My personal story of an experiment I do not recommend.

I wrote an entire book – which nobody has ever read – about the affair with my lover. As I read through it today, nearly five years later, the memories of our relationship still hit me in a vulnerable place. Reading my recollection of our affair makes me nauseous.

Still, here I find myself, set on compromising the essence of my book into an essay.  

Why is that?

I’ll tell you.

After my nauseous-making relationship ended, I went straight into another relationship, where I more or less repeated the tune of my first affair. It hurt. And now, I find myself unwilling to enter into any new relationship because I can not stand to feel that amount of pain all over again.

I want to understand what I’ve been doing.

Therefore; I’m set on completing this essay. That completion, though, has been no simple task. I’ve actually spent the last month refusing to pick this essay up. I started, then I stopped. And then I went through that routine eight times or so. I spent a lot of time crumbled up on my living room floor. And I started on a deep dive essay on co-dependency, which you will recognize is related to what went on for me below.

I wrote my essay on co-dependency in a bit more impersonal style, so I could pretend that I had got that all sorted. But it didn’t help. I still needed to complete this story. 

I think my time has come to see through my deepest, most unconscious relationship patterns.

I’m ready for my relationship upgrade. 

So, I’m standing up from my living room floor – or from a curl under a blanket on my sofa where I was just now – and completing this essay. And I’m inviting you to join me. 

I guess I enjoy your company.

Does Safety Have Anything to Do with Love?

Five years rewind.

I have just stepped out of a long relationship that was built on friendship, not on love. I have invested ten years relating to a man while never touching love. 

And my heart yearns so deeply to experience what love can be. 

As my relationship dissolves, I realise that what I had thought to be love, might just have been my feeling of safety. As I open this contemplation, an inner list surfaces; a list of my conditions for being loved. Or; a list of my conditions for feeling safe.

Do you want to see my list? Here it is:

• Acting predictable and keeping agreements

• Being emotionally stable

• Including me in your thoughts if I request so

• Listening to me and receiving me

• Answering my questions honestly

• Making me feel attractive

• Agreeing with me

The problem with my list is that although my previous partner ticked all these points, I couldn’t really love him. I just felt… safe with him. Therefore, I resonate: safety does not automatically turn into love. Those are actually two different things.

And so, I start questioning my list. 

What is even the percent chance of meeting someone that will satisfy my list, and that I’m also romantically attracted to? 

For my inner eye appears a blinking sign:

0% 0% 0% 

Hmm. 

What if I will wait forever to find a man that can tick all the dots on my safety-list and that is also suited to be my partner in love? 

If I’m set on experiencing love, I ponder, maybe it’s more effective if I let go off my list? Wouldn’t it be great if I can make myself courageous enough to trust my partners unconditionally, regardless if they satisfy my list or not? 

If I can just let go of my list and enjoy to love, I can experience love all the time. I won’t depend on the other’s way of moving about anymore. I will be free to love whenever I want to!  

That’s it. I am set on letting go of my conditions-for-love-slash-safety-list. 

And this is where my lover enters my life. 

Exploring Love Without Conditions

In the beginning, there is a beautiful lover’s meeting. 

He says he loves me as we are waiting for my train. He comes to see me when I go to the hospital. He brings us delicious food. We plan a vegetable garden. I feel safe with him, nourished by him. We have great sex. He makes me feel like a woman. 

I am convinced that this is my moment in time. With this man – I tell myself – I will finally know love.

I enjoy that he challenges me. He feels wise. My lover says things like this: 

If you refuse to love unless everything is safe around you, your ability to love will be limited. The space your love can fill will always have protective walls around it. Your love can never grow to infinite proportions.

My lover encourages me to meet him in love without considering what will happen in a day or two. Just meet me, he says. Not to secure your future, or to own our meeting as a memory of your past. Just meet me, here, as You, in this very moment in time - without concerning yourself of what was or what will be.  

His suggestion resonates with me. He is supporting me in letting go of my list of conditions. I decide that with this man, I will relax my safety guard; so that I can learn to love. 

But then one day…

Another woman enters my lover’s life. 

My lover doesn’t know how to tell me. 

He starts dating both the other woman and myself, and does his best to make that work. Neither she nor me knows of one another. 

And somewhere around that point, my exploration of love without conditions turns into something else. 

And I stay.

Where Everything Could Have Changed

We are laying in my sofa. His arm around me, we have just made love. 

