{"id":433,"date":"2011-02-21T21:03:49","date_gmt":"2011-02-22T03:03:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rachellefordyce.com\/?p=433"},"modified":"2011-07-09T10:29:57","modified_gmt":"2011-07-09T15:29:57","slug":"manifesting-the-relationship-of-your-desires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rachellefordyce.com\/creative-inspiration\/2011\/02\/manifesting-the-relationship-of-your-desires\/","title":{"rendered":"Manifesting the Relationship of Your Desires"},"content":{"rendered":"


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“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.<\/em>”\u00a0 ~ Lao Tzu<\/p><\/blockquote>\n


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\nI started writing this blog post a week ago on February 14th, Valentine’s Day.\u00a0 Since Valentine’s is often centered around love, romance, and relationships, I thought I’d take the opportunity to share the stories of my past relationship experiences, how I became involved in the relationship I’m in today, and what I’ve learned along the way.<\/p>\n

This following is, essentially, an overview of my journey of my long term romantic relationships from past to present.\u00a0 Aside from the simple sharing of my past experiences, it’s also my hope to share any insight I’ve learned in regards to manifesting the relationship (or relationships<\/em>) of your desires.\u00a0 First, I’ll recount the path and journey that I’ve traveled up til the present. Then, I’ll share the lessons I’ve learned that led me to manifest the relationship of my desires.
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My First Love<\/h3>\n

I started dating when I was 16, in the summer of 1995.\u00a0 My first boyfriend was a fellow high school student whom I had met nearly two years prior. He was about two years older than me but three grades ahead of me since my birthday is early in the year and his is late in the year.<\/p>\n

We initially met at a high school Halloween dance in October of 1993.\u00a0 I was wearing a blue NASA jumpsuit as my Halloween costume (that I had procured from a previous adventure at Space Camp in Hunstville, Alabama), and he was wearing PJ’s with slippers as his costume, holding a big soft teddy bear.\u00a0 I’ll never forget the way he introduced himself to me, because he made me guess his name…. it was Adam.<\/p>\n

Adam and I soon became friends, often hanging out in the computer lab at high school and playing computer adventure games together after class.\u00a0 We were also both Star Trek TNG geeks and we were both involved in the high school music program, so we had a handful of shared interests.<\/p>\n

When Adam graduated high school in the summer of ’94 I still had 3 more years to go before I graduated.\u00a0 No longer going to the same school, and with him starting University in the fall, it didn’t seem likely we’d stay in touch.<\/p>\n

We started hanging out again in the late spring\/early summer of ’95 once Adam had completed his first year of University, yet it was always as friends vs “going-on-a-date”.\u00a0 Although I quite liked Adam “as a friend”, the possibility of dating had never really entered my mind — until one summer night I woke up from a dream I had while visiting an aunt who lived in another province.<\/p>\n

In my dream Adam had started dating another girl and for some reason that made me really sad.\u00a0 When I woke up, I realized that perhaps Adam and I should try dating, especially since I was beginning to care about him a lot and realized I would miss him when we weren’t able to see each other.<\/p>\n

After I had returned from visiting my Aunt, I told Adam about my dream.\u00a0 He thought it was eerie, as he told me another girl had shown interest in him while I was away, and he was considering the possibility of dating her.<\/p>\n

I can’t recall if it was later that same night or within a couple of days of telling Adam about my dream, but soon after we shared our first kiss early in August of ’95 and soon afterward decided to date and become “an official couple” shortly thereafter.<\/p>\n

Adam and I soon became pretty crazy about each other.\u00a0 We both thought we’d end up marrying each other some day, so when our 1st year anniversary rolled around we decided to exchange promise rings with each other.\u00a0 (For those not in the know, a promise ring is symbolic of the intent to one day get officially engaged to be married.)\u00a0 We later got engaged to each other on our 5-year anniversary, deciding to marry two years later on our 7th year anniversary.
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My First House<\/h3>\n

We moved in together in the spring of 2001, and I had put a hefty down payment on our mortgage (I had something like $10K I had managed to save up working my part-time job in a call center while I was simultaneously going to and paying for university).<\/p>\n

It was shortly after moving in together that I began to change a lot as an individual.\u00a0 As far as I’m concerned, this new spurt in personal growth wasn’t a direct result of our living together, but rather as a result of the new friends and experiences I was exposed to via my theatre classes at University.<\/p>\n

