LIFE-TRANSFORMING THINGS I LEARNED FROM MEN-Part 6

This is the 6th post in a series I began on April 15. Feel free to scroll down to see the other 5 parts. This is about the 2nd of 4 men who taught me important lessons during my post-divorce dating years...

2. John: For nearly a year between 2001 and 2002, I dated another older man—his name was John. He lived an hour away and had a very demanding job that made it nearly impossible for him to schedule dates with me during the week or more than once on the weekend. And, since I was in a “needy” place emotionally and wanted more togetherness, I volunteered to drive to his place on the weekends when my kids were at their dad’s house…and soon wound up staying most of the weekend.
This worked out fine at first since he was willing to carve out time for me in the first 6 months of the relationship. But soon he was working more and/or tied up with other people or obligations, and I found myself bending over backwards to grab time with him, often at the expense of my own life (meaning I put my own friends and my two businesses, caretaking for my house, and my own personal interests on the back burner). However, because we were both committed to mutual personal and spiritual growth and had many helpful in-depth phone conversations on such topics, I learned a lot about how to co-create a “healing partnership” that benefits both people and so felt OK about the dynamic in the relationship during most of the time we were together. In fact, because of the richness of that experience with John, I now highly recommend that my clients sometimes seek such a healing partnership to help them prepare for healthier dating down the road.

Unfortunately, John didn’t feel as OK about the dynamic in our relationship as I did. When he saw me sacrificing my own life and sense of identity for him, he said “You don’t need to earn love…you ARE love.” From a spiritual perspective, he was telling me that we’re all born with the “divine light” of love as our essence. But, from a practical perspective, he was telling me that it’s not a healthy relationship if one of the people is doing more giving than the other and trying to “earn” his love by catering to him rather than growing to be his equal. And he didn’t enjoy and felt very uncomfortable being in a relationship like that.

So, at the end of our 11 months together, here’s what became clear to me: a partnership where one person feels inferior to the other or looks up to the other as a teacher is an unequal partnership. And inequality kills joy and passion. John, in the teacher role, looked at me more like a student or a child than a self-actualized woman who could be his true partner emotionally and psychologically. He told me he loved me but wasn’t “in love” with me. He loved my spirit and could make love to me physically, but he couldn’t connect with me on a deeper level or envision committing to me long term. That really hurt, and the pain I felt after he broke up with me was deep. But the truth I learned was invaluable: I can’t gain someone else’s love and respect until I love and respect myself…a lesson that helped me avoid such heartache in my future dating experiences.