Just open your heart and enjoy the gift of love, my lover says. And don’t think about what will happen tomorrow. 

Suddenly, I freeze. His suggestion terrifies me. It does not resonate anymore. My guard arises – strongly. 

Why does it do so? 

I whisper you the clue - although where I was laying in my sofa with his arm around my body five long years ago; I did not know: 

My lover’s intention has changed. 

Juggling two girlfriends that do not know about each other, my lover’s intention of questioning my need of safety is no longer an exploration of what love is and is not. Now, his primary concern is hearing me say: Yes you’re right, I don’t need any safety to enjoy you. 

Because then; he feels okay. 

And what about me? Are my intentions of exploring love without conditions honest? Or is it simply so that where I’m lying on my sofa, with his luscious body next to me, his skin so soft and his being so tender, I am not so very interested in exploring reasons not to love him? 

I push my angst away. This is how it feels to let go of my conditions, I tell myself. Of course my upgrade challenges me.  

Yes, I say to him. Yes, I don’t care what happens tomorrow. I just enjoy loving you, right this very moment.

And so; I stay.

My Ambition 

It’s easy to say in retrospect that this is my momentum to leave. 

The fact is: I don’t leave.

Actually, I decide to do the very opposite. I decide to make this man love me, and to make myself love this man. I decide to disregard my heart screaming to me that something is wrong and insist on loving him. Non regardless of the circumstances. Or even: despite the circumstances. 

My lover continues to see the other woman, and still I do not know. He really cannot choose, my lover. Or maybe he has already chosen. And I am not his choice. But he has no heart to tell me. And me, I continue my letting-go-of-safety-quest. 

As our relationship gets more and more intense, more and more distorted, my lover ways does nothing to support my sanity. When I get concerned to know when we will meet the next time, or if he will even stay the evening or disappear in a moment with a quick goodbye for no reason that I can detect, my lover dismisses my yearning to know a bit about the future as invalid. Just enjoy the moment, he says. 

Yes, I am now bypassing all my needs for safety. I am attempting to love without ANY stability or predictability at all. And as I go further and further in my quest of dissolving my safety-list, my anxiety grows stronger every day. I am taking myself to the edge of a cliff.

I am not entirely naïve though, and I am indeed starting to dread that this relationship will hurt me terribly. But – and here comes the perverted part - I somehow also enjoy my challenge. Loving without security feels ambitious.

I’ve always enjoyed being ambitious. 

So; I stay.

The Grip of Angst

An entire year passes by as my lover attempts to sort out his case of double girlfriends. And while no word is spoken of the second woman between us, my subconsciousness picks her up. My diary grows with dreams and visions describing what I know to be true, but can’t muster up the courage to admit consciously to myself.  

My angst is now clearly touchable, continuously reminding me of what I refuse to see. And our relation terrifies me. 

I tell him:

Beloved; I understand nothing of what is going on between us. The way we are relating to one another is nearly impossible for me to stay present to. I am so afraid that you will hurt me.

His answers don’t satisfy me. And I start comparing love with throwing myself from the edge of my cliff. With my back to the ground and my eyes closed. I tell myself that if I just can be courageous enough to jump like that, my lover will surely meet me as I fall. 

If I can only be courageous enough to love without conditions, everything will be okay.

I’m becoming helpless and fearful, increasingly unable to do anything on my own. I am scared that my lover will go away, and that as he leaves, I will have given him a part of myself that I can never retrace. 

I envision that me without him will be broken, meaningless, unable to move forward. I feel like a baby dependent on the symbiosis between us to survive. I feel I cannot not live without him. I feel I will die if he leaves. 

And I stay. 

A Lesson Learnt the Hard Way

Eventually 

my lover leaves.

I cry for a year afterwards, and cannot find myself to go on living as I did. But today, five years later, I agree with him. We couldn’t do love like that. I’m happy that he ended our misery. 

What was my lesson? 

I had to learn to stand up straight. To keep my eyes open, and my front to what was going on. To take step by step in opening my heart to love - as it came naturally to me. My forcefulness was not serving me. My attempts to jump from that cliff were not serving me either. 

I was not fully out of alignment, as I do believe that gravity has a thing or two to do with love. Because sometimes, as the heart opens, there is indeed a drop - a surrender of resistance. 

But instead of romanticising my ability to fall, my real jump was still waiting for me. I yearned to surrender to my heart, not to surrender to my lover. And in that surrender; I would have kept my presence and integrity. 

I needed to stay; with me.