Hey, welcome back you beautiful soul! How are you feeling?
Are you Ready? Are you Willing?
Well you’re here and I’m hoping you’re getting there, because you’re doing the work, asking the hard questions, saying the answers out loud and healing with those answers.
It’s so beautiful what you’ve done so far and amazing that you’re here for the next step.
So let’s get into it.
I remember this next part, how, for me, Willing was TOUGH. It took me by surprise how unwilling I was to move away from my newly created sense of safety.
Let me know if this part resonates with you…
When I started the work to be Ready, the “being single and figuring myself out, what I wanted, why I was continually doing the same things over and over again, getting essentially the same convoluted results that were never what I was looking for” and I started to sit with the uncomfortable answers to the hard ugly questions, I knew I was moving in the right direction. When I allowed myself honesty and grace to be this honest, to not judge, and I didn’t shy away from the questions or the answers, I knew I was Ready. Or pretty damn close to it.
But Ready for what? True love? Relationship of a lifetime? Not quite…(that takes more work).
What I was Ready for was to put myself out there! Ready to face the dating world with a new understanding of myself. I was extremely proud of the work I had done, the self actualizing, the accountability, the ownership of my own journey. I recognized and owned the parts I played in my past dating and relationship foibles. I dug around and started to find myself, not who I was for other people, not who I thought I was based on what other people thought, but who I thought I was, with no other opinions or input. And who I was finding, who I was discovering and figuring out was someone that I liked.
For the first time in a long time, maybe ever, I believed (for the most part) that I was pretty fricking amazing and I wanted to share my amazingness with someone. But not just any “someone”. Someone who was WORTHY of my amazingness, of my warmth and openness, my self awareness.
Then I hit a speed bump. And I slowed right the fuck down.
I got a bit scared, a little wary, highly suspicious and hyper judgmental. Not of myself, oh no, those days were past (they were not, at best they were on hiatus). Of other people. Of the ones that hadn’t “done the work”. The guys that thought they were going to play the same games on me, the same moves, the same bullshit. Those guys I judged. Like how dare they bring that weak shit! I am a more advanced being full of accountability, self awareness and worth!
I started to view everyone with suspicion, sifting out what I assumed were dishonest intentions, piles of bullshit they were trying to run (because I was smarter with all my work I had done) and I went back to my little world of wonderfulness that I had built and cultivated. No one was going to shit in my garden.
YIKES.
I was not Willing to waste all this on “someone or someones” who would ruin all my hard work. I was not Willing to take any chances on anyone who wasn’t where I was, who didn’t want the same things, and who didn’t know what they wanted, clearly and with conviction. I had no time or room for someone who, I don’t know, was on their own journey at their own pace, that maybe wasn’t as far along, but were on the right track or similar track to me.
I became a hyper vigilant, paranoid, cynical, self-important twat. I was honestly just learning how to handle myself, and my foundation was setting still, so it was fair to say I was still shaky. Like an addict, I could not get close to anyone that could pull me back into my bad habits, my ways of navigating and building relationships that weren’t working. I wasn’t Willing to risk everything I had done on anyone, in case they broke me again. I was fragile, or the new understanding and self love was fragile and I didn’t want to risk it all coming down around me again.
Maybe I wasn’t Ready. (Insert eye roll here)
Here’s the thing though. I was Ready as I was ever going to be. I had done as much of the work as I could, on my own and it was good work. But it was only part of the work. I had done the first part which was to figure out what I wanted for myself and for my relationships. The next step was to put myself out there and figure out how what I wanted could work with someone and to keep working on myself, with that someone. But I wasn’t Willing.
When I say Willing, I think the simplest way to put it is like this.
Are you Willing to “risk it for the biscuit”?
Are you Willing to put yourself out there, to take the risk of it all going tits up?
Yeah I get it. “I do this every time I go on a date!” Ummmm no you don’t. You think you are, you are maybe trying to, but you’re really not.
It’s an innate thing to protect yourself, your fragile beautiful tender heart, your incredible mind and your strong self protecting ego. And there’s nothing wrong with this, at least not at first. This is why we put our “best” versions of ourselves on our first dates. We don’t want them to see all the uglies, the nasties, the weirdness, the awkwardness, the all encompassing depth of who we are, especially in the beginning. And I get it. And I’m not saying that you should. Because to show all the uniqueness of you, trust has to be earned. And it needs to be earned from both sides.
That said, how do you even go about learning and earning? Hear me out.
You gotta risk it for the biscuit.
The risk I’m asking you to take is to be Willing to be open to the possibilities. Be Willing to see past the not so great first date outfit, the awkward eye contact or lack thereof, the stilted conversation, the lack of initial POW kind of chemistry. Take it for what it is. Be WILLING to see if for what it likely is…two strangers meeting each other, two individuals bringing themselves into a situation, and trying to navigate the brand new area with the tools they have. The best we can hope for, and be WILLING to look for is innate goodness and a spark, whether it’s physically or mentally or emotionally.
