The short answer is YES.
Anything & everything is a possibility when you live by the laws of the universe.
I want to start off by acknowledging that we are all spirit beings, here on Earth, borrowing our bodies, on this human journey.
With that duality, comes a duality of our realities.
I spent almost a year & a half of my life with someone that I could easily say was the love of my life. Everything about our union, in my perception, was easy & natural.
Then, at about the 1 year mark, when I initiated a discussion about “the future”, things rapidly changed.
As a spirit being, there is no past or future. There is only the NOW.
As a human being with a secure & anxious attachment style myself, I was seeking the security of a committed union. I wanted to know that my life partner will be there for me thru thick & thin & choose me & our union consistently, over & over again, with certainty.
I could feel that he wanted a committed union but there was a gap, between wanting it & knowing how to achieve it.
A KNOWING comes from your connection to God/universe, your higher self.
And for him, his combined attachment style of Anxious & Avoidant, had him experiencing a constant state of anxiety, fear, & insecurity, which was blocking him from experiencing elevated levels of love, joy & security.
Research studies show that the different attachment styles are formed in the early years of life & are directly correlated with how an infant attaches to their primary caregiver, which is typically their mother.
(The descriptions below are taken from the book “Attached” by Amir Levine & Rachel S.F. Heller)
Secured: People feel comfortable with intimacy & are usually warm & loving.
Anxious: People are often pre-occupied with their relationships & tend to worry about their partner’s ability to love them back.
Avoidant: People equate intimacy with a loss of independence & constantly try to minimize closeness.
This is not a blame game. I can acknowledge that I also experience anxiety, fear & insecurity at times. The only difference is, I am committed to the process of moving thru my fears & choosing union in spite of my fears.
In a healthy monogamous union, you can support each other emotionally & navigate past the fears & start to experience safety, security, unconditional love & bliss, together in union.
This takes COMMITMENT, not only to your own healing but also a commitment to your life partner & a commitment to creating the ideal relationship, one that BOTH you & your partner are working towards creating TOGETHER.
The ONLY reason our relationship stopped flourishing is because both people did not choose to commit.
It takes both parties to be fully committed to the process. You are only ever in control of your own choices. You cannot force or convince anybody to choose you, nor should you try.
For him, a person with an anxious & avoidant attachment style, it is like watching people walking on their own 2 feet & acknowledging that they can see people walking, but not knowing how to do it himself. Furthermore, not even knowing how to begin the process of learning how to walk himself.
Walking is a completely foreign concept & doesn’t seem to have any familiarity, nor does it seem safe.
Why would you choose to walk on 2 feet, when you can choose to walk on 2 feet & 2 hands, for more stability? Doesn’t that make more sense?
Even when they think they are walking, they are not.
Have you ever seen an infant crawl on all 4’s, not the traditional crawl with their knees on the ground, but the spider crawl with their butt up in the air? They are a little bit higher up than the traditional crawl, but not quite up on 2 feet yet. This is the evolution of a crawl before an infant starts building up the confidence to walk.
The idea of walking seems doable yet completely scary, unstable & also completely foreign.
Imagine crawling your whole life for decades… Walking would give you a totally different physical & emotional experience. The lens in which you would see the world would be completely different.
(I invite you to get on all fours & give it a try. You will have a totally different view/perspective of the world).
No really, put down whatever device you are reading this on & just take a minute to crawl around. You will see things that you missed as a “walker” & you will also miss things that are no longer in your line of sight).
Your ego will try & convince you that walking is not for you. Walking was designed for everybody else, but you. It’s simply not true.
WALKING IS FOR YOU, JUST AS MUCH AS IT IS FOR EVERYBODY ELSE.
And one day, before you know it, you may even find yourself running & sprinting.
If you look at our ancestors, it is perceived that walking is a higher evolution of humanity than crawling. The same evolution as overcoming your fears & connecting to your higher state of consciousness, which is programmed to unlimited levels of bliss.
Each of us have the same birthright, to be happy, joyful & fulfilled. It is also important & our birthright to be in relationships.
We have the freedom of choice, to choose people that support us on that journey.
I am very clear with wanting & choosing a romantic union that is monogamous & committed.
That does not make anybody else’s choice bad or wrong.
When choosing a life partner, their life choices & values will easily click in with yours…or not. Using this as a barometer is an ideal scenario.
At the same time, life throws us curve balls sometimes.
For instance, in my experience, I was under the impression that my life partner was always committed to me, even when the signs were very clear that his programming had him spending more of his time running FROM me rather than towards me. Looking back, it seems like the deeper in-love I felt with him, the farther he pushed himself away from me.
Each time there was devastating self-sabotage (on a subconscious level), I found a way to expand my level of unconditional love, acceptance & forgiveness. And every time I was successful at that, it seemed like he upped the ante.
