Partnership: Desires of the Soul

Partnership: Desires of the Soul

I’m sifting through the interviews for my book on partnership and as I read the thoughts of men and women of all ages, the overwhelming desire is for connection. Whether in marriage, dating, polyamory or choosing to be single because you can’t face another brush with rejection, we all want connection.

Our reasons may differ but our desire is the same.

There is a beautiful vulnerability in people when they talk openly about partnership with me. The anonymity of being able to share their story entices them to reveal their innermost thoughts, beliefs, perceived failures, joys and love, so much love. There is pain there too. Of course there is. My primary motivation for beginning this work was to relieve my own pain; pain born from a decade littered with men who had little to give and me, a woman who wanted to give everything. I wanted to know how to do it better; how to create something that was more positive, sustainable, supportive, embracing and loving for myself. So I began talking to others, seeking answers.

My only question has been, what does partnership mean to you? And then I have simply followed the conversation wherever it has led me organically. Men, women, gay, straight, single, not single, young, retiring, so many interviews and so many perspectives. The magic of their thoughts touches me when I read them through. We’ve talked about divorce, parental disapproval, trust, having children, losing children, managing ourselves better, sex and sexual dysfunction, working out our previous traumas, choosing to isolate, choosing monogamy and choosing others to fill emotional holes that can’t be filled within a current partnership.

Every person is different. Even when I have been privileged to interview both people in a partnership, their answers have been different; sometimes their views are in complete opposition from ‘being on the same page’ to ‘ marriage is bi-polar’. Yet, for them it works.

And every single person has allowed me, for a few precious minutes or sometimes an hour, to glimpse inside their Soul and see what is truly important to them. What a treasured gift they have given me, all of them.

As I now edit and begin tying their stories together I wonder, “Can I do their stories justice? Can I honour the trust they have endowed on me?” I hope so.

Have I worked out what partnership means to me yet? I don’t know. They are all so clear but I, I feel like I am still seeking the answer. It’s as if it is still hiding within my Soul, waiting to rise to the surface when the right person should ask.

Photo by Sweet Ice Cream Photography on Unsplash

Egg on Her Face

In the back of my first book The Men I’ve Almost Dated, I included some poems from my next book, The Madness of Love. The poetry collection is best described as an enticing concoction of reality, fantasy and other-worldly insight. It asks the reader to find the line between madness and love. I’m now curating those poems for publication. Here is another one entitled Egg on Her Face. Can you relate?

Focus on the feelings you felt, she said
Not the man you know who gave them
But when I did all I could do
Is think of the man who raised them

I realised then
The drama created
Was always derived from me
My expectations of being trampled on
Let my fear run away with me.

All I wished for now it seemed
Was his stillness and his light
The feeling that all was well
Of calmness with no strife

His air, just present
His eyes so kind
And frequently warmly smiling
While making me laugh
I’ve never felt so torn
As I do now
When I think back
And realise what I’ve done
I helped create the current stance
In fact, I loaded the gun

He had played his part
It’s true
He had driven it home
But I, oh God
I couldn’t believe
Just what my fear had done
All was well
Until I lost
My way and all perspective
And then all he and I could do
Was drown in the invective
As we rocked from side to side
Carried on unsteady waves
Of fear, anxiety, never confidence
I behaved just like a babe

He had called me so naïve
Was that for trusting him
But perhaps my real issue
Was actually me, not him

He had turned away from me
Because I did not stand
I had not yet put myself first
Fear had the upper hand
I did not stand in my power
I was quite simply
Just all over the place
The thought that I had caused him pain
Simply left me with egg on my face.

The Self-help Rort: When you learn how to love yourself, he will come

The Self-help Rort: When you learn how to love yourself, he will come

If you’ve been single and searching for love for a while, I’m pretty sure someone ‘wise’ will have advised you verbally or in an article somewhere that, ‘When you learn how to love yourself, he will come.’

Now I want you to picture me doing some major eye-rolling until I make myself dizzy.