Up til that point in my life, I was pretty quiet and shy (and still was, but to a much lesser extent than I had been in the past).\u00a0 All my friends were also Adam’s friends, so we always spent time together and never apart with our own separate groups of friends.<\/p>\n

Now that I had started to have friends “of my own”, I felt a desire to cultivate these friendships and to keep them separate, wanting to spend time with them without having Adam around.\u00a0 It wasn’t that I no longer enjoyed spending time with Adam but more the fact that previously I hadn’t any really close friendships growing up — aside from my relationship with Adam — and now that I had new friends, I had this desire to cultivate these new friendships since I never had that when growing up.\u00a0 (Disclaimer: I did — and still do — have one close friend from grade school that I am still friends with today.\u00a0 However, she and I went to separate schools when I was growing up during my teens, and thus weren’t as close during that time.<\/em>)
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Becoming Vegan<\/h3>\n

I was also exposed to new ideas during this period of personal growth, such as veganism.\u00a0 Having not felt congruent with killing animals for food since I was a teen, I decided to officially adopt veganism on December 1st, 2001.\u00a0 The ideals behind veganism deeply resonated with me, and as such, I was certain I wanted to permanently adopt veganism for the rest of my life.<\/p>\n

Adam, however, was not vegan nor vegetarian.\u00a0 This raised a lot of red flags for me in my mind about our future together…\u00a0 if we were to ever have kids, I knew I’d want to raise them as vegan.\u00a0 How would we do that if Adam had no desire to follow a vegan lifestyle himself?\u00a0 I also wanted to have a vegan wedding, and both my family and his family were insistent on having meat or fish at the wedding dinner, and that didn’t feel right to me at all.<\/p>\n

And then other doubts started entering my mind…\u00a0 Did it make sense to get married to the one and only man I’ve ever been with?\u00a0 Sure, it sounded romantic, but it also started to sound unrealistic.\u00a0 Wouldn’t it make more sense to have other experiences first before making a lifetime monogamous commitment?\u00a0 Maybe explore fantasies and get those out of my system before committing to a life-long marriage?\u00a0 I had also been exposed to concepts such as polyamory during this time in my life, and I was open to experimenting in this realm, but it had become clear to me that Adam was not comfortable with non-monogamy.\u00a0 I was becoming really stressed and uncertain about the future of our relationship.<\/p>\n

There were other complications that came up too, but without going into too much detail, I suggested the idea of my living on my own for a little bit before getting married — something I had never done before.\u00a0 This would mean delaying the wedding to a later date.<\/p>\n

Understandably, Adam felt insecure about this proposition.\u00a0 He essentially responded with an ultimatum:\u00a0 Stay living together and keep the wedding date as is, or break up and not get married at all.
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My First Heartbreak<\/h3>\n

As much as I loved Adam, I just couldn’t bring myself to make a life-long commitment to a relationship that seemed so full of new-found uncertainty.\u00a0 After being together for over 6 and a half years, we decided to call off the wedding, sell our condo, and break up.\u00a0 Resolving to remain friends, I moved out on my own for the first time in my life.<\/p>\n

In the months that followed our breakup I soon found myself in my very own cozy little apartment.\u00a0 I loved having my own place to myself.\u00a0 Before I knew it, I fell into another relationship with a co-worker.\u00a0 The relationship only lasted about a month, however, and in retrospect it was very clearly what would be labeled as a rebound relationship, so it’s not worth much mention here.
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An Unconventional Relationship<\/h3>\n

Shortly after my brief rebound relationship I was introduced to a friend of a friend named Michael.\u00a0 Michael was vegan (well, mostly; I think “freegan” is a more apt term), spiritual, and had a geeky side, too.\u00a0 We were pretty much the same age since we were born in the same year, and it had even turned out that we went to the same school in Kindergarten. We shared similar values, and he taught me how to meditate.<\/p>\n

Michael and I had an interesting relationship because it wasn’t your conventional type of relationship.\u00a0 We dated as a monogamous couple for about a year, and then after that year our relationship transformed from a monogamous relationship to an open-sort-of-relationship-but-not-really-in-a-relationship relationship; it’d probably have been labeled as “It’s complicated” on Facebook. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

We moved in together *after* no longer being in an official monogamous relationship, each having our own respective bedrooms.\u00a0 Even so, we still often shared a bed together at night, but not always.\u00a0 As I was saying, we didn’t consider ourselves to be “in a relationship” with each other, and instead it was more like a situation where two friends cared about each other, shared similar values, lived together, and who would sleep with each other on occasion.<\/p>\n

