What I'm Thinking: Romantic Past & Feelings of Failure

Today I updated on Facebook:

I sometimes have these moments of romantic existential crisis in which I question every romantic decision I've ever made, wondering who/where I would be if I'd done things differently. I worry that I messed up. But when I'm grounded and feeling abundant, I remember that I said no for a reason and I remember that I can have, will have all the love, romance, connection I want and in exactly the way I want it. And that sometimes the only way to it is through it.

On Monday I celebrated the new moon with a group of wondrously inspiring babes and as we sat on the shore of the Pacific Ocean we each shared what we wanted to attract in this new moon phase and what we wanted to release.

I said I wanted to attract vulnerability and the integration of all the parts of my life that have felt splintered (I was thinking about the way that my romantic/sexual life often feels completely separate from all the rest of my life). I said I wanted to release feelings of scarcity.

When I'm feeling confused or unclear about where my life is headed and why I'm doing what I'm doing I find that my anxiety settles on the part of my life that seems the least clear to me: my romantic life. I start to question my past decisions and often conclude that I've irreparably damaged my ability to love, to be close to someone, to ever have any chance of romantic/sexual bliss.

And then I realize that I'm creating my romantic/sexual bliss right now - sometimes through amazing and strangely funny dates and sometimes through those very feelings of failure and loss. I'm making my bliss, it just doesn't look like the model of bliss I've been taught to want.

It's funny how surprising that is to me! I do so many things that are unorthodox, impolite, strange and generally affronting to mainstream cultural appetites. That my love style is unorthodox should be a given. But it somehow just isn't. :)

I'm still working through all these thoughts and feelings. So, I'll end with this thought: last weekend a new friend told me that I needed to be aware that I would find as many people in my life as I wanted who would love me for all of me.

And though I don't always believe her, today I do.