Some of my  friends and family are worried about me.  They’re concerned about my relationships, one in particular. 

It’s not a bad relationship.  In fact, I consider it the sweetest, most caring relationship I have ever had with a man.  Yes, any man.  It’s also the deepest, closest relationship I have ever had in this lifetime.  With anyone.   Absolutely no one knows me better or has ever known me better.  But in general, no one in my closest circle approves, and some are very vocal.  They do not understand the nature of the relationship, and it doesn’t look like they think it should, so they fret about it openly or either give me the silent treatment on the rare occasions when I talk about this area of my life or what I want in the future.  And it hurts that they can be supportive of other people’s relationships but not of mine.   I mean, downright gung-ho about other people’s relationships, but with mine, they want to stage interventions without ever having met the person or give me  a choose-him-or-me ultimatum.   Sometimes I feel that they think other people deserve sweet relationships more than I do and that I should just be happy in my role as friend or family member and not want more out of life than I have with them.  They give lip service to being happy if I should ever choose an emotional bond with someone again, but when faced with the prospect, they don’t want me in a relationship of my own choosing.

For the most part, I don’t discuss it with my friends or family.  I learned my lesson on that in the past when a potential relationship, right after my divorce, was starting to brew and my then-friends hounded me constantly until I ended not only any chance of that relationship getting off the ground but also ended the relationships with the friends who were just too much “in my business.”   There’s a certain beauty to keeping moments of caring private, but the downside is that no one else has any idea how much support two people can give each other when times are rough and no one else is there for them…including  the  disapproving friends and family.

Like I said, it’s not a bad relationship.  There is a solid, long-term foundation of friendship and respect.  It’s the most evenly matched friendship I’ve ever had, with more in common than I could ever have believed.  I would not be in my current job position had he not talked me into getting back in the game.  I would not be writing again. I would not have regained my health.  I would be living a less fulfilled life in different circumstances, though I’d probably still be dating underwear models.  Yeah, not bad when you can point to one person as the catalyst for so many pockets of happiness.   It’s not perfect, and there are several jagged issues between us that both keep us apart and cement our deep compassion for each other.  Some of my friends like to tell me that I don’t need this relationship because they’re there for me.  And they are, to a great degree, but the times in the last year or so when I have been most distraught, it was he who was the first there for me, and often the only one there for me.  Even my most devoted (other) friends have their own lives that must be put ahead of me and not a one of them has sat with me for hours while I cried over a deep wound or a fresh anxiety.    He is there for me in the way that I have been there for them, and in a way that no one else is for me.  I have been absolutely blessed to have this particularly relationship in my life.

Now here’s the irony of  it all:  I’ve been in two really bad relationships–romantic relationships or what at least I considered romantic–since I’ve been an adult.  Three if you count one from my teen years.  My friends and family were incredibly supportive of those relationships.   Not all my friends and family, but the majority of them.  The only ones who weren’t supportive were one or two who saw things up close and personal and knew first-hand that I had to get out of those relationshps as fast as I could.  Most of my closest circle, however, were not only not supportive of my leaving truly bad relationships, but they insisted I needed to stay because I might otherwise end up alone…or they really like the guy.  Even when I explained to one that I’d rather slit my own throat than to live in it another minute in misery, I was told it was better to be with him than with no one.

My bad relationships looked the most “normal,” strangely enough.  On the outside, they were everything I was supposed to want and need and carried that social status of legitimacy with them, so they “had” to be good.  It was almost as if discovering that relationships that looked good on the outside sometimes had rotten cores was some kind of dirty secret we weren’t to admit. Just cover it up and keep living the lie, I was told.

I learned when I was 14 that perfect-looking relationships often aren’t.  ( I’m sure there are some that are wonderful, so if yours is, feel blessed to be an exception to my rule.)   As an idealistic teen, it was an awful surprise to me when one of the ideal marriages in my community ended in a very sudden divorce.  Assumptions were made about the man’s fidelity as a way of explaining it away, but I later found out–years later–that the wife had had a long string of affairs and had a history of mental illness.   The husband just kept trying to keep his family together and bore it all silently.  But the public facade was perfect.  By the time they separated legally, they hated each other’s guts but no one else had any idea.  When I divorced, I had colleagues who didn’t speak to me for a year or more because they were angry that I’d spoiled their perception of a good marriage.  They didn’t have problems with my husband so they didn’t understand how I could have problems with him.  The truth was, regardless of whose side anyone took, things happened inside our relationship that no one outside had a clue about, so it seemed perfect based on how well we fit into the mold of partnered-up happiness in a nice home with nice careers and two kids and a dog.

So no one really knows what happens in anyone else’s relationship.  It’s easy to assume based on our own viewpoints and reference points.  We want the security of believing that if a relationship looks a certain way, then their life should be perfect and so should ours.  But all relationships have bumps and joys. 

Some of my friends think I should be alone for the rest of my life because that way,  no man would ever hurt me again. They know I was hurt badly a couple of times and don’t want to see a repeat.   If I allow no one into my heart, then they can live peacefully and joyfully with the idea that I’m not going to be hurt.  But they love me and want the best for me.

Some of my friends think I should be with someone who is whatever their mate or boyfriend or friend is to them.  They want me to have someone close to me but someone they approve of.    Oddly, I know enough about their relationships that I would never want to trade places with them.   But they love me and want the best for me.

Do I have everything I want right now?  No.  I’m not sure I ever will.   But I am closer now to having everything I have ever wanted than I have ever been in the past.  No one seemed worried about me getting hurt when I was in a bad relationship, but they worry when I’m in a good one?    Getting hurt is a risk any time you give your heart, regardless of the type or texture of the relationship.  I’ve been just as hurt in platonic female relationships as in romantic male relationships, and I never saw it coming until the relationship was gone, gone, gone forever.

I can say it doesn’t matter to me what others think, but it does matter to me what people I care about think.  I want to believe they’re behind me, even when they disagree with the choices I make.  I certainly don’t agree with their choices, but I know it doesn’t matter as long as they’re happy, even with occasional relationship turbulence in their lives.  I wish others could rally behind me like I’ve rallied behind them, not judging their choices in life, but short of that, I’m just very glad to have one person who does rally behind me.

Revisiting the past– sunset across the fields.   Photo copyright by Aislinn Bailey.

I get more letters from readers of my book, Attract Him Back: Master the Law of Attraction to Bring Back Friends, Lovers, and Relationships from your Past,  than I have time to answer, but occasionally I get one asking about how things are going with a particular man I mentioned that I had attracted back.    I’ve learned something new that I’d like to share with my Attract Him Back readers.
 
During most of my life, I’ve needed a particular kind of partner.  I’ve attracted those types of men into my life, according to my specific needs and energetic vibrations at that time.  A lot of what I’ve attracted to me and later attracted back has had to do with what was going on in my life and what I needed or felt I needed.  I’ve stayed fairly solid and steady in those needs.  That’s why I’ve had such a surprise recently.
 
I’ve gone through different relationship phases and different relationship needs in my life, depending on my career needs, my children’s needs,  my health needs, etc.  I have often adjusted my needs to the needs of those around me, but now that my children are emptying from the nest I’ve built, my needs are becoming more focused on the things I’ve set aside for them and others.  The dreams I built around them are either fulfilled or will never happen now—like the long-held dream of being able to stay home and write full-time while I waited for my little girls to come home from school, get their afternoon snacks before homework help, dinner, and baths and bed.  But, as a friend points out when I fret about the dream that never happened because my relationship at that time did not support it, it’s time to put together new dreams because my life is on the upswing now.
 
Those new dreams aren’t based on children any more.  They’re based on ever improved health, travel, fun, fulfilling activities, dipping my toes back into some intriguing work in my Defense Department career while fascinated by some ideas in my writing career.  My dreams are suddenly about my needs now, and so—to my surprise—the men I’ve attracted back and had been enjoying in my life don’t fit so much into this new vision of my future.  This isn’t an overnight change but a slow transition as they have begun to move out of my life and I am now willing letting them go. 
 
I recently sat and talked for hours to someone I attracted, then lost, then attracted back and was so thrilled to have back in my life.  My relationship with him has been changing over this last year into one where I no longer crave anything romantic or long-term.  We are still incredibly fond of one another but our relationship is developing more into one of platonic friendship, and I am fine with that.  Probably more fine than he is and perhaps we would be together long-term if he’d come back to me sooner, but I am now too far down the road to a new set of needs for him to keep up, I think.  Or at least, for him to be the best source of fulfillment for these new dreams.  He would bring young children into my life at a point where I want to focus more on myself, finally.    He is no longer able to travel…at a point when the world is opening wide for me.  It is not that he no longer cares for me or that life together would not be wonderful, but I’m approaching a new beginning and I know he won’t be coming with me as anything more than a friend I occasionally confide in.  We are drifting apart, and it is because I’m the one who has changed. 
 
I attracted him back, and now I am letting him drift away to something and someone else because my relationship needs have changed.  That’s not a sad thing.  I’m going through an upgrade, and he isn’t at the same place in life that I am now and probably won’t be for many, many years.  
 

That said, I find it rather interesting that I have attracted a new, promising relationship into my life that matches so many of my current needs and the vision I hold for myself, beginning this year.  He has some of the finer qualities of the man I have let drift away as no longer quite right for who I am—the scientific mind, the deep romanticism,  superior intelligence,  a quick wit, a strong respect for me, a quiet but older sexiness.  Things I am often attracted to, yes.  But this one has far more he can offer the new version of me, the one who can travel, explore new health regimens, and pursue new dreams that were put on hold for the sake of my family obligations.
 
Lest you  think I no longer believe in “attracting back” particular men into my life, this man is someone I knew when we were both quite young, just starting out in our careers and families and dreams that didn’t happen the way we wanted.  We never had a romantic relationship and I never expected the possibility of one to come into my life at mid-life with him.  We  have always had an awareness of one another, even though it was never acted upon.  I never set out to attract him or to attract him back to me…my needs changed, and he has appeared.
 
But he’s one of my all-time favorite people from my past, and there’s a reason he’s made it into my future.

***

I’ve always hated Jonathon Livingston Seagull.  Irrational, I know, but the Richard Bach book came out around the time I was in the fourth grade, and I remember my teacher reading it to the class and gently (she thought) drilling into us that “If you love something, set it free:  if it comes back to you, it’s yours…if it doesn’t, it never was.”  I hated that quote.  Hated it.

