After a giving my signature talk on ‘Love In The Brain,’ one of the attendees ran up to speak with me. One of the core concepts of the speech is that there is someone for everyone and she had to tell me her story.
The attendee had been married for 10 years and divorced for 3 years. She has a 12 year old daughter despite a near sexless marriage of just a few times a year. As she got older, she realized she wanted to experience more, including an attraction to women.
The curious woman had a relationship with several women once the divorce was finalized. She enjoyed them sexually, yet something was missing. She wanted a man and missed being with a man. A search began for one she desired.
Three months ago she started flirting with a man she met at a drum circle on the beach. They made beautiful music together, but he was quite shy in approaching her. It took him forever to ask her out; she enthusiastically said yes!
It took him a long time to tell her his secret. He was divorced for 2 years. He was married for over 8 years. He had a unique sexual fetish of enjoying wearing women’s lingerie. He was still heterosexual, but he did this in private and enjoyed masturbation. He never told his wife.
One day his wife came home early and caught him dressed up while pleasuring himself. She was shocked and offended. He response was to run out of the house and immediately call his parents. Right afterward she called her parents to tell them what she had seen to spread a deep level of shame to punish her husband.
They did have kids, so they divorced quickly and he moved out of the city to start over in South Florida. He hadn’t dated since the divorce because he felt alone. He felt like no one would ever love and accept him as he was.
Until he met her. Some time passes as it took a while before he felt he could trust anyone with his secret. Once he did, something amazing happened. He felt a loving acceptance that he had never experienced in his life. She was totally into it!
The sex was hotter than ever. Planning a date, picking out outfits, dressing him up and then making love all night became a sacred, pleasurable ritual to their relationship. She found her soft, tender man and he found a woman that would accept him as he is without trying to change or shame him.
The beautiful part of this story is the lesson of self-love and acceptance. We are all trying to find ourselves. As we get older, we evolve, grow, and seek out new experiences. Things bubble up inside of us that we didn’t even know where there.
The great curse of relationships is that the longer we are with someone, the more rigid and fixed our idea of who our partner needs to be becomes. There exists less and less space to express ourselves. We start to edit, filter, and repress our desires that we know will be a challenged for our partners to accept. Eventually, individuals feel trapped and suffocating trying to be the same person they have always been for their partner.
Instead of trying to hold on to partners exactly as they are, we can look at our partners as ever growing and exploring. We can encourage and support them in their growth, realization, and self-actualization instead of trying to lock in and maintain the status quo for 10, 20, or even 50 years.
Rather than bragging about the number of years we have suffered terminal sameness with our partner, we could be cheering them on by celebrating what they have become and accomplished
As one of my favorite teachers, Nicole Daedone said, “In a right relationship, we should feel more free than if we were alone.”
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