There was
this one time I went out on a first date with a guy that I had met on a dating
website, and his profile sounded perfect to me. Everything he said he was and
was looking for, matched me, and what I was looking for also. To my delight,
his pictures looked attractive to me, too. Upon receipt of his first message to
me, I felt an immediate connection with him. We had a lot in common and similar
interests. We set up an official dinner date, and he planned the details. When
I showed up, it was a spectacularly romantic setting: I felt like I was walking
into a Paris diner, on a beautiful sunset evening. He was sitting at the bar
happily chatting with the staff. When he turned around, I was awe struck, he
looked even more handsome in person than in his online photos! We strolled to
our table, which the staff had carefully selected for us, knowing it was our
first date. Our table was nestled next to a little crackling fire in an
old-stone fireplace, on an outdoor patio with tiny lantern lights strewn
overhead. Delicate white roses bobbed gently in the breeze next to me, while
instrumental music could be heard playing in the background. We had the best
first date of my entire life. Everything felt right, good, and the conversation
went so smoothly. I felt like I could open up and really talk about a lot of
things. He was so kind and chivalrous to me, it was refreshing. After the date
was over, he texted me saying it was such a momentous night for him, that he had
called his mom to tell her all about me, and asked when he could see me again.
We planned to try to meet the next day....
But....by
the next day, he was noticeably being distant already. I tried not to put worry
into it, but I couldn't figure out why it was happening. Then, he told me he
needed a rain check and couldn't hang out that night afterall, so we planned
for the next night. By 5pm the next day, I hadn't heard anything from him, so I
texted him asking if we were still meeting, or if he'd had a change of heart.
His reply sunk my soul. He said meeting me stirred up unresolved feelings for
his ex, and he just wanted to be friends. He hasn't spoken to me since. I
noticed he got right back on his dating profile though, uploaded an even more
sexy revealing photo of himself, and to add insult to injury, he'd added to his
profile that girls needed to be at least 5'6" to be compatible with him
(I'm 5'4"). So it seemed I'd been rejected for being 2 inches too short
for him. I was heartbroken. I know it was only a first date, but it was a
profound connection and experience. I will never forget it.
Rejection is a hard pill to swallow. Sometimes
in life, things just don't work out, no matter how hard you want them to. If
it's not right, it's not right, or perhaps it’s just not the right time. But
holding onto something or someone who's clearly giving you the boot or signal
that they don't want you, is reason enough to try to move on. You may never
know the real reasons for being rejected if someone doesn't have the courage to
tell you why to your face. It can feel difficult holding onto faith and having
patience for the "right" someone to come along who will be the right
puzzle piece for a happy romantic partnership with you, but when you realize
you don't have any other choice in the matter, moving on and having hope for
someone else may be your only option.
It
occurred to me over a week later that it seems like romantic-relationship-seeking
is a series of rejecting people and being rejected constantly, until eventually
you make a mutual match. Someone with whom you share a mutual attraction and
chemistry with, and who also wants the same type of partnership that you do at
the same time. If you really think about it, it’s a pretty magical occurrence
for everything to line-up for both people to end up in a romantic relationship.
Basically, your checklist and type of romantic partner that you want, seems to
match the person, and you roughly match what they're looking for also, at the
same moment in time. What people look for in a mate can change over time, as
the person learns, grows, and evolves over the course of their lifetime. With
each relationship, you learn more things: things you definitely don't want to
put up with again, traits or behaviors that really don't work for you, but also
discovering good things you know that work and are good to have in a
relationship. With each relationship being unique, it's unpredictable how it
will unravel. Some people find the love of their life very young, like in high
school or college, and stay together their whole life. Some people, like a
woman I recently met, didn't meet her most profound beloved mate until she was
64 and married him. And some people will marry several times in their life.
People don’t always settle down with their ideal life-long partner the first
time around. Sometimes you have to go through several epic relationships before
you land on the one that may last for the rest of your life. You never really
know, if you truly think about it, because no one knows how long they or their
mate will live, or how each of you will evolve, and how the relationship itself
will evolve over time. Each individual within the relationship is an evolving
creation, and the relationship is a unique evolving entity in and of itself,
and the two people may not evolve in a way that keeps them in alignment with
staying together.
One
thing that seems important, is you have to do your best to CLEAR your last
lover out of your life before you can properly introduce a new one into your
energy field. Now of course this method doesn't have to apply to everyone.
There are people with multiple lovers, and somehow they manage to all know
about each other and respectfully make it work. Some people have secret
affairs, some people just "look the other way" knowing that their
partner is having an affair. The intricacies for the WHYs for anything going on
in any given relationship is only intimately known and understood by the two
sharing the romantic relationship. The healthiest and happiest relationships
have the best forms of communication and compromise, for everyone's highest
good, in my opinion.
~Mandelyn Reese 6/13/2016
Additional
remarks:
On July 26, 2018, I had an epiphany: It occurred
to me, that every single man that I have ever loved, dated, or slept with, has
broken my heart. Once I came to that awareness, I realized that I needed to
make friends with having my heart broken. It’s part of the learning journey of
life experience. People will make mistakes, lie to your face, break your trust,
and let you down. But after I had the epiphany, I was like, “Ok! Bring on
whoever is next!”