by Lucretia | Jul 5, 2018 | break ups, Emotional, Love, poem, poems, poetry, The Madness of Love, The Men I've Almost Dated |
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.
by Lucretia | Apr 4, 2017 | Advice, create your life, Love, Men |
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.
by Lucretia | Oct 17, 2016 | Bad behaviour, Men, The Men I've Almost Dated |
It’s interesting to observe people’s reactions when I start telling people about some of the less than ideal male behaviour I’ve described in my book, The Men I’ve Almost Dated. The thing is, I’ve been pretty honest about my dating experiences and often men don’t come off as behaving very well.
One recent conversation with a couple (let’s call them Maggie and James) went something like this.
‘I think it sounds great!’ Maggie said enthusiastically after I’d briefly described the content of the book.
‘Are you dating anyone now?’ James asked.
‘No,’ I said.
‘Well no one’s going to ask you out once you publish,’ he said. ‘No one will want to date you!’
‘Of course they will. It will just weed at the ones she doesn’t want because they’ll know she’ll just call them on their crap if they try it on,’ Maggie said indignantly.
Hmmm.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not naïve to the fact that occasionally the things I mention in my book might polarise opinion or make some people uncomfortable. The very topics of divorce, dating, sex and pursuing the wrong men is highly topical and a lot of people will have opinions about it.
The suggestion that I will be deemed less attractive by the opposite sex because I’m honest about some very ordinary male behaviour is a little disconcerting yet not surprising. The inference from James’ comments was that I might be too ‘scary’ or ‘intimidating’ because I put it all out there.
I’ve heard this argument before about women being ‘intimidating’ or ‘too confident’ and that it apparently scares men off. James’ remarks were just another edition of that same old story. Honestly, I think these types of comments are just another way to keep women small. The very idea that we should hold ourselves back in some way to make men more comfortable is completely repellant to me. That being said, I don’t believe women are better than men or that we should exclude them from our lives. Relationships between men and women are a delicate balancing act that should be based on mutual respect and freedom to be precisely who you are. But that’s a soapbox for another day.
In the meantime, am I worried that no man will ever ask me out once they read my book?
Um, no, because I’m more in Maggie’s camp and hope that it actually turns away the players from my life. Because the truth is, I don’t want any more men I’ve almost dated. I want the real thing now. If some men find me too intimidating, full frontal or whatever because I choose to tell a story based on my perspectives and experience, then they are clearly not the men for me.
And I’m really 100 percent okay with that.
The Men I’ve Almost Dated is now on sale. Find out more>
by Lucretia | Oct 2, 2016 | Love, Relationships, The Men I've Almost Dated |
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>
by Lucretia | Sep 29, 2016 | Bad behaviour, Books, break ups, Dating, Inappropriate male behaviour, Marriage, memoir, The Men I've Almost Dated |
So it’s here. My book, The Men I’ve Almost Dated, is available online. It’s out there.
Now.
Yikes! After such a long period of time, I can hardly believe it.
What if people hate it? What if they love it? What if they don’t care? The thoughts scurry through my brain before I come back, for a moment, to a place of inner calm because it’s done now. It’s born. All I can do is tell people about it.
So here’s the summary. The Men I’ve Almost Dated is about my life in my 30s, the men I dated (or almost dated), sex, dubious decision-making, divorce and men behaving badly. It’s not a ‘how-to guide’ on getting it right when it comes to men and dating. However, it may be a ‘how-to guide’ on how to get it atrociously wrong. I’ll let you be the judge.
Over the coming days and weeks I’ll be sharing more about my book on this blog and my social media channels – so keep your eyes peeled. But for now, if you’d like to grab yourself a copy, head over to my webpage for all the details. You can buy the eBook version today and the print version will be available in coming weeks.
Happy reading!
