The Battle Between Wanting & Knowing

I can’t explain how tough it is when you have to make decisions based on knowing rather than wanting. An easy everyday life example would be wanting; sweets, cake or a cigarette but knowing it’s unhealthy and 80% of the time picking the cake.

My wanting and knowing situation

If I’ve learnt anything it always better sharing than hiding away…

I am going through a break up and it’s the toughest time of my life, the ups and downs of every day, one day feeling like I can do anything and the next minute feeling completely lost.

For a man that showed no emotions throughout his adult life to suddenly have my heart broken and have a flood of emotions pour into my body was intense and overwhelming at times.

I’m proud that I was/am brave and strong enough to look into myself, not shutting down, running away and playing the blame game. I was/am trying to understand why I was feeling a certain way, as it does go far deeper than the break up, the break up is just surface level.

What I am finding to be the hardest part, is I still want to be with her but understanding that can’t happen if it’s only one way but also that we both need to discover ourselves.

During the start of break up we came to Bali together as we already had the flights booked so thought ‘we can do this’, let’s go there as friends and just enjoy it, and then the lock down happened, great I thought, we’ll stay in Bali, and let’s see if there is anything between us. We’ve had amazing conversations, pant wetting laughs & jokes, blistering arguments, deep talks, and amazing sex. We did have this before however this time it felt different, all of them felt far more honest, loving, open and connected even the arguments.

We were diving into our shadows, it was uncomfortable at times, I was loving it and so was she, discovering parts of myself and my ex that I never knew. It showed me what we were avoiding over the years, individually and in our relationship, tip toeing around each other because we didn’t want to upset the other one, avoiding the conversations that would have been difficult but effectively made our relationship stronger, but maybe we just weren't ready to speak and hear it at the time, who knows really.

Even though this was all happening - feeling more connected than we ever had before, we both knew that something wasn’t right, we needed to separate and live apart, we needed our own time to digest, reflect and learn from the past so we were able to start fresh with ourselves.

I was battling between wanting to live with her, look after her during the lockdown in a foeign country, my own denial of what was happening and knowing we both needed to be separate, it was tortuous, the night before the planned separations, I couldn’t sleep, I wanted to take every last minute I had with her. On the day I felt ‘this is a terrible decision, let’s stay living together and split when we get back to the UK’ but deep down I knew it had to happen now, if there was ever going to be a chance for us it had to happen, if I was to truly understand myself and what I wanted it had to happen instead of prolonging what needed to unfold.

I remember writing a quote down a while ago that I loved from the superior man book;

‘‘A fearful man who knows he is fearful is far more trustworthy than a fearful man who isn’t aware of his fear’’...And a fearful man who still leans into his fear, living at his edge and putting his gift out from there, is more trustworthy and more inspirational than a fearful man who hangs back in the comfort zone unwilling to even experience his fear on a day to day level...A free man is free to acknowledge his fears without hiding them or hiding from them’’

It’s a great quote and it truly resonates with me, helping me to understand that it is just fear going through my head, trying to keep me in my comfort zone zone, trying to force me into a nice little box and that's not the man I am or the man i’m wanting to be. I am a man that likes to push himself, live on the edge, faces fears and I’ve lost that along the way.

This is a perfect opportunity to get it back and go further. It may be tough, it may be easy, I’m not sure, but one thing is for sure I’m not sitting around waiting for someone to save me.