You see, while I know that most of the time this advice is well-intentioned (except when it’s patronisingly delivered by someone who also happens to be in a partnership – yes, occasionally people do this), the truth is this statement about loving yourself and then he’ll come, simply isn’t true.

There are loads and loads of women out there who do not love themselves and yet have managed to create partnerships with wonderful people who love them. Have you noticed that?

I also know lots of women out there who do love themselves; they’ve done a lot of work around self-love for years and years, and yet they’re still single.

Mmmm.

Now, am I sounding the death knell for your search for the right man?

Nope.

Am I saying that learning to love yourself is a thankless and pointless task?

Definitely not.

What I am saying is this advice about first you need to love yourself before you get to have a partner who loves you back can be, well, kind of a mean thing to say to someone. It also sets up this idea that your goal or ‘prize’ in learning to love yourself is that you get the love of someone else.

And that’s really beside the point of the whole journey of self-exploration.

Trust me, I’m speaking about this from a position of some expertise and experience. I’ve been mostly single for the past 10 years and I have done HUGE amounts of work around self-love. As someone with heightened self-awareness and intuitive ability, the Universe has pushed me to go deep with this stuff time and time again. And it’s still an ongoing process.

Is it easier to create a stronger, healthier and more viable long-term love partnership with someone if you have strong self-love and everything that goes with that understanding of self? Yes, I really believe that to be true.

However, the right man still needs to be there in front of you, at the same stage as you, for that to even become an option. And maybe he’s not ready yet. Maybe you’ve still got things you have to do. Maybe it’s not time. Maybe you’ve done the work but he’s still around the corner paying some other karmic dues or embedding some other life lesson he needs to learn before he can progress.

These factors are real possibilities. You both need to be in ‘the same step’ in order for you to come together. Maybe he’s just not there yet.

So please stop buying into this theme that suggests it’s your fault that you’re still single because you haven’t done the work yet. After all, that’s what this kind of self-help is doing. Too often it suggests that you just need to work harder.

Well, I think that’s a rort because I know you’re working hard on yourself beautiful woman. You’re getting up every day and you’re doing your best. You’re looking at your ‘stuff’ and you’re beginning the journey of self-accountability and facing your life lessons because you know you have to in order for your soul to progress. And you do want to progress. I know that. But for someone to dangle this carrot of ‘self-love’ as being the answer for you to attract the ‘one’ is illusory and somewhat misleading.

We all need to learn how to love ourselves first; that much I believe to be true.

We all also desire the love of another, a partner to travel life’s journey with. I believe that to be true as well.

But I don’t necessarily believe that you must do the former in order to successfully attract the latter. Although it may be a helpful contributing factor, it is not the comprehensive answer.

So keep doing your best you fabulous, complex woman. Keep striving and learning. Know that whether you are with someone or alone, you still need to walk your path and nourish your self-love daily. But please don’t buy into the self-help rort that it’s your fault that you’re single because there’s nothing wrong with you.

It’s just not the right time yet.

Lucretia Ackfield is a writer and transformational teacher who has learnt the lessons of love and romance the hard way. You can read her voyeuristic, hilarious and sometimes mortifying stories of the single life in her memoir The Men I’ve Almost Dated. Or, if you’d like to work on developing your self-awareness and intuition, you can join her Facebook group Rock Your Inner Channel.

Are you attracting the Dark Knight of Your Own Soul?

Are you attracting the Dark Knight of Your Own Soul?

Are you still waiting for a man to rescue you? Except, the men you keep attracting are not the White Knights. Instead they are the reflection of all the ways you doubt yourself and all the parts of you that you don’t believe are ‘good enough’.

You are attracting the Dark Knight; the one who is the epitome of the dark sadness in your soul. Yet you accept his negative behaviours, his emotional abuse, his dismissiveness, his devaluing of you and non-acceptance because you do those things to yourself little by little every day. You don’t believe you’re worth anymore.