It may be there, a little tiny ember that can be stoked into something bigger. Or it may not. But you won’t know unless you’re Willing to try, to take that risk.
When people talk about bringing the “best versions” of themselves to their dates, it makes me, well, a little bit sad. And probably wary and suspicious. Why? Because I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. I assumed they were showing me the surface, the shiny sparkly surface, (because that’s what I was doing) and under all that was the tarnished, battered monster that was going to blindside me, and fuck you if I was going to be blindsided again!
Which was definitely why I was not Willing at this point.
Then I met someone. While I was working in a bar, this guy, slightly rough around the edges, shorter than what I thought was my preference (he was about 5 feet 8 inches tall), slightly portly, walked into the bar. Sounds like the start of a good joke, yeah? It was and it wasn’t.
Stay with me.
Now I only describe him to highlight that I had resolved that I would not go for guys with this kind of physicality. Not that there’s anything wrong with this, it was more that I had convinced myself that I was not attracted to guys that weren’t at least 6 feet tall, or if I was, they were leaner and polished. This didn’t come out of nowhere. The relationship that sent me into the Dating Hiatus, was with a guy whose nickname was Mighty Mouse. He was on the shorter side and had issues with his height and felt like he had so much to prove because of this. Now, to be very clear, I had no issues with his height. What I had issues with was his aggression that came from his complex, his constant need to prove that he wasn’t some wimp or “little man”. How he would take offense to almost anything that was in reference to size. I also had issues around his choice of a side hustle. Involved trips south of the border. Enough said. That said, I stuck it out and when it ended about 8 months in, I made a hasty exit and started to look for my next distraction.
Because of Mighty Mouse and his short man complex, I swore off short guys. I didn’t need to be constantly soothing, constantly reassuring, and dealing with the unnecessary posturing. Keep in mind I’m on the shorter side myself, standing at a proud 5 feet 4 inches tall. He was still taller than me at about 5 feet 7 inches tall, on a good day. All that meant for me was I stopped wearing heels with Mighty Mouse, instead grew my collection of flat shoes, and spent way too much of my energy telling him I didn’t care he was shorter.
Back to the slightly rounded, shorter guy we will call Mr. East Side. He walked into the bar and it didn’t matter that he was shorter, I wasn’t going to date him. He smoked, he drank gin like it was water, and he had the nicest eyes. He was self deprecating, smart, had this kind of snarky subtle humor, like you had to be smart to understand his jokes. He made my brain buzz. He wore the worst outfits, like vintage bowling shirts and baggy jeans that dragged under the heels of his shoes and were constantly frayed and dirty and he snuck under my much lauded new self and new self awareness. He blindsided me with his consistent visits, but also his hot and cold bullshit (see I told you I was not above making mistakes.) He chased just enough but not so much that it was creepy or unwanted.
I was still on my dating hiatus, about three months left in my six months. I kept him as a customer, then a friend until my dating hiatus was over. I didn’t start dating him right away (remember how I was not willing to really put myself out there), but after the realization that I had swung wildly the other way with my fear, I forced myself to “risk it for the biscuit” and started dating him and staying over at his dilapidated, ultra hip, East Side walk up apartment.
When I met him I wasn’t Ready to date anyone, much less someone so far away from my “type”. I definitely wasn’t Willing to risk my new found peace on someone who had very little in the way of life goals, was disenfranchised and happy with the status quo. I had made enough mistakes already and had no interest in making them again, not when I had worked so hard to get where I was. Because I had done all this work I wasn’t about to throw it all away with someone who I considered so far off the mark. But there was a click. And somehow, my head and heart were Willing to be open to this guy, this gin swilling, bowling shirt wearing, East Side vagabond.
Which is a long walk down memory lane to get to share what the Willing part is.
The Willing part is the risk taking part. The part that is Willing to MAKE THE MISTAKES. Because you know you have to, to get it right. It’s rare to get it right on the first go. And honestly it’s better to make the mistakes as long as you are learning and using that to get better and stronger. You have to first be Willing to take the chance, then you have to be Willing to be vulnerable. You have to be Willing to make the time and to explore the possibilities. Most importantly, you have to be Willing to communicate what you want, take all the prep work you did to get yourself Ready so that you’re Ready and Willing to share that.
It took time for me to be Willing to put myself out there, and it happened gradually. I realized that what worked better (for me) was getting to know someone without the pressures of “dating”. I was Willing to meet someone new as a friend, not as a potential boyfriend. This was useful because it gave me time to become Able. Able to put myself out there, Able to date in a way that worked towards the kind of future I wanted with the kind of person I wanted to be with, to grow with, to spend my life with.
As for the gin swilling, bowling shirt wearing, frequently unemployed friend that got under my newly formed Ready self aware, self loving self? We dated for almost two years.
Like I said, this was and is a work in progress. I learned from that relationship and strengthened myself up for the next one.