I grew up on a farm with lots of little birds with broken wings that I nursed back to health, and I knew that as soon as I set them free, they would migrate elsewhere and I’d never see them again.  I might wait Spring after Spring to see if they would return, but few ever did.  There was an exception of a hummingbird and a bluebird I saw for a few seasons after I’d held them in my hands and fed them, but by and large, the birds I set free soared far away from me.  And for as much as I loved that moment when they found their flight again, it always saddened me that they never returned.

I never had any problem setting birds free.  Men either.  I don’t like the idea that a man is with me only because I require him to be or a piece of paper requires it or raising a child requires it.   I have always prided myself on giving both a lot of freedom and a lot of loving support in my relationships.  No, for me, the issue has always been more  to the tune of “If you love someone, set him free and wait for him to return.”  That’s generally a no-no when it comes to the Law of Attraction because there’s no surer way to focus on the lack of someone’s presence than to keep thinking of how you’re waiting on them to come back. 

I’m good at waiting, though.  My mom would probably disagree, but I learned that as a child and have never unlearned it.  I’m actually great at waiting.  Fantastic.  I would have made a fine soldier’s wife in the mid-1800’s or maybe even in Roman times when men went off to battle for years and you never knew when or if or under what conditions they would return home.  I’m sure my faith in a man’s promise to return could have rivaled my ancestor who positioned her cooking table toward the window so she could always look up and see if her husband was returning from the Civil War he’d gone off to years before.  (He did return but died 11 days later, so at least she had that.)   So somehow in my mind, I’ve always felt that if you loved someone, you waited for them.

And heaven knows, there’s plenty to wait for, even under the best of circumstances  that don’t include wars, amputation, or death.  People are always going through transitions and transformations and need time to get a firm footing before they can commit to the next step. Many of those times, you want them to have a firm footing instead of making a rash decision that will fall apart immediately.   I’ve been going through my own transition for the past year, as far as my relationship needs.  I think I realized that when I discovered that the second guy in a row was making wedding plans with someone else…who didn’t know about me.  Until that point, the man I loved would ask me to wait for him and make all sorts of promises, and I would wait–because I don’t bail when I love someone…and I had a long marriage to offer as proof of that.

 But at what point do you no longer wait?  And especially when the other person has been selfless enough to pointedly not ask you to wait for him to work through major decisions in his life? 

It’s funny looking back now because this man, an old friend I’d known for my entire professional life  but not one I knew that well personally, re-emerged in my life about the time I realized that my relationship needs had changed.  I needed someone much deeper on the emotional scale, much–how else can I possibly say it?–more intelligent,  more gentlemanly and caring,  more ethics and integrity, even a little more…old-fashioned and sweet and romantic.  The man I’d been seeing for the previous year had met my relationship needs early on but wasn’t anymore, and that all came to a head when I discovered some illegal and unethical behavior on his part.  I dropped  him and never looked back.  It was remarkably easy, probably because he so obviously no longer met my needs.

But I did continue to talk to my old friend here and there, and think nothing of it.  It was a bit of a thrill to discover how much we didn’t know about each other,  how awfully much we had in common, how we seemed to reflect each other’s deepest dreams.  It was easy to spend five hours a day in deep conversation, and yet it wasn’t nearly enough to satiate either of us.  Trust evolved quickly as we discovered a world beneath the surface of the person we’d always just known and admired but never really got to know.  He was a gift from the Gods, a sudden answer to my list of “here’s exactly what I want in a man, even if he’s not 23 and an underwear model.”   

I admit I stopped blogging as frequently because by the time I sat down to write out my insights and viewpoints, all I could do was sigh–I’d already expressed them all and worked through them all with him.  Instead of writing long essays on my world and publishing them to my journals, I wrote long letters to him, shining bright lights on things I’d kept in the dark and receiving his warm, gentle support as he helped me work through some festering old wounds.   I was able to say goodbye to some things I’d held onto for way too long.   

I have some awe-filled new opportunities happening in my life now, and they are largely because of the emotional support, affection, and unrelenting encouragement he has given me on every front for the last few months that pretty much no one else in my life has known about because they would not approve of our friendship.  I was the first person he told when he received devastating news, and his was the only embrace I could find solace in when my doctor, who was wrong, told me he suspected thyroid cancer.   Our relationship has left me alternating between absolutely soaring and feeling as if I just got struck by lightning, sometimes both at once.

And then suddenly he was no longer just a guy I’d known for forever.  He was a close friend.  And then he was my best friend.  And then I was madly in love with him and never saw it coming.  I can’t even say when the shift happened, except that it was a lot earlier than we’d realized. 

So my feelings for him  are on the table.  They have been for quite some time, though not known  to the general public. It’s surprising to me, but it’s the deepest emotional relationship I’ve ever had, one of complete trust and faith in the other,  and probably the one with more promise and joy-potential than any I have ever come within 10 feet of.  But I’m still going through my latest big transition, and I’m so, so, so close….almost done.  And he’s not.  He still has critical decisions to make about his life  and where he’s going with it.  That’s true of many people, but at least he’s aware of it where others are not.  He is now in territory I’m familiar with, and I didn’t pass through it quickly. 

So why is it for the first time in my life that I love someone and I feel I can no longer wait for the other person to get through their transition?  Why do I feel now, where I never have before, that I just can’t wait any longer for him to be at the same point I am?  Even though I have faith in him that he will transform himself in the wonderful ways he wants to, and very soon because I’m seeing the small changes the precede the big ones? 

Maybe it’s because the other men I waited so long for never made it through their transitions, and my biggest fear is that  this one won’t either.

I learned a long time ago—mainly as a child watching my mother—to be self-sufficient, to need no one.  That lesson was something I relied upon heavily when I started my life over as a single mom.
 
I’m still rabid about being able to take care of myself and terribly awkward about asking for help.  I don’t need it.  I’ll figure out a  way to do it on my own.  I  don’t need your support, thank you.
 
Or do I?
 
Just because I don’t need it to make my way in the world doesn’t mean it isn’t extremely meaningful to me.  It’s one of the few things that will bring immediate tears to my eyes, simply because it has been so rare in my life.  I have so often stepped forward to help and support others, but reciprocal support has been neither expected nor offered in most cases.  Emotional support has mostly been a one-way street for me, going in the opposite direction.
 
So while I don’t “need” it, it sometimes creeps up on me, and I’m always deeply touched.  In this case, it was me responding to a friend that I couldn’t possibly take a particular suggestion because I would have no one to take care of me during a temporary helplessness and vulnerability.  I was floored when I realized my friend was offering to be that help, expecting nothing in return.
 
That made me wonder:   if I don’t “need” emotional support, then why did that offer mean so much?
 
When support is a two-way street, it’s a two-way connection, a full electrical circuit of energy.  While I may operate fully contained and independent, that kind of support plugs me into the rest of humanity, makes me a part when I am feeling most apart.

Back on the 24th of August,  I emulated my dear friend Maggie Shayne and posted a seasonal review of the summer–not any of the hardships or turbulence  but the most satisfying moments of the summer.  Now that Autumn has passed and the frigid Florida weather has arrived (yes, it’s dipped several times into the low 20’s–uncharacteristic for this area), it’s time to look back on the season and think about the best of it.

Whereas the summer was about building and strengthening my foundation, this fall has been about preparing for big changes in my work life, my home life, and my romantic life.  Not that any of those changes have happened, but instead the season was a constant reminder of both the endings and beginnings of my younger daughter leaving home in 2011 and what it means for me personally, emotionally, and financially.   New doors are opening and I have to decide…eventually…which ones to step through.  Switch jobs?  Move to a new home?  Move to a new city?  Give my heart away again?  Travel internationally?  All of the above?

So this season has been about recalibrating and preparing myself emotionally for the possibilities before me–the ones that are in every way both exciting and terrifying.  The best of the season has really been focused on two things:  relationships and spiritual gifts.

On the relationship front, a new friendship has probably had the most impact and given me, in spite of some turbulence, the most satisfying moments of the past four months.  Hands down.  I have laughed, I have been delighted, I have been intrigued, I have been challenged, and I have been touched.  Through extremely intelligent conversation and plumbing some difficult emotional depths that have been off-limits for quite a while, he has helped me to fine-tune what it is I want at this point in my life.  He has become my best friend in a way a man has never been my best friend before, and I’m so grateful to have him in my life.  That’s the outcome, at least, but the journey has had many sweet moments.  It’s immensely satisfying to be able to give someone my trust and know that he knows me better–even if he doesn’t understand me any better–than anyone else in my life…ever.  He is closer to me than any lover has ever been, and this fact amazes me.

The spiritual gifts have been just as satisfying over the autumn months.   There have been beautiful moments of intuition and understanding, and I’ve made some leaps in my application of The Teachings of Abraham.  I’ve had some moments where I was thrown way off course but made it back to my path rather quickly and regained my serenity faster than I ever have in the past.  I came to understand how well I’ve brought certain things into my life and that I can bring them in again, that I’ll be just fine–no matter what. 

So in hindsight, this season has been about feeling adored and appreciated and loved by the Universe while figuring out a last few things for myself, practicing them even badly at times but coming through it better, and allowing others to go through their own painful growth periods to figure out their own happiness.  After all this, I am anticipating an eventful Winter season.

Granddaddy’s been gone for over 15 years, but if he were alive tonight at 105, I’d want to ask his relationship advice.  Not about a romantic relationship but about how to deal with disapproval of a romantic relationship that has been bringing me a lot of joy amongst the rollercoaster epiphanies.  Of course, I think he’d probably decline to say anything and just nod. That was more his way.

Isn’t it funny how things from the ancient past bubble up when you least expect it?  Like a particular night when I was 8 or 9 years old and Daddy jumped down my throat because I uttered one meek little sentence that let him know I’d been listening in plain sight to the discussion and that I was supposed to not be old enough or bright enough to discern what was being said.  Heaven forbid that I might repeat what everyone else in the extended family was talking about.

My parents had been talking about Granddaddy–again–though really, it was my dad who talked incessantly about the “situation” and what had to be done to stop it.  I’m pretty sure now that my mom didn’t want to hear it, especially not drilled into her several hours a day, the same words, the same ever-expanding assumptions, the same harsh emotions.  I don’t really remember my mom talking about it at all, as she was still so lost in her grief for so long over losing her mother.  There were far more family dynamics at play than I knew at the time, and I’ve come to realize that part of my dad’s plans for an intervention was based on his resentment of his father-in-law and so putting him down wherever possible was a small way of firing back.  Daddy had no qualms about beating his kids with belts and sticks, but  he never, to my knowledge, beat my mom…and I’m now convinced that it was because my granddaddy would have shot him in the head and fed him to the legendary gators in the Collier Pond swampland.

