Someone asked recently if I believed in fate or if I thought we had a choice in how our lives turn out.

It may seem contradictory, but I believe in fate AND our ability to make choices and exercise our free will.

I think we all have a path to follow, a purpose and lessons to learn while we are here. These things are decided before we are born. But how our lives and lessons manifest, and how long we take to learn our lessons, is up to us.

Let’s take exhibit A: Me.

For quite a few years after my marriage ended, I attracted and was attracted to unavailable men. They might already have partners, be emotionally constipated (i.e. unable to make any type of emotional commitment), physically unavailable (live intra- or interstate), like to play hard to get or be unable to work out what they really wanted.

I was a magnet for these men. I didn’t know why but they kept turning up in my life and I would be sucked into their world of unavailability. And of course, I would get emotionally involved, make excuses for their poor behaviour and believe they could change, get hurt and then spend months recovering from it all.

I repeated this pattern over and over again.

In hindsight, I believe I had a lesson to learn about valuing myself and realising I deserved an emotionally available man. I felt guilty about leaving my marriage and hurting people I cared about for a long time and part of me just didn’t think I deserved another shot at the ‘relationship title’. So those unavailable men just kept rocking up until I learned the lesson.

I’m pleased to say I don’t open my doors wide to unavailable men anymore. I’m much better at spotting them from a distance, giving them a wide berth or just saying, ‘No thanks’ and moving on. I guess you could say I’ve learned my lesson and now make different choices. I know I deserve the best now.

So when it comes to fate and choices I think we do have certain things to learn in this lifetime but it’s up to us how long we take to learn those lessons. We can take as long and make it as painful for ourselves as we like. That’s our choice.

Sometimes in these situations we just don’t realise we are repeating the same pattern over and over again.

That’s my take on fate versus choices anyway.

May you make good choices for yourselves today.