Ladies, have you ever imagined what it would be like for a super gorgeous, slightly older, tall, dark, handsome Italian to take a romantic interest in you? To have him share his deepest thoughts and feelings with you and ask about yours in return...to have him recite Italian poetry to you in that beautifully silky accent of his and sing you the most beautiful love songs of all time..?
Well, it’s happened to me, and let me tell you; it is among the worst “wooing” I’ve ever experienced in my life.
Love to me has always been a bit of a mystery. Sure, I’ve been in love before...or at least I think I have...but that doesn’t mean I necessarily know everything about it.
After my last relationship ended badly I decided I wanted to take some time for me; to enjoy the last year of my teens and the start of my twenties as a free agent, and I really did. I got to the point where I was so happy to be single - I was never the sort of person that was desperate for a relationship in those primitive adult years, no matter how many times I had the “so have you got a boyfriend yet?” line of questioning from friends, family members and even my nail technicians, Jenny and Kelly...on every.single.visit, bless them.
After I moved to Melbourne and had felt a little more settled I decided it was time to get back in the dating game; it’d be nice to have someone special in my life, right?
One of my favourite talking points with my housemate over the past few months has been all of my trials and tribulations with dates and dating.
And oh boy, do I have some absolute doozies!
There was Mr He's-Probably-a-Player...he was sweet enough, it all happened too quickly though, and soon enough it was all over. There was a time when I actually thought he liked me but looking back on it, I don't think he ever did.
Mr Italy, who I mentioned earlier, was weird, and that’s probably an understatement. In a matter of days of talking he became more and more intense, and was telling me things like “I want to meet with you in a park at dusk so I can see how your eyes sparkle in the sunlight and your hair blows in the wind..” and that he wanted to “pour red wine in the dip of my collarbones and drizzle honey over my mouth and drink the wine and devour the honey” (sorry mum and dad if you’re reading this, TMI!). I honestly thought men like that didn’t exist, but here I was, living it and cringing more and more with every word he spoke to me.
Mr Clingy started off really nice, and then he got weirdly possessive and creepy. Not to mention he was the worst kisser I’ve ever experienced...bleughh I still get the shivers when I think of the washing machine syndrome I encountered with him!
Mr Nice Guy..where do I start with this one...probably one of the nicest people I’ve ever come across, not to mention bloody gorgeous...even my housemate agrees! Romantically it didn’t work out, but to this day we still talk here and there, and he proves to be a constant source of laughter in my life.
And then there’s Mr I-Thought-You-Were-Different...we had one of the best first dates ever...and second...and third...and for a while I thought finally, FINALLY I had found a good one. Someone that genuinely cared about me and my interests and wondered how my day was going. I was constantly showered with compliments and affection, and to be told “I’m so happy you’ve come into my life” after not very long was everything I’d wanted to hear and more. But out of nowhere that all stopped and to be honest I’m still really confused as to why, I’ll probably never know..Maybe he wasn’t so different from the rest of them after all.
There is a point to reliving some of my dating stories, I promise.
In amongst all of the fun times there were obviously also a lot of failures, and with that came a lot of questioning. Questioning what I wanted, where I wanted to be, I started questioning myself; why did no one want to be with me? What is wrong with me?
That last one was the hardest one of all…
What was wrong with me?
It’s an age-old question that I’m sure pretty much everyone deals with asking themselves at least once or twice in their lives. When someone doesn’t want you your automatic thought patterning is to blame yourself; you try to figure out where you went wrong, what you could’ve done differently...and so begins a vicious cycle, which more times than not leads to one thing and one thing only; the demise of self love.
After my latest “break up” (if you could even call it that) all of the same thoughts as before started making their way through my mind, but this time one thing changed.
After a few days of wallowing I found myself thinking back to something that Mr Italy had once asked me but I had never once thought to ask myself; did I love myself?
My answer at the time had been “well that’s a weird question..”, but thinking about it after being left on my own yet again I realised maybe it wasn’t so weird after all.
So I started wondering do I actually love myself?
Was I happy with the person I was?
To be honest, I found myself kind of stumped; I didn’t know my answer to a seemingly simple question. I thought I was happy with the person that I was but after more and more thought I realised maybe I wasn’t, maybe I didn’t love myself, and maybe that was my problem.
It wasn’t as though I wasn’t trying..for as long as I can remember I had desperately tried to love myself, and show myself the respect I knew I deserved but it was something that internally I had always always struggled with, growing up being bullied and not feeling like I fit in anywhere.
But something I realised during the time of reflection was that the choices I was making, some of them very very VERY stupid, didn’t reflect the person I thought I was, or one that I wanted to be.
I became all too aware of my faults, yet at the same time I was doing absolutely nothing to correct them.