On this particular night in my childhood, Daddy was bludgeoning his father-in-law’s name, and my precocious ears heard it all.  My beloved grandma had died a year or two before–or maybe months…I don’t know…from my child’s perspective, I wasn’t sure how long was culturally acceptable to be without a mate…or just a little companionship of the opposite sex.  Granddaddy had started “courting” again though, and that was the subject of much family debate.

It wasn’t the last time, though.  Thorughout the years of his courting various widows in town, his romantic life was widely discussed among family and friends, always with great disapproval.  He eventually remarried, unfortunately to a woman I greatly disliked, and I wonder if one of his earlier alliances might have been happier for everyone, especially him. 

I do remember, oddly, that there was much talk of him “sneaking around” to see some particular widow in town.  I know, of course, that he was “sneaking around” because various relatives drove past said widow’s house in the dead of evening to report that his car was there and how early and then how late. 

I totally understand now. 

The argument I often heard–and have heard about many other men and women who will forever be viewed as parents or grandparents and not humans in need or want of love and partnership–was that he was just visiting with a woman because he needed companionship and why was that, when there was plenty of companionship to be had with his adult children who had lives of their own or various other family members whom, I’m rather certain, were not there to hug him in the night or chat excitedly about their youth or just hold his hand while watching TV.  Family was supposed to be enough, and  it seemed that any desire for romance was something to be squelched as soon as possible with help from as many people as possible.

I can understand why he might have decided to “sneak around” and not tell anyone whom or if he was dating again.  Everyone close to him disapproved.  It didnt’ matter that they didn’t know the woman. I can still remember the looks they gave him–chin slightly hiked, jaw set and pushed outward a little, a frozen moment in time when only the eyes regarded him, the undisquised disdain.  Yeah, I recognize it myself.

I wonder if he was happy with any of the women he knew after Grandma.  If he was, he was never allowed to show it to the family or the silence that followed spoke for itself.  I wonder if it eased his loneliness to sit  and hold hands with a woman or to have someone to talk to over dinner or to see a woman smile when he showed up on her door step wtih a little bouquet of flowers picked from  the roadside. I wonder if he ever thought that maybe people were right in their assumption that it’s better to be pitied for being alone than to have the enjoyment of someone’s company who did not meet the approval of others.

The thing that still resounds from my childhood was that all these people who weren’t there with him to hold his hand or have dinner with him or relish his romantic sentiments were so busy deciding who was wrong for him–and I never (other than the woman he married) met any of those women. I’m not sure that anyone in the family really knew any of them or what what their wounds and joys were.  There were inventive stories but looking back, I don’t see any substance in the gossip, just lots of adjectives to describe these awful women who’d caught Granddaddy’s attention.  Yes, all that judgment passed on romantic partners some–maybe none–of us had never met personally, women I never saw dote on him or even in his presence.   Just the stony silence of disapproval of various family and friends,  and the preference that he be alone for the rest of his life.

I am really missing Granddaddy tonight.  I wish I could take his gnarled hand again and tell him that now, now I understand.

The Dark Night of the Soul is a rather ominous term for something that happens in some lives, but not all.  I  believe that some people actually make it through their entire existence on the planet without encountering anything as dark and devastating as a Dark Night.  Those who do–and survive–are forever changed.

The term is generally regarded in its spiritual or religious aspects–time when a devout person loses faith and meaning.  I can’t say that it’s always about faith but I have seen it mostly among people who are deeply spiritual.  My own Dark Night of the Soul took place several years ago, and though it was the hardest thing in my life, I would never go back to how it was before.

I’ve learned a few things about these Dark Nights, from my own experience and from observing others:

1.  Time must move differently for the soul because the soul’s idea of a night lasts several years.  From what I’ve seen, the darkest part last about 2 years, and then there’s a period of transition where life is still difficult, fully in twilight of that Dark Night, before the sun shines brightly again.

2.  There is a profound sense of loss, if not actual loss.  This is a period of losing dreams, careers, lovers, spouses, family.  It is often a time of scandal or potential scandal, of public judgment, of becoming an outcast.   It’s a time of hanging on to things that are no longer working because you’ve lost so damned much that you can’t imagine losing anything else, even if what’s left is detrimental to you.  Most significantly, it’s a time when all the people you thought were friends disappear, and it’s always a surprise to find out who really wasn’t a friend after all.  In my own Dark Night,  I quickly discovered that of the 50 people I considered my closest friends and had been emotionally supportive of for years suddenly no longer spoke to me on the elevator at work or returned phone calls.  It was a hurtful and angry shock to the system. 

3.  The theme is loss and abandonment, and of deep questioning of your security in your faith and in yourself.  All the things you’ve trusted in and depended on are suddenly gone, perhaps even your faith in Deity or God.  This is the moment when all your self-confidence is stripped away and you feel quite alone in the Universe.

4.  For at least a year or two afterwards, life is  a crab-walk.  The best you can muster is side-ways as you try to find your footing again.  You’re beyond the initial loss of the Dark Night, but it’s still not quite over.  The things you held onto to prevent a complete loss, the remaining things that are not good for your metamorphosis into your true self, begin to fall away.  The few friends who stuck by you slip away or vanish in a burst of attitude when you differ with them.  The family members who stayed with you and have never ceased to remind you that they stuck with you will begin to fade away as well.  I myself lost almost everyone I was close to during my Dark Night, and in the following 18 months, lost the rest.  A few have returned to me but for the most part, I have an entirely new set of people in my life.

5.  The transition stage following the Dark Night is not easy either, but it is a period of planting new seeds and of new hope.  Even several years into the future, when you’ve been living in mostly sunshine again and life it good, remnants of your Dark Night of the Soul  and your journey out of it will resurface when you least expect.  For me, these are often what seems to be a repeat of a pattern.  That pattern may be an old habit I need to address that has not cropped up since the Dark Night  or it may be a new person with the same qualities as one who’s gone before and a second chance at what (not whom) I thought was lost forever.   It’s almost as if, once out in the light of day again, the Universe dips back and repeats something from the past, offers it up to see what you would do with it after all that soul growth that’s taken place.  It’s what I call the Job-Effect, as in the Biblical Job.  You’ve lost it all and now you’re given back not the things or people you lost but experiences of new things and new people that can mean as much or more.  I’m thinking “more” because once you’ve lost something, then you have a better appreciation for it when you get that second chance. 

6.  The Dark Night of the Soul does pass, even though you might be tempted to end your own life.   It takes a while to get back to good place in your life and to replenish your scorched garden with beautiful new blossoming life that you would never have had before, but the sunshine and beauty does come.  It’s not  “nothing but” sunshine and beauty–there are still moments that will startle you or rock you to your core–but the Dark Night and the transformation it demands if you stay in the world are worth the outcome.

My back patio at sunset, on a beautiful October day.

The last six weeks have been full of epiphanies, but I’ve kept them mostly to myself or shared them with a very  limited number of people rather than here.  They’ve been mainly for me, just me–at least while I’ve been sorting through them to find the biggest epiphany of all. 

I’ve also been forced–in a good way, I suppose–to look back at my most significant romantic relationships throughout my life.  What I’ve found has definitely made me squirm.

I’m glad now that I’ve kept a journal through several significant relationships because many of the finer details would have gone forgotten, not because they weren’t important but because I’d thought those things were gone forever from my life and it was just easier to package them up and put them on a shelf in a locked room in the basement of my heart than to look at them every day and intentionally live in the past.  Reading those journals now leave me a bit astonished to see what was important to me in those relationships then.  I have for a long, long time tried to catalog what I like about someone–though I very rarely share it with the guy.  It’s just my way of  showing all the ways I connect with a person that are incredibly meaningful to me, but this is where I’ve been off-track in the past.  I have associated those attributes with the person rather than with myself and what really “does it” for me.

And where those relationships have faded has been often in the fading of those attributes.   It doesn’t matter how exquisite a man’s intelligence is  or his rare ability to dish about Life, Death, and the Universe…if his ability to be honest with me vanishes or is overcome by alcohol abuse or some other 180-degree turn in his nobility, then the relationship fades and even when he returns to my life (they ALWAYS do), I’m not interested anymore because he’s no longer the person he was with me when I fell in love and I don’t want to go back to whom I was in the past that he fell for because it’s a lesser version of me now and he hasn’t been around to grow and change with me.  My failing has been in attaching those beautiful attributes to that person, even when the person has changed.  There is no going back because I don’t want to go back, only forward.

The biggest epiphany of all is that to attract love, prosperity, career, and more to me is to stick with the attributes and not worry about who the person is who presents himself as a bearer of those traits.   The Universe provides many opportunities for someone with those attributes to arrive in my life, present himself to me, bond and grow with me–but the trick is, I have to be open to allowing the Universe to fill that order for me in a more perfect way than I dreamed, more perfect certainly than that man from my past returning to me but with all those embitterments over where we failed in the past.  When spiritual teachers talk of attracting the right person to you, there are many possibilities for a right person, but not if you don’t allow a right person to come to you in favor of holding that space for someone in the past.    These teachers tell you to ask for your “someone,” not for a partiular someone, because you allow for something (or someone) better than you could have imagined.  As long as you are thinking of a particular someone and not ready to move on, someone better isn’t going to show…or if they do, you’ll just miss it.

I’ve chosen this past spring to move forward, not look back, and let the Universe surprise me. I’ve told myself that I won’t judge, that I’ll just allow, that I’ll see how things unfold beautifully and how the future takes care of itself.   Sometimes it takes a while for that kind of thing to line up, and then again, you can look back and see how it’s been lining up for a long time and you didn’t realize it, had no idea, and it seems to be out of the blue.  Lightning can strike the same place twice, definitely, and even more,  and when it does, it really lights up the sky.

It’s said that there’s a reason that people from your past didn’t make it to the future.  Sometimes, in hindsight, you can see that the reason was a very positive one.

I lounged in a hotel room over an hour from home, waiting to hear back from my daughter and glad that, with the heavy thunderstorms and late hour, we’d decided to stay the night rather than drive back home.  I was waiting for her to call after a project related to her high school graduation project–photographing a wedding with Jessica and David Marshall of Beachbum Photography–and to find out when I needed to pick her up.  If  she loved her new mentors and they loved her, she’d be spending an extra hour picking their brains at Starbucks.  I’m not sure why I had to pick her up–she was so elated that she could have floated back to our hotel. 