Of course all of these self sabotaging behaviours were unintentional on his part, but if you don’t believe that you are deserving of love, the ego will play mind tricks on you, to sabotage the very thing that is a source of love & joy.
We played a game of cat & mouse for the majority of our relationship. I was always the cat.
The cat wants the mouse, while the mouse wants the cheese.
If you each want different things then the answer is pretty clear, you are NOT moving in the same direction.
If you are able to take a birds-eye view of this game of cat & mouse, you will see that both the pursuer & the pursued are playing out their trauma responses.
They would both love to find safety & security with each other in union, co-existing & sharing life together, but both of them have fears & hesitations getting in their way of experiencing a beautiful, secure, fun & playful experience together.
The key to overcoming the fears as mentioned above is to fully commit to the process of conquering & transforming your old programming & replacing it with the truth of who you are. It is most definitely a journey. But I promise, that with the right tools, it can be a fun & joyous journey with brief flashes/moments of adversity. Each adversity will be an opportunity to evolve to the next level of consciousness. Each adversity is an opportunity to replace the old programming with the new more loving & expansive programming.
I invite you to choose a committed union to practice & play, as you move thru this journey. Your ego will convince you to be in “unattached” relationships. That’s the egos ploy to keep you in the safe zone. Nothing amazing & epic happens in the safe zone.
I remember the feeling when it slipped out of my former life partners mouth, that he is shopping to buy property with a friend of his…
After dedicating & committing more than 1.5 years of building a life together with him, nurturing him, loving him, being patient with his self sabotaging behaviour, all I asked from him, was to choose to turn to me instead of running.
In my perception, that was a very small ask.
I wanted to create a space to evolve, grow, make mistakes, feel scared & still have the capacity to turn TOWARDS each other, instead of running away.
I believed in his ability to evolve & succeed, more than he did in his abilities, at the time.
This is where the importance of self love comes in.
I had asked him if he would be open to taking steps towards strengthening our union by making tangible choices towards “committing”, by purchasing a place together, getting married or having a civil union & he chose to leave the relationship, instead of staying & building together, because my “need” for commitment scared him into oblivion.
He expressed that he felt his freedoms being taken away from him.
His choice to make a commitment with somebody else (his friend), doesn’t mean anything about me.
It doesn’t even mean that he doesn’t love me.
It just simply gives me insight into the lens in which he’s experiencing his world.
He finds more comfort in making a commitment with someone that doesn’t know him intimately & someone that he doesn’t know intimately. That is a trauma response.
His inner voice is telling him that this is the safest choice…the choice that will ensure that he won’t get hurt.
I’m sure you can agree that this is an ego mind fuck. The ability to get hurt is still very much a possibility.
In a union, love is not enough.
There needs to be an unwavering commitment to each other & the relationship.
It takes simple common sense to understand that if you water your own grass, it will flourish. If you water your neighbours lawn & not your own, their lawn will flourish.
If you want to build a life together in a monogamous union, then there is only room for 2 people in the union.
You have the freedom to CHOOSE your life partner.
I am responsible for my own inner healing. I take responsibility for attracting someone with an anxious & avoidant attachment style who is not able or willing, at this time, to CHOOSE me unwaiveringly. It is my responsibility to process & release all of the emotions that come up for me when I think the thought that he is making steps towards commitment with somebody else & not me.
It is up to him to heal his trauma around the thick walls he’s built around his heart that does not allow him the freedom to give & receive love from the most vulnerable & authentic space within himself.
Both people have wounds & at the same time both people are whole, perfect & complete, as they are.
It takes stepping fully into your power to look at your fears dead in the face & say, I am moving forward ANYWAYS. I am going to COMMIT TO STAY (physical abuse is an exemption), even when ALL of the voices in my head ask me to run.
If you imagine driving thru a storm, the most intense storm of your life…If you choose to pull over to the side of the road in the middle of the storm, you will spend more time in the storm. Whereas, if you muster up the courage to keep driving thru the storm, you will pass the storm & be able to see it in your rear-view mirror. It will be a thing of the past & you will have witnessed & experienced the strength & courage that it took to weather the storm.
Once you fully commit, the universe carries you the rest of the way.
This is with anything & everything, not only in relationships.
It’s interesting that the word “freedom” came to the surface because he’s expressed that his biggest fear with commitment is his loss of freedom.
The most freeing feeling is releasing the shackles that you yourself have put on yourself.
Nobody else has the power to shackle you!
You have always been free.
The suffocation you feel is YOU sinching off the flow of love that YOU ARE.
The more you give the more you get.
If love is not flowing freely & in abundance, then check in with yourself.
You are the source of all of the love that you are. And with that knowing, comes your ultimate freedom.