If anything the mistakes I was making were pushing me further and further away from that person I wanted to be..it was like I could see her in the distance but no matter how far I ran to try and catch up to her she was always just out of my reach.
To put it blanky, it fucking sucked.
After several of these realisations were made and I had done a bit of crying here and there I decided there was only one thing I could do.
I picked myself up off my floor, threw away all the soaked tissues and started to write in a journal.
I wrote down all of my hopes and dreams. My thoughts and fears. I wrote affirmation after affirmation and set intentions for the next weeks, months and years of my life.
I wrote a list of the kind of life I wanted. I wrote down everything I wanted to achieve for the next year. Heck, I even wrote a list of all the qualities of my ideal man (who will turn up eventually…).
I decided that from that moment on I choose to love myself.
Choosing to love yourself is one of the most powerful things a person can do.
It’s choosing to accept yourself for all of your good qualities, but also all the bad ones. It’s deciding to love yourself on both your best and worst days, and to do everything you can to forgive, nurture and accept yourself for the person you are, because really, you’re pretty fucking great.
For the past month I’ve been doing a lot of work on myself. I meditate regularly, I exercise when I can and every night before bed I write down everything that I’m thankful for from the day I’ve just had...it sounds cheesy but let me tell you, after doing it for just a few days I had already realised how blessed I was to be living my life, and I knew I would never take life or myself for granted again, because I could finally, honestly, truly say that I love myself.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m still no professional at this self-love thing, and by no means am I going to go all guru on any of you, but I everyday I’m getting better and better at it, and I’m learning to love myself as the person I am, flaws and all.
And maybe for now, until Mr Right eventually comes along, that’s the only kind of love I actually need.
It’s an age-old question that I’m sure pretty much everyone deals with asking themselves at least once or twice in their lives. When someone doesn’t want you your automatic thought patterning is to blame yourself; you try to figure out where you went wrong, what you could’ve done differently...and so begins a vicious cycle, which more times than not leads to one thing and one thing only; the demise of self love.
After my latest “break up” (if you could even call it that) all of the same thoughts as before started making their way through my mind, but this time one thing changed.
After a few days of wallowing I found myself thinking back to something that Mr Italy had once asked me but I had never once thought to ask myself; did I love myself?
My answer at the time had been “well that’s a weird question..”, but thinking about it after being left on my own yet again I realised maybe it wasn’t so weird after all.
So I started wondering do I actually love myself?
Was I happy with the person I was?
To be honest, I found myself kind of stumped; I didn’t know my answer to a seemingly simple question. I thought I was happy with the person that I was but after more and more thought I realised maybe I wasn’t, maybe I didn’t love myself, and maybe that was my problem.
It wasn’t as though I wasn’t trying..for as long as I can remember I had desperately tried to love myself, and show myself the respect I knew I deserved but it was something that internally I had always always struggled with, growing up being bullied and not feeling like I fit in anywhere.
But something I realised during the time of reflection was that the choices I was making, some of them very very VERY stupid, didn’t reflect the person I thought I was, or one that I wanted to be.
I became all too aware of my faults, yet at the same time I was doing absolutely nothing to correct them.
If anything the mistakes I was making were pushing me further and further away from that person I wanted to be..it was like I could see her in the distance but no matter how far I ran to try and catch up to her she was always just out of my reach.
To put it blanky, it fucking sucked.
After several of these realisations were made and I had done a bit of crying here and there I decided there was only one thing I could do.
I picked myself up off my floor, threw away all the soaked tissues and started to write in a journal.
I wrote down all of my hopes and dreams. My thoughts and fears. I wrote affirmation after affirmation and set intentions for the next weeks, months and years of my life.
I wrote a list of the kind of life I wanted. I wrote down everything I wanted to achieve for the next year. Heck, I even wrote a list of all the qualities of my ideal man (who will turn up eventually…).
I decided that from that moment on I choose to love myself.
Choosing to love yourself is one of the most powerful things a person can do.
It’s choosing to accept yourself for all of your good qualities, but also all the bad ones. It’s deciding to love yourself on both your best and worst days, and to do everything you can to forgive, nurture and accept yourself for the person you are, because really, you’re pretty fucking great.
For the past month I’ve been doing a lot of work on myself. I meditate regularly, I exercise when I can and every night before bed I write down everything that I’m thankful for from the day I’ve just had...it sounds cheesy but let me tell you, after doing it for just a few days I had already realised how blessed I was to be living my life, and I knew I would never take life or myself for granted again, because I could finally, honestly, truly say that I love myself.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m still no professional at this self-love thing, and by no means am I going to go all guru on any of you, but I everyday I’m getting better and better at it, and I’m learning to love myself as the person I am, flaws and all.
And maybe for now, until Mr Right eventually comes along, that’s the only kind of love I actually need.
No comments :
Post a Comment