It was a life-changing weekend for her, in terms of her career as a professional photographer  and college plans.

But as I was waiting for her call, I couldn’t help but marvel at how so many incredible mentors have come into her life in the past few months.  Besides Jessica and David, she is blessed to have Jan of Jan Bus Designs and Amanda Suanne as mentors, plus a lot of advice from her photography pal, Elysia Griffin of Fenyx Design.  These are all doors that have opened to her in a few short months of losing her first mentor–and when they opened, they opened wide, peeling back like a curtain in front of a stage.

It’s a sort of a Biblical Job effect, I decided, suddenly remembering several mentors from my own past.  Empty gaps were filled in joyous ways I could not have imagined.  Very few of my original mentors are still in my life.  I’d be hard-pressed to name even one right now.  Several have died, and they always will hold a cherished place in my heart.   Others, we went our separate ways over petty or significant disagreements or both.  Some, at the time, felt like tragic losses to me.  I couldn’t understand then how it was that a beloved mentor and I would ever reach a point of no return, though in hindsight, it usually involved a matter of boundaries being respected and the difficult transition from a teacher-student relationship to one of equal partners. 

It’s only through time that I have come to understand that there was no other way for me to grow than to close doors to previous mentors and seek out new ones to guide me on my journey.  They could go with me only so far.  For me to continue to travel with them, I either had to follow their path instead of mine or we both had to stand still.  Had I stayed with those mentors or had they stayed with me, even the ones who left me by dying, I would not have learned and grown and moved forward as I have, and that’s the best reason that many people from my past didn’t make it to my present or future.

Mentors and guides are all part of the journey, but when we get to walk forward along parallel paths and wave to each other as our paths weave in and out, then we are all very blessed.

We happened upon this little reminder at Disneyworld.  Photo by Lorna Tedder; all rights reserved.

The three of us Law-of-Attractioners were talking about how people who aren’t good for us, when we choose not to be with them any longer, just seem to not be around so much.  The transition to the “not-so-much” usually takes more than a few minutes, though.  In some cases, it’s months.  In other cases, even years.

I’ve been accused of cutting people out of my life on a whim.  To me, it isn’t a whim.  It only seems that way to people who haven’t been observant enough to notice my efforts.  By that point, I’ve usually exhausted all measures to get along or either discovered that the person I’m cutting out is so unethical that I cannot abide their presence any longer.  When I’ve had enough, I’ve had enough and it’s over. 

Sometimes, they don’t want to go.  There’s nothing worse than deciding you are done with a relationship and want nothing else to do with it and the other party just won’t let go.  They keep texting, emailing, calling.  In short, they have to be in control and will do whatever it takes to be the one in control, sometimes even so they can get  into control just long enough to be the rejecter rather than the rejected. 

Eventually, the more you focus on new stuff, exciting stuff, any other stuff than that relationship, they fade away.  They leave you alone.   They move away.  They find someone else, at least for a little while.  The wavelengths you haven’t been on in a while further separate, and you begin to bring wondrous new things into your life. 

So how is it bad people (or people who are bad for you) re-appear when you least expect it?  The latest female diversion is out of town or they’d had an argument and wham—right back and expecting everything to be the same as it once was.

I really can’t answer the question of how we attract such past-tense experiences and people back into our lives when we’ve changed our lives so much for the better.  For me, it seems always to be a shock but, at the same time, a beautiful reminder of what’s changed.  Of the lack of negativity that surrounded my life then.  Of the thickets of lies I had to machete my way through.  Of how much better life is without their negativity, manipulations, attitudes. 

It’s a measuring stick, I suppose.  I forget sometimes how good life is…or maybe how bad it once was.  The Law of Polarity, which means you need to know the opposite to understand something truly. When old things I thought I’d drummed out of my life reappear,  once I catch my breath, I usually realize that the contrast is a great way to brighten my present and future.

dd

Because what better karma is there for liars or cheaters (or liars and cheaters) than to attract some other liar or cheater into a potential long-term legal partnership?  They may think  they’ve found their own little slice of nirvana, but from what I’ve seen, it quickly becomes their own private hell, even though they generally won’t admit it for a couple of years.  The behaviors that brought them to this place don’t go away—they just change focus.  Cheaters rarely stop cheating, and liars rarely stop lying—they simply cheat on different people or lie to a new spouse.  They find that out about each other soon enough, and  that’s what comes around again.  I’ve been caught laughing a little too often over the prospect of someone else marrying some past romantic interest because I’ve known enough secrets about at least half of the happy couple to know that marriage between those two people is the greatest punishment  I could wish on anyone.
 
So if your lying, cheating ex is marrying someone else, congratulate him or her…and then smile to yourself.  You don’t have to do anything at all for them to get what’s coming to them.

Ms. Redbird poses while I stalk her through a window, window screen, and patio.  Photo copyright by Lorna Tedder; all rights reserved.

I believe that a person’s word should be good enough.

I  refuse to put my hand on a Bible and swear to tell the truth.  I refuse to swear to tell the truth, period.  I believe that my word is good enough.  In fact, I find the act of having to “swear” I’m telling the truth to be offensive to me and overall meaningless when it applies to other people.  If someone has integrity, they have it without putting a hand on a Bible and if someone is going to lie or mislead, then I believe that person will find a way to do so regardless of which holy book is present or which Deity is called upon.

Bibles and swearing are not some kind of “Simon says, ‘tell the truth’” tools.  In my world, you don’t get to lie indiscriminately and then, when someone sticks a Bible under your nose, you say, “Oops, NOW I have to be honest but as soon as you remove that Bible, I can lie freely again.”

In both personal and professional relationships that have failed or ended quickly, I often find myself shaking my head and frowning while mumbling, “But he SAID—“ or “But she SAID–.”  I’m always confused until I back away for a moment and realize that I’ve based much of the relationship—whether romantic or business—on the other person being truthful.  My reactions to them and the path I take in those relationships is always based on my idealistic understanding that they will live up to what they have said.  In my profession, the majority of my contracts are negotiated under the Truth in Negotiations Act, so I’m hardest hit in my personal negotiations where I often take for granted that the other person is acting with integrity.

I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt and not distrust every stranger I meet.  I prefer living that way to being paranoid and hiding from the world.  Occasionally, I become involved with someone who blithely tells me what he or she thinks I want to hear or what they think it will take to get my agreement.  Then when they fail to follow through, it’s whiplash for me.

One of the sourest business deals I’ve been a party to  was when a potential business partner begged me to work with her.  I pointed out all the reasons I was hesitant, and she countered each one, telling me how she felt about the situation and how each reason wasn’t an issue to her. I plowed substantial  resources into the deal, only to find out too late that all the things she’d been adamant didn’t matter really did and always had.  When I ask why she’d led me to believe otherwise when I’d told her what battles we’d have to overcome, she stated, “If I’d told you the truth, you wouldn’t have proceeded with our deal.”  Well, at least in that, she was right.

I’ve read that instead of listening to someone’s words for the truth, you should watch their actions for the truth.  That may be so, if those actions are visible.    The guy who tells me repeatedly that he’s not seriously involved with a particular woman might be believed if I watch his actions—that I know about—and listen for the consistency in his words.  Unfortunately for him, I do have the insight into his actions that he doesn’t know about and his private actions with his too-talkative girlfriend betray his words.  Then again, I shouldn’t have to rely on watching his actions—I want to take him at his word.

Once, when I argued with a new romantic partner that he was not truthful with me, he tried to tell me that I had the wrong idea about our budding relationship.  I reminded him, word for word, of what he’d said that had lured me in.  He became angry then and told me that if he hadn’t said that, I never would have agreed to a second date and that it had been his best interest to lie to me.

“Jeez,” he said as we parted for the last time, “I guess anything I say can and will be used against me!”

I’d not thought of it that way.  It wasn’t that I was using anything “against” him, but rather, merely expecting him to live up to his word as I had.  If his word had been good, then there would have been no need for anything to be held against him.

But then, I’m an idealist, and I expect people to mean what they say or don’t say it at all.  Without having to swear it on a Bible.

The labyrinth at the Florida Pagan Gathering at dusk–a powerful maze for contemplation. The best thing about labyrinths is that you just let your feet follow the path and your mind flies to more spiritual planes.  Photo Copyright by Lorna Tedder; all rights reserved.

From the upcoming book, 23 Ways I Screwed Up My Life  with the Law of Attraction—and How I Fixed It

My 17-year-old sprawls across the passenger seat, her injured foot on the dashboard, and she cuddles against her pillow.  Her mood is that of a wounded kitten, and she’s withdrawn rather than her usual outgoing and delightful self.

I don’t understand how I could have manifested this,” she whimpers.

She’s not talking about her foot.

Her foot injury is a simple accident that resulted in a lot of pain, soreness, and blood–and hopefully not a broken toe.  That happened as we were leaving four days of camping and festival-making in the Ocala National Forest.  The throbbing foot was the icing on the cake, a culmination of her frustrations.  Easy to see how that one manifested.

Instead, she’s talking about how much she’d looked forward to this festival–for weeks–only to wind up feeling shut-down by people she’d admired because of a new policy put in effect that felt like a gut-punch rejection.  We’d both been so thrilled about this trip that we were thrown off-kilter by a series of events that left her tearful and me pissed off on her behalf.  Of all the camping trips we’ve been a part of since 2006, this was probably the worst for us–and the only one where we considered leaving a day early  and finally left for home feeling low instead of amped.  Considering that we’ve attended past festivals when my dad was dying and also right after two big heartbreaks, that’s saying something.  What saved the trip for us was being involved with particular circles of friends as well as some great workshops and talks.  The downers were all specific to a policy that affected her, one where she’d followed the rules  100% and the rules were changed on her mid-way.  Not her fault and no way to change minds …which was another reason we took it so hard.  We had no control over a hurtful situation.

As she sleeps and I drive for six hours, I start trying to figure it out for myself.  How exactly did this manifest when we’d left for the trip exuberant about the possibilities?  The present situation, simply, boils down to legalities involving a minor child and her professional photography.  It involves being told she’s misunderstood, it involves feeling coerced into agreeing that what she’s told is okay, and it involves her having to be the bearer of disappointing news.  It involves her being pulled into the politics of adults and, to some extent, being pitted against her mother.   Funny, but that’s incredibly familiar, isn’t it?

