Intimacy Is the Key to Finding Love

Sometimes I am flabbergasted at the fact that I have so many successful, awesome, yet single girlfriends.  And these women haven't only been single for a few months, but years!

These women are a lot like me: strong, independent, successful, make good money in awesome careers, either own their own homes or live in apartments without the need for a roommate, and they do not have kids.  Why aren't they with the love of their lives?

Something is wrong with this picture. 

I feel guilty sometimes that I was lucky enough to have had Jeff and now I have Wyoming.  Some of my girlfriends have not even had a Jeff and I've now had a Jeff and a Wyoming.  How is that at all fair, Universe?  I want my friends to find love, safety, comfort, and a best friend like I have.

I've been thinking about this a lot.  I know there is no perfect person out there.  I didn't even like Jeff when I first met him.  I thought he was loud, boorish, and not at all very attractive.  But through the 7 years we were in the same social circle, I slowly got to know his personality, heart, and soul and grew to love him unconditionally.

I read this article and it really shed some light on dating and finding real intimacy, which is the key to finding love.  I realized that, unknowingly, I practiced the skills from this article with Jeff when we secretly started dating after 7 years of just being friends.  We kept our dating a secret because we didn't want any outside interference from our friends, which I realize now was the best thing we could have ever done to build trust and intimacy.

I also noticed that I practice these skills with Wyoming as I am getting to know him through email, text messaging, over the phone, through FaceTime, and now in person.  Distance definitely helped with some of these but I honestly believe that we are both in a place in our lives where we want to find an intimate connection, share our vulnerabilities, and find love.  I know for sure distance has helped me with sharing my vulnerabilities enormously.  I have been able to tell him things on the phone that I might not have been able to talk as openly about if we were in person.  But once we finally did meet in person, all the intimacy and trust that was established over the phone, through texting, emailing and FaceTiming was apparent and everything felt natural and normal.

I do have to admit that I am still petrified of being hurt.  I think I am more afraid of him leaving me without any choice on his or my part, just like Jeff.  As I move forward with my relationship with Wyoming, I'm still afraid of that but I'm trying to not let that get in the way of being happy in the present moment.  I'm trying to be like Wendy!  In this blog post she discusses having a fearless heart.

Wyoming has been and continues to be very patient and understanding of my fears but if I hadn't been vulnerable and shared my fears with him, there could easily have been a miscommunication in that my fear could have been misconstrued and he might have thought I just wasn't that in to him.

In having conversations with my friends about their dating life, I have definitely noticed that they are not practicing a lot of the skills from the article, which might make more sense as to why they are still single.  But, I also think a lot of the men they are dating are also not practicing the skills from the article.  I don't think it's just one person's fault.

It's ok to be vulnerable.  I know it's hard after losing the love of your life, you can't imagine going through that kind of pain again, but in holding back, all you're really doing is hurting yourself.  It's a risk to put yourself out there, but if you don't, you may miss out on the next best thing to ever happen to you, which is finding your next partner and best friend to share the rest of your life with.

Let's all try to have a fearless heart.  We only live once.