Free to love

I spend a huge chunk of my time and energy on learning how to be more emotionally stable and connected, on practising mindfulness and other methods for better mental health, and on managing to stay true to myself and grounded in my relationship. Today was the first time I thought that I would quite like a break from the constant mental toil, and I wondered: Will it always be this exhausting, so consuming?

I have felt a growing pressure in me these past days, because I want to tell my boyfriend that I am in love with him. And yet I know I am not ready - I still have a lot of healing and growing to do. Our relationship is not ready either, and perhaps neither is he. 

I used to say "I love you" at the drop of a hat, but now I know that what I actually meant was: "promise me you will stay" or "are you there for me?". I am not sure I have these dysfunctional tendencies out of my system yet, and I don't want to build myself another cage. That would mean the end of this relationship, and I don't want that. 

And so, having largely held back on professing my love for him (with some glitches early on), this is the first time in my life that I have let my feelings for someone just flow and develop freely. It's been an amazing experience so far, glorious in fact. Why ruin it with an "I love you" if right now it still brings such expectation and pressures with it?

The freedom has helped me to thrive:  I have not felt such happiness, connectedness and well-being with someone before, all while knowing that it is mutual and not just in my imagination. Is it love? It may well be, but I don't know, and right now I don't want this to matter. 

I realise now how limiting "I love you" can be, how striving only for this little phrase stifles your spirit, that of the other person and of the relationship. In the past, I always, always said it far too soon, and in the most ludicrous of instances, to people I hardly knew, people I didn't really like, and so on. To those among them that I hurt, I must have seemed like a sociopath. I would tell them I loved them with all my being and pressure them to reciprocate, then disappear or betray them. I still have amends to be make. They didn't know - and neither did I - that inside I was a shipwrecked person in a storm, clutching at driftwood, discarding one float for another. I was desperate for love and affection, for security. I was also hopelessly ignorant about what love meant, and on top of that I didn't know myself and was immature to boot.

I said "I love you's" in the same way I slept with people - it was really the expression of a deep, burning need. Saying it caused me dreadful anxiety, even to the point of panic attacks, because I knew something wasn't right, I just didn't know what. Soon enough I would start to doubt my feelings and suddenly the relationship - and thus my whole existence and survival - hung in the balance.

Now I don't say it, not yet. I think I may recently have had glimpses of what true love could mean, but for now I must stay free of this notion to get to know myself and my heart. Free to like him a little less one day, or a little more the next, without such fluctuations being a matter of life and death. 

 And when I feel that familiar urge again to blurt out an "I love you", I tell myself to be patient, to dance a bit more in the sunshine, to let things flow instead of trying to influence, secure and control. It's not easy, but I think it's worth it. 

Much love because I am in a loving mood. 

Rosamunde