Different characters, different setting, but the same elements of plot and theme.  It’s a replay of a situation that has not yet fully resolved.  We’re still repeating that pattern, that “vibration” of six weeks ago, and it’s still an active pattern that we haven’t broken, even though we thought we were done with it.

Six weeks ago, Aislinn was pulled into a situation that left me equally as angry at seeing her put in the middle of what should have been between adults.  The past situation, simply, boiled down to the questionable legality–and definitely the ethics–of involving my minor child and her professional photography talents in someone else’s deceptive activities.   She was told she’d misunderstood (about me), felt she had no choice but to agree and keep quiet, and left to be the bearer of disappointing news that should have been delivered by an adult.  She was put in a predicament where she was pitted against her mother, and Mom was very unhappy about that, enough so to involve authorities.

The past situation of six weeks ago isn’t just in Aislinn’s vibration but it’s still in mine.  I recognized that almost immediately–a month ago at least.  My part of the past situation is more personal than professional, and though I can immediately end a relationship with a long-term liar with multiple girlfriends who don’t know about each other, I cannot immediately change my entire vibration so that I don’t repeat it. How did I recognize my vibration?  Easy–all I had to do was look at what was going on around me.

The first two guys to approach me about dinner dates were already encumbered and lying through their teeth about it.   One was married, according to his social networking site, but “getting a divorce,” according to him.  I didn’t just take his word for it.  I quizzed him about whether she knew they were getting a divorce and golly-gee-whiz, but she’s on a business trip and he’s planned to talk to her about it when she gets home.  The other guy, when pressed for details about the girlfriend shown on his social networking site, became quite cagey.  About 3 hours before we were to meet for dinner, he finally told me that he was on his way to see her to break up with her (he hadn’t already as he’d sworn) and he’d see me afterward at dinner.  Wow, thanks, dude!

I decided not to date anyone new for a little while, until this pattern of lying scumbags had passed.  When I ventured out again, I met a seemingly sweet man who said all the right things–and like the last man in my life, went to great lengths (oooh, I mean the last two men in my life) to keep his girlfriend a secret on his social networking sites and somehow failed to mention her except eventually to refer to her as a “friend.”  Sheesh, isn’t it exhausting to walk such tight ropes?  These guys could probably produce enough electricity to fuel North America if they spent their energy on positive works rather than deception.  The highlight of their lies is that almost every time, their other girlfriends turn into crazy stalker chicks who feel the need to blame me for their men not being truthful with them or with me.  In the end, they end up with their liars and not me–and that’s not a bad thing at all.

So in looking around at the men I’m still meeting, that pattern of liars is still there for me.  And my fix for that is to not date, to not get involved, to just keep things easy and single for a while.  Kinda gives new meaning to the term sucka-free, doesn’t it?

But the pattern is still there for Aislinn, too.  How to fix it?  Maybe she’ll break her pattern by not offering or not being talking into offering her photography skills for free, whether they’re paid for later or not.  Or maybe she’ll just make sure her skills are really wanted and appreciated.  I don’t know.  Given the good heart she has, it would be far harder for me to convince her not to volunteer for the next photography project that arises for a good cause than it is for me to decide to forgo men for a while.

When the current pattern has finished playing itself out, then I think we’ll both be free to be appreciated to our full extent.

I’ve been divorced long enough that few people tell me what to do anymore, or how to do it, or –heaven forbid—how to play the game.  Maybe they grew tired of it.  Or maybe it was the less willing ear I give them now, accompanied by plenty of eye-rolling if I’m nice enough to sit through more than 10 seconds of it.

I’m not a game player.  Most men tell me they don’t want a game-player, yet they’re so focused on game-playing and how it’s always been that they don’t know what to make of me.  They keep asking what the catch is.

There isn’t one.  If I like you, you’ll know it.  I don’t hide my feelings, even if that means you’re uncomfortable enough to run away or create a drama you know will cause me to end the relationship in one fell swoop.  I don’t play games, and I won’t put up with a man who does.

When I was first divorced and dating again at mid-life, I made a lot of mistakes in the first few years.  Most of them were because, after a long marriage,  I lacked the confidence to do what was true to me.  I listened to friends’ advice on dating—friends who’d been married for two decades or longer or hadn’t had a  date in a dozen years.  In general, their advice was all about how to play the game so I could pair up again.  Some would encourage me to make a bold move and then suggest I quickly back off.  Others would suggest I be subtle and calculated.  In any case, I was told that I had to wait, then play it cool, pretend not to care, and let the guy make the next move.

“Ball’s in his court,” my friends would warn.

In hindsight, most of those guys never knew there was a ball, much less a court or that the game was on.  I took my friends’ advice and kept my opinions and my feelings to myself so I didn’t scare anyone away.

And I didn’t scare anyone away.

I did, however, become a lot happier after I ditched my friends and their expectations and rules and relationship games.  I also began to enjoy dating a whole lot more and reached a startling perspective—most of those people weren’t very happy in their own relationships but they could certainly dish advice on how to be.

The only way  it’s ever worked for me is to be unabashedly who I am, and not the least bit worried what a man thinks.

The ball’s not in any man’s court.  The balls are all in my court—crystal balls, snow globes, spinning and sparkly things.  They’re mine to command…though I’m willing to share.

Lorna Tedder at 23

From the upcoming book, Passion to the Third Degree.  Originally published in 2007.

I haven’t thought of that boy in years.

I knew him in college, considered him a friend. I never had any romantic inclinations toward him, but I was vaguely aware that he certainly had them for me. I was either mostly oblivious or ignored them—I’m not sure which.

He never did anything to act on his desires though, and I was already involved with the boy I married. Plenty of my friends had the hots for this guy, even though he never had a girlfriend and we couldn’t understand why not.

And there was that one time when he stripped COMPLETELY in front of my roomie and me, one night in my apartment, and asked us as female “friends” what was wrong with him physically that he couldn’t get a girlfriend. Who knows? Maybe he meant me.

My eyes must have been the size of saucers because my roomie and I did a double-take of his full monty, jerked our heads up to see each other’s response, and then both ran laughing maniacally into other rooms. When we finally calmed down and returned, the poor boy was sitting there, devastated by our reaction. It took a while before we were able to (fan, fan, fan) explain that there was NOTHING wrong with him physically. Omigod. Nothing.

Neighhhhhhhhhhhheeheehee.

We all stayed friends, to varying degrees, through college. I graduated a few years ahead of him and left town. Moved around a little but never heard from him again after that. Until….

He called my parents’ home on the day of my wedding. I don’t remember now if it was just before—after I’d gone to the wedding location—or during the wedding. Someone at the house answered the phone and took a message. I didn’t know until much later that he’d called.

He hadn’t known about the wedding, or that his call was so ill-timed. He didn’t leave a number, just a message to say he’d called.

I never heard from him again.

Sometimes I wonder what it was he’d planned to say to me and if it would have made any difference in the path I took with my life.

From the upcoming book, 23 Ways I Screwed Up My Life  with the Law of Attraction—and How I Fixed It

You wouldn’t let your last boyfriend–the one with all the drama and problems–choose your next boyfriend, would you?  Yet that’s what most of us do without realizing it.

Whenever I’ve been single in my life, particularly after being married, supposedly smarter people than me are great at unsolicited advice like  “Just ask the Universe to bring you the right guy” or “You should pray for God to pick the perfect person for you.”  Well, duh.  These people also tend to have been married to the same person for a couple of decades and just looooooovvvvve telling others how to be as miserable as they are.  Yes, they amuse me.

But their advice isn’t all bad.  It makes perfect sense, yet in recovery from the last break-up, we don’t so much choose to let the next guy to come to us be exactly what we need as we do hope they’re not what we had last time.  In that sense, we look for, seek out, attract to us a guy with key features that are the opposite of what we just endured.  And we try like crazy not to keep attract the same kind of guy as last time while actively seeking something better.   Better equals opposite, you see.    That doesn’t bring us the perfect guy for us–it brings us a guy with a different set of drama than the last one.

For example, after dealing with a romantic partner wasn’t very romantic, wild passion was definitely what I looked for in the next man.   The key factor missing from my  previous relationship instantly narrowed my dating pool to a few teaspoons of men who were the opposite of where I’d been, regardless of their other issues.  I got wildly passionate–and tons of drama and him sobbing in my arms.  So the next time I was open to a romantic partner, I specifically asked the Universe to bring me a guy who was happy and drama-free.

I got that, too.  Of course, he was happy and drama-free (seemingly) because he was leading at least two secret lives and delivering a daily performance that’s just got to be worthy of a suspense thriller in my future as a novelist.

After that, it was easy enough to set my intentions for a new romantic partner who isn’t living a life worthy of a whole week of guest starring on Jerry Springer, but I decided not to.  Instead of looking for people who aren’t anything like the last guy, I reset my intentions.  The next special guy who settles in for some extended good times with me doesn’t have to have the opposite traits of all my past partners.

Nope, he just has to match to me, not to what I didn’t have in the past.

I will believe in honor.

I will not become jaded.

I will not lose my compassion.

I will not be a victim.

I will conduct my relationships with integrity.

I will love myself enough to demand accountability from those who do not behave honorably toward me.

I can look myself in the mirror and not flinch.

Sometimes people disappoint us.  We can make excuses for them or we can acknowledge that they’re human.  We can even forgive them.  That doesn’t mean we have to continue our relationship in the same way, especially when we’ve conducted our side of the relationship with honor and integrity and they’ve done everything but.

There is a tendency, after such a blow, to wall ourselves off, to withdraw.  We think that if this one person we cared for can be so corrupt, then anyone can be…that anyone is…that everyone is.

The lens of life we look through can become tinted a darker shade, one that matches the experience with that one person.  Or even with many other such persons, since feeling keenly such a betrayal brings similar betrayals to us via the Law of Attraction.

But I don’t want to be that way.  My friend Jillian used to tell me I was too idealistic.  I’d learn something awful about a person or two and still give them the benefit of the doubt or be too forgiving, and later get burned.  But I like being idealistic.  I like being compassionate and trusting.  I don’t ever want to become jaded by too many heartbreaks to not be idealistic and compassionate and trusting.

Balance has been the key for me.  Holding a liar accountable.  Pulling back the curtain to show the truth, regardless of how ugly it may be.  Seeking justice to balance an injustice.  Seeking truth to balance a lie.  It helps me to believe that the world is not skewed to favor the dishonorable man.

I still believe that there are good people out there.  I like that I believe it.

