Remember times when you felt stuck in the way something was and you couldn’t imagine how to change? And then suddenly, someone or something helped you see it a new way. This clarity slapped you in the face … in a wow, eyes –wide -open kind of way!
That’s an aha moment!
We’ve all had them in work, love, or spiritual parts of our lives.
I had a series of big aha moments that changed my love life forever. They were game changers for me. All the years of therapy, reading and struggling finally clicked into place. I could clearly see WHY I had been stuck on a hamster wheel of dead-end relationships my whole life. I was re-creating a very old pattern that started as an infant: Trying to get emotionally unavailable men to love me. Get is the operative word. I was trying to change them and compromising myself to get what I never got as a child. At that moment in therapy I got it, saw it, realized it, and most importantly, FELT IT in my belly.And then everything changed.
I became “allergic” to these men that I had been so attracted to before. It was like someone turned on my emotional radar detector and I could tell within minutes of a date that he was not the one for me. I’m not kidding my first long-term relationship lasted 10 years before I realized it was a dead end. The next was 10 months, then 10 weeks. One of the last ones lasted only 10 days. That was with someone who claimed to be a reformed narcissist (yeah, right!). Literally, today it takes about 10 seconds now for me to call it.
This new emotional radar worked not only for my love relationships; it also worked with friends. It dawned on me that I had also collected friends along the way who weren’t there emotionally to support me.My past partners and several of my friends were sucking the life out of me. They were draining me while I was bending myself into a pretzel to please them and get them to love, accept and support me. I don’t blame them though. The reality was they didn’t have the ability to be there for me.
So I cleaned house a bit and some of those people who I thought were friends, well, they didn’t like the new me. The new me spoke my mind, set healthy boundaries and asked for what I needed. It was very liberating to free myself of the stress and emptiness of those relationships.
It was one thing to be allergic and avoid people who weren’t good for me, but it was another to recognize and allow in those who were healthy, emotionally available, and set and respected boundaries.
I’m not saying it was easy. I had setbacks. I had my share of run-ins with men who I thought were right for me. I learned that emotionally unavailable people come in many shapes and sizes other than the most obvious (more on this in my article coming soon titled Chasing Mr. Hard to Get).
Then my next big aha moment hit me: I made the deliberate decision to deserve the love I wanted. I put myself on my pedestal and wouldn’t settle for anything less than what I needed and deserved in my life. It worked. I found the love of my life and he’s perfectly imperfect for me!
So you ask, how does an aha moment happen? It happens when you’ve hit a point where you can’t stand it any longer. For some it’s the bottom; for others it’s the point where continuing with the status quo (staying single, dating the wrong men, being in unfulfilled relationships) isn’t working any longer. You decide that the fear of being stuck and wasting your time is greater than the fear of the unknown—the unknown being different than what you know.
Here’s the awesome thing—once you have your aha moments and become aware, going back to how things were doesn’t work for you any longer. You will have to deal with and tolerate friends and family who are still holdouts from the past because that’s how life works. But when it comes to love, you can’t and won’t tolerate what doesn’t work for you. You’re done repeating the past.
Curious how your aha moments can help you find love?