And deep down you know this. You know you are the root of the pattern. You probably even have a good idea where it’s come from. Maybe it’s from your childhood and your teens. Maybe your Dad didn’t listen to you, made you feel small. Maybe you never felt you could speak up and instead you focused on being the good girl. Trying to do the ‘right thing’. But you were never easy. People sometimes found you difficult. ‘Why can’t you just ‘get over’ things?’ they’d ask you.

But you never could. Your very unique and capricious soul was marked with discontent of yourself as you tried to be one thing and wanted desperately to be another.

Fast forward and now you’re an adult. But those marks of the past persist and now manifest in your entrenched ‘not good enoughness’. So you attract the same and you accept the same. Your Dark Knight arrives.

The curious thing is the Dark Knight often looks exactly like his White Knight brother. They are, after all, two sides of the same coin because we all, even you, have light and shadow within us. It’s just up to us to manage the shadows and grow the light.

The Dark Knight is just as shiny on the surface. He is just as good-looking and just as attentive (for a moment or two). But soon enough his shadows make themselves known. He doesn’t return calls, belittles you just a little, suggests oh so subtly that maybe you need to change yourself…condense yourself into a box he’s more comfortable with. And you respond in kind, oh so subtly, because it’s more comfortable that way. It’s the pattern you adhere to. It’s your comfortable zone. And your mind is happy there, sort of. Your soul weeps but it often seems like the pain of conformity and the life you’ve lived for so long, is preferable to unhooking your caboose and letting go of someone else’s direction. Far better to conform to their projection.

For the Dark Knight is merely your reflection and you are responsible for your predicament. I know these words seem harsh. I’ve directed them to myself often enough. But I know them to be true. For my boundaries are decided by me and if I don’t put any in place then how does anyone know they’re there?

My heart will still search for love in the Dark Knight because I wish to find it there. I crave it. I see his potential. But therein lies the trick of the light because his potential is mine. He is me. But I must cut him loose in order to allow my light to shine. His shadows are his to manage and he is my reflection. I cannot allow his shadows to suffocate my light. Yet I have done, so many times. So many Dark Knights have galloped in and swept me away and I have loved them. I have given myself unto them willingly. Desperately seeking the light of love that glimmers within them.

But they cannot light the match that ignites my lantern. They will instead snuff it out as they simply do what I do to myself, time and again. I snuff out my own light with my feelings of not being worthy, of not being enough, of not deserving more, of not being heard.

But I am done with the Dark Knights. I cannot carry their shadows any longer. And I know the White Knight can only come unto me when my own light shines brightly; when my own shadows are gently but firmly confined back where they should be.

I must focus on my light. I must be accountable for dealing with my own shadows and sending them on their way, one by one. Only then will I stop attracting the Dark Knights of My Own Soul.

Only then will the White Knight come.

Only then will I be free of the shadows of me.

Only then will I realise, perhaps my White Knight, is me.

Lucretia Ackfield is a writer and transformational teacher who helps women unlock their intuitive power so they can become their own White Knights. For more information about her programs and tips about using your intuition, join her Facebook group Rock Your Inner Channel or visit her Facebook page Lucretia’s Words.

Getting comfortable with my uncomfortable story

Getting comfortable with my uncomfortable story

As the release date for my book, The Men I’ve Almost Dated, drew closer, I had more than one person query my choice to put my story out there. Comments have include things like, ‘Are you prepared for what people might say?’ and ‘I couldn’t do it. You’re completely putting who you are out there. There could be a bit of a backlash on some of it.’

Their comments are only reflecting some of the fears I’ve had along the way; fears that, to be honest, still occasionally begin to simmer under the surface before sinking back into the depths once again.

My book is my story, that much is true. Some of the content will make some people uncomfortable. That much is also true. Does it reveal who I am and share the lumps and bumps of a small part of my life’s journey? Yes. It does. And finally, do I always appear in a positive, happy-clappy, innocent light in the stories I’ve shared. No, I don’t always and that’s because it’s real. I don’t believe for one second that any adult with any life experience has led as so-called ‘blameless’ life. We have all made mistakes and explored less than ideal situations, particularly when it comes to matters of the heart. I am no different.