When you’re in the midst of a heartbreak or trauma, it’s very easy feel stuck in the muck.  I have come to see the turning points of my life in a different light, because that’s exactly what the worst moments of my life have been:  turning points….turning to something better, even if that was impossible to see then.

If I look back on the path my life has taken, every time there was a really rough patch, it forced me to change the course I was on.  Usually, I was not content with the course I was on but I didn’t know how to change it, to craft it into something better for me.  In a way, I suppose I brought that to me, Law of Attraction-style, because I was looking for something that would force a decision. I wasn’t proactive in an action sort of way but rather in a thought sort of way. 

That was true of my back injury when I was so focused on my career that I wasn’t doing much toward fulfilling my dreams or tending my spiritual needs.  It was true of how my marriage ended. It was true of home-business decisions.  It was true of health decisions.

It was true of several relationships I had that were really forks in the road for me.  I was happy with how things were going but wanted more.  If I’d gotten more, I would have been taking a particular fork that would have led to misery.  I couldn’t see that at the time because I needed that aerial perspective to see where the path beneath me was headed….into fire pits, swamps, and far more heartbreak than I got from a break-up.  Those break-ups put me on different path, one that was smoother, wider, gentler, and far less violence to the emotions.  The break-ups were just a few horrendous days wide as I got pushed onto a different course, rather than the miles of sameness before walking through years of hell.

What started as heartbreaks put me on better paths to more confidence, independence, happiness, serenity.  I could have spent the rest of my life–easily–with any one of those men.  I would not have grown in the ways I have, been loved in the ways I have, or learned to love myself.  If I were to map my life, you would see drastic zigzags with markers at each course correction, each with a name or event, but each directing me to higher ground.

When someone I dislike does something to hurt me, especially intentionally, I want to bare my teeth and claws and think nothing of going for the jugular.  If they do something to someone I care about, I’ll shred them without thinking.  When someone I care about does something to hurt me, intentional or not, my natural tendency is to want to withdraw and curl up in a ball until the pain goes away.

Those are my natural inclinations, what goes on inside that most people don’t see.  Showing my injuries is another matter.

In fact, very few people would have any idea at all of how often or deeply I’ve been hurt in my life if it weren’t for my blog and articles, which all started as a form of post-divorce catharsis through what I referred to as my “healing journal”  and ended up being a useful tool for many other women who were starting over in their lives.  That’s because somewhere along the way, I got the idea that you’re just not allowed to show your injuries to others because doing so makes you weak.  Yes, in some cases, it’s like announcing to sharks that you’re wounded and hey-doesn’t-my-blood-smell-good, and the people who did intentional damage will try to move in for the kill…but this is much more than that.

It’s easy to understand that you don’t want your enemies to know you’ve been injured or the extent of those injuries.  That’s just self-protection until you can get back on your feet and fight back.  It’s survival, that.  Showing how strong and invincible you are, even if you feel like a trembling, chilled, drenched puppy inside.

With people you care for, it’s much harder.  Or at least, it is for me.

For me, rather than show my injuries, it’s easiest for me to give off that strong appearance and remain light, open, and involved while I withdraw emotionally and often physically. Often, I will cut people off in an emotional shutdown to keep them from wounding me again.  I certainly responded that way enough throughout a long-term marriage and other relationships.  If I dared to say how I really felt and show my injuries, I knew I’d be accused of being “emotional,” which of course is code–especially among guys–for “weak.”

Yeah?  Well, I’m an emotional girl, I live in my emotions, I enjoy my emotions.  I love feeling wonderful about something or someone or just life, and loving my emotions and what they bring to me does not make me mentally disturbed or weak-minded.  (Thank you so much, Abraham-Hicks, for teaching me that.) I feel everything deeply, and though at times I’ve needed to take the edge off some pain, I don’t want to not feel deeply. My emotions bring a layer of joy and satisfaction to my relationships that nothing physical or intellectual comes close to.  And so I hated being regarded as deficient if I showed my injuries, if I let my spouse know how much lack of support or interest hurt me…or how devastated I was to have a manuscript rejected and dreams dashed…or any number of deep desires that just weren’t coming to fruition for me.

I’ve also been trained not to show my immense joy of being with a particular person because my own emotions were too overwhelming for the other person, even though I thought my emotions were rather subdued.  I once spent a fabulous weekend with a man I was crazy about–we’d been seeing each other for a long time and he’d frequently professed his love–and as he pulled up to drop me at the airport, he crushed my happily quiet mood by saying, “I had a great time, but don’t think this means anything.”   I withdrew into myself, kissed him goodbye at the terminal, and never showed him how badly those words had hurt.  His message was clear that he didn’t want to make a commitment, even though I’d never asked for one and didn’t expect one.  Pushing me away emotionally was a self-protection mechanism for him, but it hurt, and for the rest of the time I saw him, I kept a tight reign on my emotions and never let him see how much he mattered to me, lest insult be added to my injury.  I hated having to tamp down my feelings for fear of how someone else would handle it–which is why I try not to swallow my feelings these days about anything or anyone–but I could no more show my feelings than I could show my injuries.

In my last relationship, I most definitely showed my feelings but none of my injuries.  The reasoning was simple for me:  I didn’t want to add to his stress, didn’t want to try to guilt him into doing something that would have been better for me than for him, and didn’t want to manipulate him by flaunting my injuries.  I’ve noted that some women use their injuries–”I’ll kill myself because you don’t love me enough!”–to get their way, and I never wanted to be confused with one of them.  So my not showing my injuries wasn’t so much about self-protection as protecting him.   Making it easier on him.  Feeling I could not show my own injuries did not make it easier on me.

So where I am now is trying to be completely open and honest whenever I feel hurt.  I try to not withdraw, not close down, not internalize a wound so it can fester and become a physical illness.  I try to be honest.  I try not to manipulate or control a situation by creating a guilt-fest or try to force anyone to deal with emotions that are mine to deal with.  I try to be true to myself.

That’s not easy for other people to see or hear.  It’s easier for others if I pretend I’m not hurt  or that it doesn’t matter or if I do something to take away from the raw intimacy of showing someone else that I’m hurt.  There’s actually power in that, for me,  to show my injuries and know that I’ll be okay, that something happened that hurt and I’ll work through it and figure things out with no expectation of anyone else doing it for me.  That I can be honest in what I show of myself to others without using it as a weapon to get the attention, love, and/or respect that I deserve.

From the upcoming book, 23 Ways I Screwed Up My Life  with the Law of Attraction—and How I Fixed It

It’s easy to blame all the lying, cheating, mean bastards out there, but if they’re not bringing us down every chance they get, don’t worry: we’ll do it to ourselves.  There’s a little bit—or a lot—of the Saboteur archetype in all of us.  Few of us can defy our past overnight and shift into a different vibration, or pattern.  That means that old wounds are repeatedly re-opened or new ones formed, thanks to our very own self-sabotage of the great and wonderful things we want to bring into our lives.

Let’s say that we recognize the error of our ways.  We’re tired of the bad stuff.  We want to bring a certain something good into our lives and we set the intention to do so.  We make lots of changes in our lives to get to a better place to bring it to us.  Unfortunately, no matter how hard we try or want, we can’t get into the vibration of that certain  something good.  We really want it, and we really do understand the Law of Attraction and how to get it.  The problem is, we just can’t manage that last step we need to bring that certain something good to us because we’re stuck in the past where a certain something good never came to us or, if it did, turned out to be a certain something not-so-good.    So even though we now adhere to the Law of Attraction, we still can’t make it happen for us I the way we want.  Oh, it happens for us all right—but it’s just a miserable repeat of the past.  We are still vibrating away at the frequency of oh-please-screw-me-over while yearning for sweet princes on white horses.

It’s taken a rather powerful new influence in my life to help me see this, and I’m actively working to change my vibration to one of perpetual buoyancy by focusing on trust.  I’m honestly fascinated with the situation and the lessons I’m learning from it, and I’m determined to correct my course.

I’ve dated over a dozen terrific men in the past year, and a couple who weren’t exactly terrific but, for the most part, didn’t send me scrambling for a window in the Ladies’ Room while at dinner.  Even from the less-than-wonderful, I learned more about what I wanted and didn’t want.  My intention, set back at the Winter Solstice of the previous year, was to enjoy one or more romantic partners who were happy, vibrant, young, drama-free, kind, interesting, sincere, good men.  Oh, yeah, and hot, too.

The Universe certainly delivered!

There’s only one of these men that I continue to see after a year, and I’m rather fascinated by what I’ve learned from him.  Namely, that it took me a solid year to trust him. I’m not sure whether to be surprised that it took so long or that I was ever able to trust again at all.  But I’ll come back to that.

Looking back, I know now that I had a similar situation in my life with platonic friendships.  During and after my divorce, I was terribly hurt by the lack of emotional support from the people I considered my closest friends.  Five years ago this month, I cleared my slate of most of my 50 closest friends and allies because I was making a big change in my life and they represented the negativity and inertia of my past.  Energetically, they felt like a physical anchor dragging me down, trying to control my actions and thoughts, and constantly telling me what to do.  Within the next year, I parted company with the last of my closest friends from my “old” life.

In that year’s time, even though I said goodbye to almost all my former friends, many of whom were really terrible friends to me who lied to me or used me, I didn’t want to become jaded about friendships and relationships.  I wanted to trust again.  I wanted to have friends again—just not the control freaks, users, and liars of my past.  So I made big changes in my life and made a conscious effort to bring new friends into my life.  Too bad I was still vibrating that my friends were control freaks, users, and liars…because that’s exactly what I attracted to me yet again.

I was so used to being disappointed by my old friends that it was an underlying expectation.  It didn’t take long for my new friends to disappoint me in ways that could not be mended.    Within six months,  I was being blamed for the break-up of a long-term marriage because my friend had told her husband she was out partying with me when she met her new boyfriend, even though I was never one to go out clubbing and was intentionally celibate at that time while I healed from my divorce.  She was seldom home, and she usually gave my residence or “Lorna needs me” as her reason for her  extended absence from her home and children.  There were lots of lies told, and I never really got the closure I needed that would have come from defending myself.  As soon as I discovered the truth and refused to cover for her or let her use me, she dropped our friendship.

There were other new friends who disappointed me also, but it was the betrayal of this new best friend that hurt the most and bothered me for years afterward.  By the time my other significant friendships ended, I drew inward for a while to work on myself and make sure that I had changed my vibration enough that, instead of bringing more users into my life as best friends, I would bring in friends who genuinely cared about me and weren’t users by nature.    That transition time was very hard for me, very lonely.  I literally had no friends for  many months while I rebuilt my life to reflect the kinds of friends I wanted.  I built a new social network, brought back a couple of old friends who’d been through changes of their own, and grew lush new friendships.

