to “wait” until someone could catch up, and then their giving up. I felt the fear of not being sure what someone was choosing for themselves. And just hearing “I choose you.” I felt being used as a battery and inspiration. And I felt grief, despair, and an unwillingness to trade my vibrancy for support.

I felt a “NO.”

Truthfully, there are things I have to give up. I have to give up the arrogance of feeling in control. I have to be with the little girl that wants to get all twisted in someone and call that devotion. I will have to catch when I’m in the tree house of analyzing patterns, and come down to be with my beloved again. I will have to hold the practice of loving with more gentleness. I will have to get better at telling the truth about when I need to be alone to ground, pray, and create.

And at first, I will need to fully say “Yes” to someone and not “Yes…if…”

I believe increasingly, that we CAN have it all. Passionate rooted love, friendships that inspire our bloom, and work that reflects our greatness. But all of these things are an active practice and not a prize.

What if we all stopped worrying what was out there, and started to face our resistance to love, and work on being better partners? What is we stopped fixating on the appearance, race, financial status etc. of who we should be with, and focused on the feeling we wanted to create with someone?

After all, to someone else, you are what’s out there.

So am I.