But I know in my heart that if I don’t do this thing, if I don’t share my story, then I will always, always regret it because I’m here to share my story; it’s part of my purpose on the planet. I also believe that it actually might help some other women out there who are like me to feel more comfortable with their own story.

It was during a conversation with a work colleague about six years ago when I first began to think my story might have some real value to the outside world. She was going through a separation after a long-term relationship and most of her friends didn’t understand what she was going through. They were used to her as she’d always been – the one who was stable and ‘taken care of’. But now she was transitioning to her new life and many found that process uncomfortable to witness. Of course, all things she was doing were completely normal for a woman in her 30s going through that process – the partying, the shopping up a storm, the younger men, etc. But later she told me that it was only when I’d shared some of my similar stories and experiences that she began to feel she was normal. She said, ‘I felt like a weight lifted from my shoulders.’

That I could help one person feel better about their journey seemed like an incredible gift.

My book isn’t high-brow but it’s honest. It’s also real and I own every bit of the story. And if it can help another woman to feel better and more comfortable with her own sometimes fraught journey through single life, then I think it’s totally worth putting myself out there.

If it makes others feel uncomfortable, then I think that has far more to do with them than it has to do with me. So I’m going to feel the fears about putting my story out there…and go ahead and do it anyway.

The Men I’ve Almost Dated is now on sale. Find out more>

 

 

 

 

Brick Walls Coated in Teflon

Brick Walls Coated in Teflon

The brick wall was coated with Teflon
It stood there staring back
Everything she threw at it
It just kept sliding back

So she walked around the side
To see what she could see
But all she could see was more Teflon
As far as the eye could see

Eventually she lay down
And stared up at the sky
The Teflon shadow stretching over her
There was nothing else that she could try
To shift the weight
It pinned her down
She was gasping her last breath
Or so she thought
Then something moved
And she got up instead

She knew there were cracks
Not far inside
That Teflon-covered wall
But it wasn’t up to her to budge it
It wasn’t up to her at all

She put on her hat
She put on her shoes
And left her calling card
Well actually truth be told
She left more than several cards
She stuck her cards
With super glue
All over that God-damn wall
Those cards they stuck
Didn’t even move in the breeze
They weren’t going anywhere at all
And every time
She passed by
She simply stuck on another
That God-damn wall would have to collapse
She wasn’t giving up
No she wasn’t, my brother

But that wall
Was fucking determined
It liked the safety of Teflon
But she didn’t care
About any of that
She didn’t care about the Teflon
She’d keep leaving
Her calling card
It was printed in colours of light
That wall it didn’t stand a chance
Against all that beautiful light

Eventually the Teflon would be consumed
By the light of those sweet cards
The black would fade
To leave all the cracks
All the indelible scars

She would run her fingers through them
All those faulty lines
She would reach deep within
Or maybe not
Who could surmise
What would happen
When the Teflon left
And revealed all that was hidden
So much love
So well-protected
So hidden from normal vision

Perhaps she would just know it was there
As days turned weeks turned months
Her life expanding
And then contracting
Seeking always love

But walls are harsh
So very hard
Wiser ones would say
But it’s the cracks that lie deep within
I love them she would say

Life is full of faults and pain
And some use that Teflon
To repel all other advances
They prefer to keep it on
And that is fine
To be sure
There’s nothing wrong with that
Although perhaps there is actually
Something profoundly wrong with that
Imagine if they moved the black
Moved that dark Teflon
And instead they let the light flood in
All the darkness could be gone

What did she know
Anyway
About anything, any of that
All the plain eye could see
Was Teflon staring back

But she would keep leaving her calling cards
That glue was really strong
Was the Teflon stronger
She wondered
As she kept on, keeping on

She didn’t know
Maybe she was wrong
To believe in any of that
Maybe she was wrong
To believe
The darkness was merely an act

Fanciful flights
Circling her brain
They flew straight to her heart
She was happy right then
To let them fly
The light still filled her heart