I needed that downtime to transition from someone whose friends were users to someone whose friends were sharers.  There’s no way I could attract happy, caring friends into my life when I was still stuck in the vibration of what I’d experienced repeatedly in my past.  Even though I took the right actions to find new friends after clearing out the old ones, I still had an underlying belief that I couldn’t trust my friends to back me up when things got rough.  I had to change my own beliefs and vibration, and that took time and some careful deliberation on my part.

Which brings us back to my fascination with a man I’ll call “Bear,” thanks to his stature.

It has taken me a year to trust him.  Not that he’s given me any reason not to trust him, except thanks to the Saboteur we all have in us.  For a year, I have observed his interactions with me, with my daughters, with his child, with his colleagues, with his friends.  All of his actions have been consistent with his words to me.  I have seen things I didn’t quite understand and felt those old pangs of fear that it was evidence of a deception, that it was just history being repeated…and then, before I could even ask or before he knew that I knew, he would offer up that information as well as the reason for it.  No deception.  No using and abusing.  And then, as if the Universe was telling me here was something important to pay attention to, someone unrelated would unwittingly corroborate the information he’d given me.

The fascination I have with this epiphany is that for the past year of not trusting him, it’s not been about anything he’s done or hasn’t done.  It’s been because, while I brought him into my life with solid intentions of spending more time with men who really are good men, I have been vibrating  my belief that good men are too good to be true, that a seemingly good man will eventually be discovered to be either a lying user or a gutless coward…because that’s been a prevalent pattern in my life.  (Pattern equals vibration.)  That has been my true belief about men, and as a result, I’ve attracted men of that type to me again and again.

So my challenge now is to stay in this vibration of being joyful that there are some great guys out there whom I enjoy and who have been good for me…and just continue to enjoy the hell out of my time with him and anyone else like him.

Serene moments in Donalsonville, GA.  Photo copyright by Lorna Tedder.  All rights reserved.

I was somewhat mortified (to put it mildly) when my 17-year-old announced that she was looking up men from my past on Facebook and friending them.  They were all men I’d cared for at one time or another and she had, too, which is why she was concerned about how they’re doing now.  Some of them weren’t doing so well the last time she saw them, and she has a soft heart.

Some have since responded readily and some never will, but that has everything to do with the Law of Attraction and the way things must line up for old lovers and friends to be reunited.

The first thing to look for in such alignments is where you are.  For my daughter and me, we are both in a wonderful place in our lives right now—lots of hard work but plenty of excitement and passion for both the future and right now.  Most of the  people I attract into my life now become fast friends with her as well because we’re on the same wavelength—not an easy feat  with every teenaged child!

So I can’t blame her for—and won’t stop her from—choosing to reconnect with men who’ve been somehow important in her life because they were once important to me.  She has a big heart and a lot of compassion, and that reflects in her connections to others.  I can’t always see this so well in her connections to other people her own age—people I don’t know well because she has so terribly many friends—but I can certainly observe their alignments in our mutual friends.

Because I know where the two of us are in our own frequencies, it’s easy to tell where others are in their interactions with us.  If we’re in alignment with friends from my past or present, that comes through rather clearly in our initial re-introductions—or lack thereof.  Only the people in alignment with us come back into our lives in a stable way.

It’s an interesting lesson:  some happy, vibrant people keep coming back into our lives over and over, and we have such great times with them.  They never stay away for long, and if they are away, it’s mainly because they are as busy as we are. Some people, who are not “in a good place,” show up only intermittently…if at all.

We may wish for those we love who are unhappy and miserable to be back with us, but the Law of Attraction does us a huge favor by matching us up with people who are more in the mindset and good mood that we are.  It’s a blessing in disguise, though most people don’t realize it when they’re agonizing over a missing lover.  It would be much more difficult to stay upbeat and serene if we spent all our time and effort on friends and lovers who are negative, angry, and bitter.

Right now, with the people we attract into our lives and the people we attract back into our lives, it’s easy to be happy.

Two months ago, I participated in some “spiritual work” with some trusted spiritual leaders who always have an interesting point of view.  I very much enjoy these sessions where I am a student rather than a teacher and where I am challenged to see things in a new way.   I’m a big believer in continued learning, no matter how much of an expert you are or how much you think you know.  There’s always more.

I’ve had terrible arguments in the past with spiritual people who considered themselves experts because of how long they’d been a member of a particular church, circle, or group.  When I challenged them to learn something new–just investigate it to see how it fit with their beliefs–I was quickly slapped down.  They seemed very comfortable in the little niche they’d carved out and not at all interested in any type of spiritual “continuing education.”

It’s because I like to learn that I’ve investigated other religions, attended Voodoo ceremonies, sat through lectures on aliens and other dimensions,  watched for orbs in cemeteries, studied as much as possible for the layman about zero field theory, listened as a didgeridoo was aimed at my second chakra, talked to people who talk to the dead, and oh, so much more.  I never really reject any of it–but I assimilate it in different ways, turning it over in my head and figuring out what it means to me.

During the January session, one of the women was trying to help me work through a relationship question.  I wasn’t sure how I felt about a particular friendship.  I had not shared this with the group, but I was on one hand intrigued by the uniqueness of the person in my life and on the other, well, a little nervous because it was most definitely new territory for me.  The woman helping me talk through the situation began describing to me the relationship as she saw it:  a platypus dawn.

I had not heard even the word platypus in months or years when she said it, though in the two months since, I heard it frequently.  That’s more than just selective filtering–I really am hearing it quite often.

I don’t want to say that the platypus is my new totem animal, though to some degree, that would make sense.  A platypus totem is rather powerful and reflects the need to work with the energy of the truly unique and be able to flow and change direction as need be.  Not a bad meaning at all, especially after working with the wolf totem for so long and then the bear.  It does seem to be a good representative of this particular friendship.

What this woman described to me was a new dawn, a new era in my life.  She described the pink skies of dawn and the platypus coming up out of the water.  She told me that it was the uniqueness that was the key.

That platypus has been the problem.   I really adore men who are “different.”  They don’t have to be openly different, but in their private lives, there tends to be something unusual that no one would ever guess.    Sometimes that “difference” can be very new territory for me, such that I’m not just acknowledging the uniqueness but a part of it.  (I’m being general here, not cryptic.)

So I’ve had my doubts about my platypus relationship with its double-edged sword of uniqueness.  I think the bottom line has been how far is too far when it comes to different ways of thinking.  I’m not so used to being “out-platypus’ed” in a relationship, so this could be interesting indeed.  Especially if what I’ve seen so far is just the dawn of it.

Photo Credit by pdjs-photos; creative commons license

Keeping secrets can be dangerous. It’s not that they can’t be kept, but if they’re kept at a price, then that price tends to manifest into something harmful.

Though I’m fairly open myself and have very few secrets, I still know and keep many secrets that aren’t harmful to me, but there’s a difference in the nature of those secrets. Those are the secrets told to me by someone I’ve counseled. The secrets are shared with me, but they don’t involve me directly. The same is true of secrets that friends have told me over the years. Some have been truly awful secrets that they felt they had to share with someone and I was it. I never asked to be their confessor but I treat those secrets–ones that never had anything to do with me–as their private information that stays private. I was specifically asked to keep it secret and, since I’m not culpable in these cases, I have. I’m sure that there are former friends of mine out there who worry that I’ll write about some terrible secret that happened 20 years ago that had nothing to do with me, but they need not worry: I’ve never disclosed their confessions.

In all of these cases, I did not take on the burden of the secret myself. It was confessed to me, but the burden was not shifted entirely to my shoulders. And that’s the difference between a secret I’ll keep and one I won’t.

In both my personal and professional lives, every time I’ve let someone shift a secret to me instead of bearing it themselves, I’ve gotten burned–both personally in my health and professionally in my reputation. For example, in 2003, a colleague came to me with a secret. She alleged fraud, and by telling me in the position I worked in then, I had no choice but to take responsibility for what I’d been told and follow-up on it. She shed her ownership of the burden of what she knew by telling me, and put me in a precarious situation of having to report it to my boss, even though she was the eyewitness to it. Three other people followed her lead and made the same allegations, all of them turning the secret burning in their chests over to me and to the people in my office. They all gave evidence but only if it was anonymous. The whole thing blew up in our faces before we’d gotten more than a couple of days into our investigation, with the person we were investigating calling for us to be fired for even thinking there might be fraud. The identity of one of the four–the first and most senior one–was discovered through someone else and when asked by a council to explain her allegations, she recanted, later apologizing to me because she was afraid she wouldn’t get promoted if anyone knew she was the one who’d come to my office for help, afraid that the person she’d turned in would retaliate. The other three were terrified of being found out and remained silent out of fear of retaliation and because the most senior of them had hung her head and said it was all a misunderstanding. Meanwhile, my office was left looking very foolish and vindictive because I was ethically unable to divulge any identities.

That will never happen again.

In my personal life, there have been a few occasions where I’ve carried other people’s secrets. I didn’t mean to be the sole one bearing that burden but in each case, the other person unloaded the secret entirely on me, somehow made me responsible for keeping it, lied through their teeth to save their own skin (much like my colleague who desperately wanted a promotion), and then walked away to breathe easily because they’d dodged the bullet.

And I caught it. Between my teeth.

I let that happen. I felt I was the stronger in each of those cases, that I could take it on until they could better bear their circumstances. They never reclaimed it though. They became content to let me bear it. A few have come back into my life to tell me how ashamed they are that they dumped it on me and ran away. Most avoid me now out of fear that I won’t be responsible for their secrets any longer. That’s probably a good idea.

Because in all those cases where I was keeping someone else’s secret while the person who committed whatever act pretended to know nothing–even in some cases pretending not to know me–I let myself bear the emotional and sometimes physical strain of it. I let myself stay up nights worrying, while the real owner of the secret was quite happy not to stay up worrying.

There’s a fine line between keeping mum about someone else’s secrets while that person works through his issues–and agreeing to keep someone else’s secrets so that he doesn’t have to own up to his own problems.  Sometimes the other person, the one whose secret it is, has to man-up. Other people will not grow if I take on their secrets as my own…and neither will I.

