Our own relationship story (part four)

Continuing with the recounting, here is the next part of Julia's and my tale. First, though, a clarification brought about by a comment.

A fairly unfriendly commenter (and one who did not leave any evidence who they are--it seems that anonymity is the realm of the cowardly critic) made mention that Kenny and Julia Loggins are no longer a couple. Quite true. Fortunately, the value of a message is never dependent upon the messenger's life, the ups and downs we all experience, or the outcome of one marriage.

The commenter decided that Julia and I are kooks, as are Kenny and Julia Loggins. In talking with my Julia about it, we decided it was good company to be lumped in with.

We now have this blog set to moderated comments, so if you do add a comment, I'll okay it as quickly as I see it.

Now, back to the story...


----(Julia's story)

So I met this nice guy with the videotapes on the Unimaginable Life forum, and we struck up an email conversation. I knew he was special right away, and wished he weren’t already taken, but I was happy to have him for a buddy at least. I figured any man who could simply make it all the way through such an intimate book as UL, not to mention, proclaim himself commited to conscious relationship, and was so devoted to his girlfriend, had to be someone I’d like to be friends with! It took only a few days for our email exchange rate to ramp up to 6-8 per day each way. We talked quite a bit about his relationship, and about my moving toward one. There was something really special about our chemistry, though, and it sure felt different than any platonic friendship I'd ever had, though I knew that's all it could be.

Around this time, I decided to try out an online dating service, and had several guys contact me based on my profile. I liked most of them just fine, and enjoyed emailing with them for the most part, but found myself FAR more excited to see a message from my buddy Rick in my inbox than one from any of them. When Rick asked if he could call me so we could hear each others' voices, I was so excited, you would have thought it was a fancy dinner date with Mr. Right! When I heard his voice on the other end of the line, I spontaneously had the thought, that’s my guy—he sounds like "home." (Danger, Will Robinson!) His voice was so familiar and so soothing to my soul, I just knew that he was “mine”—and yet, he was deeply committed to his girlfriend and their relationship. I knew this because we had talked about it so much. So I decided that he just sounded like the man that was coming into my life—the one I knew intuitively that I was magnetizing and could feel coming closer. I figured when “the one” showed up, he’d sound just like Rick. (I guess you could say he did!)

I can’t name the minute it happened, but it soon dawned on me that I didn’t just like this guy a lot, or love him as a friend—I was in love. Holy moly—in love with an unavailable man. SHEESH! That frustrating pattern had reared its ugly head AGAIN, and I can’t tell you how irritated I was and betrayed I felt when I realized it. I thought that the universe was having a big sadistic laugh at my expense, but I sure didn't think it was funny. I had worked so hard to break this pattern, but there it was, despite my best efforts to consciously move past it. I didn’t tell you the whole story on that before, but suffice to say that in addition to staying out of relationships with men for 8 years, I had also worked with it intensively in therapy and made it clear to the universe by my actions in other powerful ways that I was done with that pattern and willing to do anything to transmute it.

Let me backtrack a bit, and tell you what I discovered about the origins of this pattern of being involved with all manner of unavaialble men. I found this out in the therapy that I had worked with for many years called the Results Method, which was based on Thymo-Kinesiology. I started it in the early-to-mid ’80s with Margaret Fields Kean, who was the originator of Results, and when Margaret moved out of my area, I started seeing Mary Mooney (trained by Margaret), whom I still see to this day when I am in Raleigh. (If you are in that area, I highly recommend Mary—email me if you want her contact info.) Anyway, what we found out by doing an age regression is that it all started when I was a little girl, waiting for my daddy, whom I adored, to come home from work everyday. Late afternoon after work was my time with Dad, who would walk in the back door, pick me up, carry me into the kitchen where Mom would be fixing dinner, hug and kiss me, tickle me, and hold my arms while I turned somersaults by climbing up his legs and flipping over. And over. As many times as he would let me. It was always a thrill—and never lasted long enough. You know how kids are—it’s never enough. Just when it was really getting fun, Dad would run out of steam and tell me that was all for now—which always disappointed and deflated me. Then—and this is the critical part—he would turn away from me, and go and hug and kiss my mother, and they would talk about the news of the day and the important matters of life, while she stirred the pots on the stove.

What I learned from that was that I was the girl that men liked to play with—until they got tired of it—and there was someone else that they discussed the real things of life with. So that’s why I had created the same pattern over and over—while it hurt, it was what I was used to. I was comfortable being “the other woman,” and the one the guys loved to play with before they settled down and got serious with somebody else. (I also learned that I had internalized the notion that “just when things start getting good, they’re over.” But that’s a different soap opera…) But I had cleared all that and was ready to be the one at the stove stirring dinner—or so I had thought. So why, right out of the box, was this cropping up again? What was I going to have to do to move past it? The answer is pretty cool. But it will have to wait till another installment!


----(Rick's story)

While Julia was stewing over my seeming unavailability, I was beginning to notice that, when she would tell me about a few men she corresponded with thanks to her experiment with online dating, I was secretly wishing that they would all prove to be duds, at least in the sense of her finding any of them attractive. My problem was one of denial, and I mean the big-time, can’t-see-the-forest kind of denial, when I tried to explain those feelings to myself.

Julia had sense enough to feel the love growing between us, and I was silly enough to think it was a special friendship and only that…sure, blind-as-a-bat Rick!

I finally knew for sure that Julia really was the person with whom I belonged, and who belonged with me, soon after she decided that our situation was just too unsettling, confusing, and too much sending her off of center. She declared a moratorium on our communications—which by that time meant dozens of email messages a day, and frequent, hours-long phone calls—and it just about killed me.

I was still seeing my Colorado Springs friend, still doing my best to remain loyal to a vision I had which was already scratched and warped beyond repair like a badly mistreated cheap mirror, and still trying to see Julia as a really good long-distance friend. It hit me when I was driving back to the Colorado Springs house from the grocery store early one weekend morning. I thought of some little piece of life that tickled me in the moment, and I instantly wanted to tell my special someone about it…and realized that the person I wanted to tell was Julia, not the Colorado Springs friend.

That was my turning point as I look back. Everything that transpired after that point followed the new path I glimpsed for the first time that autumn dawn.

Right that moment, though, I had a problem: Julia was not willing to communicate with me. That problem’s resolution and more about the next few steps on our joint path will be retold soon!