Despite not being in an “official” relationship, nether I nor Michael became involved with anyone else while we lived together. \u00a0 We lived together for about a year and a half before we both started to realize perhaps we should move on and find a relationship that fulfilled our respective desires.\u00a0 I don’t recall what Michael desired in a relationship, but I know that I longed to be involved with a creative individual — perhaps even someone I could collaborate with on creative projects or endeavors of some kind; someone with drive, passion, ambition, and who’d inspire me while I inspired them.
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Rediscovering My Independence<\/h3>\n

I moved out of the apartment Michael and I were sharing in the late spring of 2005, toured a solo play of mine for somewhere between 3-4 months, then returned to my hometown of Winnipeg in the latter half of September.\u00a0 I soon rented another apartment and resumed solo-living.\u00a0 I was glad to be living on my own again.\u00a0 I had missed having my own place.<\/p>\n

The next relationship I become involved in started sometime in 2006.\u00a0 It’s hard to say when Andrew and I started dating, because there was no clear-cut date.\u00a0 We met on NYE, shared some passionate kisses later that night after it officially became 2006, and would continue to meet up every once in a while for a date here and there.<\/p>\n

I liked Andrew a lot and it seemed apparent that we had chemistry, but at the time I felt hesitant about getting into another relationship.\u00a0 Part of me felt as though I should remain single for a while longer, while another part of me felt as though I should wait and try to find another vegan mate.\u00a0 Veganism isn’t too common, however, so I felt conflicted as to whether or not I should be flexible or rigid in that regard.\u00a0 Although Andrew wasn’t vegan, nor vegetarian, he was very open to veganism and ate little meat himself.\u00a0 He was also a creative individual, being interested in stories and writing.\u00a0 Over time, my feelings for Andrew grew, and before long I desired to experience a relationship with him.\u00a0 I think it was sometime late in May or perhaps June of 2006 that we started to officially date.
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Gaining Clarity<\/h3>\n

Andrew and I ended up living together too, yet always with a third roommate and never just the two of us in our very own place.\u00a0 We dated until sometime in September of 2008.<\/p>\n

I experienced a lot of confusion and uncertainty towards the end of our relationship.\u00a0 We definitely loved each other — there was no question about that —\u00a0 yet sometimes it seemed we’d bring out the worst of each other in regards to our personal temperaments.\u00a0 And because of this, despite Andrew’s creative side, we never really got to the point of inspiring each other or working on any projects together.\u00a0 Even though we certainly loved each other, we didn’t seem to experience any growth in our relationship.\u00a0 I desired to be in a relationship that inspired mutual growth, inspiration, ambition, and passion.<\/p>\n

Feeling lost and uncertain, I longed for some form of guidance.\u00a0 I decided to book a reading<\/a> with Erin Pavlina<\/a>, hoping that I’d gain some insight and clarity about my situation.\u00a0 During our reading, Erin was able to point out that all of the men I had been in relationships with up to this point were weak in their personal power.\u00a0 And then, Erin actually said, “You know, someone just like Steve would be perfect for you!”<\/em> She then elaborated: the drive, ambition, passion and inspiration I had longed for in another partner would be present in someone who was strong in their personal power — someone like Steve Pavlina<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I agreed with Erin’s assessment and knew that, although I loved Andrew dearly, I’d need to move on if I were to ever experience the kind of relationship I desired.<\/p>\n

Something else I remember from Erin’s reading was a message to open up and communicate more of my thoughts without holding back and self-censoring so much.\u00a0 That note of advice really stood out for me, and consequently, I tried to keep that advice in the back of my mind henceforth.
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Getting Specific<\/h3>\n

I was single and living on my own again by October of 2008.\u00a0 I soon ventured into the world of online dating for a while, albeit hesitantly, but never found someone I really clicked with or who was a match for what I desired in a partner and in a relationship.<\/p>\n

Online dating did teach me something, though:\u00a0 it helped me to acknowledge and refine what it was that I truly wanted to experience in a new relationship and with a new partner.\u00a0 I essentially made myself a list.\u00a0 I came to realize that I didn’t want to compromise and settle for less than what I desired because doing so would ultimately prevent me from experiencing the very experiences for which I longed.<\/p>\n

My list of qualities that I desired in a relationship partner went something like this:<\/p>\n