Photo credit by -RobW-; creative commons license

From the upcoming book, 23 Ways I Screwed Up My Life  with the Law of Attraction—and How I Fixed It

I had a date with a  man I can’t get out of my head.  Normally, that would be a wonderful thing because—normally–there would be something pleasantly fascinating about the man.  In this case, I’ve had problems figuring out how I ever attracted him into my life in the first place.

As my readers know, when I talk about such scenarios, I use composites or describe the guy in such a way that none but my closest friends have any idea who I’m talking about.  The man in this case was someone I’d met through a website, sight unseen.  He’d posted something interesting on a forum and I responded, and in turn he asked me to dinner.  He was older than most of the men I usually date but was open-minded and willing to take a risk.  The worst that could happen?  We’d continue a great conversation started online, with a focus on our professions and what they have in common.  He swore he was more adventurous than his age might lead me to believe, and I had a great attitude as I dressed for our date.

As most guys over 40 do, this man had quite a few “requirements” for the women he dated, most of them laughable.  He had quite the fantasy woman in mind.  But the thing that struck me as really…I don’t know–I couldn’t put my finger on it…was something in his attitude that bothered me.  Though I’ve had men in the past demand to see a driver’s license to prove my identity, this one wasn’t quite so obvious.  At least, not at first.  I guess the thing that bothered me was that he was suspicious. Of who I was.  Of my motives.  Of…everything.  I barely noticed at first, because given our day jobs, we’re required to have a little bit of paranoia about meeting new people. (They might be spies, you know.)  But he also had a habit, which he later admitted, of asking misleading questions to try to catch a date in a lie.  Which explains some of the oddball stuff he asked me that didn’t make sense.

After a good 30 minutes of telling me about women who’d used fake identities to get to know him online, who had stolen pictures off Facebook to “prove” they were whom they said, who had lied about their attributes for months while dodging face-to-face meetings, I was seeing a strong pattern here.  Every woman who turned out to be “real,” didn’t measure up to his requirements.  Every one who did, turned out not to be real but a scam artist.  He even questioned how I could be authentic if I didn’t have the same fears he did, to which I answered, “I prefer to stay positive and assume that you’re as real as I am.”

After another couple of minutes of his thinly-veiled paranoia about how all women are liars, I snapped my official ID down on the table and joked about it, hoping to lighten the tension I was starting to feel.

His response?  “That just proves you do the job you say you do.  That doesn’t prove you really are who you say you are.”

Ooooooh-kaaaaaaay.  Somehow, I’d thought that by showing up for the date, I had taken a big step in proving who I was.  I didn’t realize I should’ve brought my portable polygraph with me.  Nor had I done anything to deserve the assumption of being a fraud. If anything, he seemed a little disappointed that he didn’t catch me in a pack of lies so he could tell me off, as he said he’d done to countless other women.

We had a nice date, and then it sorta fizzled out over the paranoia display.  When it fizzled, it was okay with me and I was ready to go home and relax.  Relieved to be leaving his presence, even.  Only, I couldn’t relax.  This man’s quiet paranoia (and subsequent witch-hunt) kept tugging at me for days.  He was NOT the usual kind of date for me.  The previous few men I’d dated were happy, relaxed, fun, carefree but caring.  In other words, the men I’d been attracting to me and back to me were a good reflection of how I myself felt about life in general.  So why the sudden ick?

That’s when my analytical side took over.  I don’t want to be around a date, romantic partner, or even a stranger like that, so how could he have shown up in the middle of sweet and easy-going men who are usually my company?  I went back to the moment he appeared in my life and back-tracked.

That night, I’d checked out a forum I’d been to no more than two times in the past year.  I was in a little bit of a funk when I did, but I saw his intelligent post and wanted to discuss it with him.  My spirits picked up after that and I actually ended up talking to someone far more interesting a couple of hours later who is more in line with my usual upbeat mood–and perhaps I’ll be seeing him soon.

Taking it a step backward to before I checked out the forum where I found the topic of discussion, I’d spent the previous couple of hours feeling a little not-so-happy.  I’d received an annoying email from a man who–ironically, now that I think back on it–had the same first name as my date.    That had come in the middle of feeling a little perturbed that a man I see occasionally hadn’t responded to a text  message I’d sent him, which had conjured up old fears that he was ignoring me or lying to me or….well, basic unfounded paranoia rather than the fact that he was dealing with something harsh he didn’t want to share with me because he was worried it would bring me down.  And right before that, I was laughingly telling a friend that I had an intention for the weekend of at least one date.

It’s amusing now, looking back at how I went from being joyous and feeling good and great friends to letting myself slip out of that serenity just long enough to worry about something totally unnecessary and unreasonable.  I got it back together a little later, yes, but that window of blooper-tunity was wide open just long enough for my weekend date to show up.  And as much as I hate to admit it, he was a very apt reflection of my angst for the 2 hours before he manifested on the forum I was visiting–his first ever visit.

Once you figure out how to manifest what you want, it becomes especially important to stay aligned and not let yourself slip out of those good feelings–especially over something ridiculous.  The rewards for getting to the point of fast manifestation are exquisite, but if you drop out of alignment, it can be a cold slap in the face.

In the summer of 2003, I took Shannon with me on a road trip, just the two of us. She was at an important age, going into the eighth grade, which in my own history was the threshold for beginning to understand things as an adult. Too many “grown-ups” don’t seem to remember their youth, and that’s unfortunate for both their children and themselves. Too many of my colleagues tell me they can’t/don’t/won’t talk with their kids because, well, they’re teenagers, as if being in different phases of life excuses their lack of interest in their kids’ minds and emotions. I was determined not to be the distant parent.

I had recently received my Second Degree Elevation within my church organization and was driving “up North” to attend their annual spiritual retreat. This gave me a chance to bond with my new teen and to explore the rural lowlands of North Carolina in the hopes of finding answers to a particular genealogical mystery.

Our trip lasted ten days, with the second half spent camping in the woods with Mom’s very cool friends with tattoos, pentacles, and Goth skirts, and then driving straight home for 19 hours, with a brief stop in Carrollton, Georgia, to get directions from an angel—but that’s another story. By the time we reached home, my daughter had a much better understanding of Mom and vice-versa, and I wouldn’t trade that time together for anything.

The first half of the trip was a little more awkward. We left on a Sunday afternoon, simply because we couldn’t get everything together quickly enough and my ex wasn’t terribly happy about my taking a trip without him. I’d considered inviting him, except that he had only disdain for my spirituality and also I needed to know that I could made a road trip on my own. I needed that burst of self-confidence that comes with a cross-country adventure where you know you’ll find your way if you get lost and that you can take care of yourself. We did.

The first day, I drove for nine hours or more—a grand feat for someone who feared her ancient back injury would make the road hard, but after the first day, the stresses of home and the work world lifted and so did my soreness. My daughter and I discussed every shallow subject we could think of, and we were starting to get into deeper waters.

By the time we’d crossed parts of Alabama and then every detour in the bowels of Middle Georgia, it was well into darkness and dreary weather and we were on the outskirts of Augusta, Georgia. I was exhausted and wanted the first hotel we could find. Unfortunately, we could find only a few hotels along the road. The next morning, we discovered that our road merged with a new highway lined with beautiful, clean, sparkling hotels…about a mile from where we ended up.

When my ex and the kids and I had traveled on vacations and business trips, we’d always stayed in “nice” hotels. Even though the hotel was a well-known chain where I’d had good luck before, that first night of our trip was a new experience for my daughter.

I paid the bill through a mouse-hole in a glass-and-barred window, and the disgruntled woman on the other side slid me a bent key. Our room was on the second floor, for which I was grateful, considering the shadows lurking in the parking lot. Our room had a door that closed all the way but was a little lopsided. I pushed a chair underneath the door knob and braced it with other furniture and suitcases.

The phone in the room didn’t work. Well, actually it did, but you had to wait for the other hotel guests to hang up first. The sign outside the hotel boasted microwaves and refrigerators in the suites, but the ones in our room had been torn out, with the wires still dangling. To top it off, the room was infested with roaches. I considered sleeping the car, but I was too afraid of the crazy old white dude hanging out in the parking lot.

We went to bed early and got up at the crack of dawn and left as quickly as possible, laughing about it after we reached a safe distance away. Then our conversations took a deeper tone and we really got to know each other.

We crossed South Carolina in a few hours, faster than we’d planned for, and by noon, we’d reached our ancestral lands in North Carolina. We spent most of the day comparing modern roads with maps from 1810 and digging through courthouse records. Along the way, we saw a beautiful bed-and-breakfast inn that called to us. We’d purposely not made hotel accommodations for the trip so that we could set our own schedule and stay where we wanted…and this place, we wanted—badly.

Several times during the day, we stopped by to see if we could get a room for the night, but no one answered the door. We called the number on the sign, but all we got was a message to leave our name and number. Since my cell phone had just died, we had to make our calls from a phone booth.

About an hour from dark, we tried one last time. We so wanted to spend the night there. We’d read their pamphlet’s description of the rooms for rent, we’d walked around the grounds, we’d admired the shade trees and gardens. We had our hearts set on spending the night there. But when darkness was coming and we still couldn’t get an answer, we gave up. There weren’t other lodgings in town, so we left, dejected. We would have to drive an hour out of our way to find a place to sleep.

On a road “less traveled,” a road in the middle of the proverbial nowhere, we saw a sign for an “old inn” and stopped at an unusual Tudor-style building. We found a sign on the door that said to come next door to the restaurant if we wanted a room, so we parked the car and followed a stone path through a courtyard to a second building. When we walked inside, our eyes had to adjust to the dimness of a room with a huge wooden chandelier, candles, and enough Medieval-style décor to make my heart jump!

Because we hadn’t stayed at the pretty little inn in town, we’d happened onto a Medieval-style restaurant and inn that normally catered to bus tours from the coast but opened on certain week nights for the locals. We had a wonderful time there that night and, over candlelight, we kept marveling about what an incredible find we’d stumbled upon. If we’d settled for what we thought we wanted, we never would have had our heart’s desire.

I’ve seen the lesson of that evening applied many times since, but most recently in regard to relationships with men. Sometimes you can find one in a well-known area with a well-known name and discover he’s infested inside and flanked by shadows. And sometimes, you can find one who’s attractive, interesting, and seems to be everything you could want, but you just can’t get inside.

And sometimes, the real prize is off the beaten path—unusual and different, relishing being unique, a perfect match you didn’t dream existed. And one you never would have found if you’d made your home elsewhere.

Yeah, that’s where I want to sleep.

Article originally published in Life in the Third Degree, available for download now.