How patience took me from the ‘friend zone’ to engaged.
While I sit and smile admiringly at my fiance’ and adjust to having the extra weight on my left hand, I cannot believe that 10 years ago, I was agonizing over the same man, struggling to understand why we were “just friends”.
We hung out all of the time, and we started to learn to surf together (which we still love and share together), we went to mutual friends gatherings together, and we went away together with our friends. He was the first person that I wanted to tell everything, and vice versa. He was there when I went through some of the most traumatic experiences of my life, he was the first to give me support and encouragement after the nightmare that was my ex, he was there to dry my tears, make me get back into the water, and just be the big supportive hug that I needed. Everybody thought we were a couple.
But… we were just friends?
When he got together with his ex, I was heartbroken. Asides from the fact that I just knew that she was going to hurt him, I just could not understand what he saw in her, that I could not offer. But he was my friend, one of my best friends, and I supported him. He was in the same boat a couple of years later when I was blind to the abusive relationship that I was in. We have all been through it, we just cannot accept that ” he/she is just not into you”, as the cheesy chick-flick goes. But sometimes, maybe he/she is just not into you, because the timing is wrong and you are not actually ready for it. This is something that only you will know, and will probably only realize later in life when it all makes sense!
We don’t ever stop to take a look at ourselves. Or we do, which inevitably turns into self-bashing and self-hate, picking out all of our own faults and running ourselves down. Don’t get me wrong, it is a huge blow to your ego when your heart is broken, nobody can deny that, and it is perfectly normal to feel that way. If you are going through this now, and are reading this, I want you to listen to me: It is PERFECTLY ok to feel this way!” It is not permanent, but what is important is how you respond to it. What is the experience teaching you about yourself? Is there perhaps something that you can, and want to fix about yourself? Just make sure that it is something that YOU want to change about yourself, for your own personal gain in life. Do not EVER try to change yourself for someone else. If you feel that you need to change into a completely different person, then it’s not timing my dear, but simply the fact that there is a better option out there for you. Trust me on this!
Fast forward 10 years, and it all makes sense. Now I understand why it did not work out, why I needed to travel first, and why I needed to go through a (horrific) relationship, to learn what I wanted out of life, and who I was, I still had so much growing to do, which I did not realize. Our friendship needed time to develop, to strengthen, we both had previous scars that had to heal. We needed to build a level of trust with one another, which we had, I trusted him with my life and still do, but when emotions start getting involved, it is on another level. You have to be friends with each other, this is key, and I am so happy that it turned out this way.
I am now sitting in another country, where we have just moved together. We are busy looking at property together, he wants to take care of me, he looks at me and I melt inside, and still feel the same fuzzy feeling in my tummy that I did when I first met him and made eye contact with him. ( I am grinning like the Cheshire cat to myself as I write that!). He makes me just as happy as he did from the very first day that we went surfing together ( and his pants split, true story!), and he has taught me what true, unconditional love really is, and most importantly, why it was important for me to learn how to self-love first.
If you cannot learn to love yourself, nobody else will be able to. You have to know what you want, what you like, what you will and will not stand for. Self-respect is so important, and when I look back at myself a couple years ago, it makes me a little sad to see just what little self-respect I had, and just how badly I was putting myself down. All that this did for me, was open up myself to attract the wrong relationships, the types that responded to what I was putting out: fear, self-hate, self-destruction, poor self-body image, abuse.
I hope that this has helped somebody to take a look at themselves and say “You know what, I am so totally worth it!” Be patient, your prince charming is out there, but it is up to you to guide him toward you! You attract what you put out, always remember that you are what you manifest. I wish I had started to listen to that years ago.
I had heard it, and it made sense, but until I started actually believing and doing it, it was merely just a bunch of words, in a fancy typeface on a dreamy-looking Instagram post.
Get out there and make your life what you want it to be, learn to say NO to bad relationships, and bad jobs, and don’t ever settle for anything or anyone who does not fuel your fire, and who makes you want to wake up every day and shout out to the world how freeking happy you are!
runsurfyogagirl031 