Abstain and Obtain

At 25, I've had my fair share of flirtatious endeavors, as well as one or two solid relationships. To be honest, whether solid or not is all perspective but you get the point. Born free from the constraints of others' judgement, (not my own) I've lived a pretty open (when not completely closed off) and fulfilling life. What I haven't had is an even remotely consistent positive, healthy, fulfilling sex life. This extends into my relationship sector heavily, and my thoughts and observations for this conversation are geared more in that direction, but it is the practice of abstaining from sex that has highlighted all the other intricately overlapped layers of those relationship experiences.

Whether you make the conscious decision, or you're driven by your inconvenient ability to attract the same non-soul nurturing, non-satisfying types of relationships over and over again, there is something very liberating about practicing abstinence. I'm definitely one of those, "I'm not the relationship type I just end up with people for years at a time" full of it personalities, so you can imagine the shock on my face when I realized I had spent all of ages 16-25 primarily focusing on finding someone to love me correctly. I guess I forgot the part where I had to set the example and learn to love myself properly and fully first. The good thing about this life though, is that our learning is directly and absolutely supported by every thing in and around us. We have endless opportunity to learn what we need to in order to create the greatest experience in every moment. So at this time in my life, where I could blame myself for spending years getting to know others instead of myself, I choose to appreciate each experience for what is was and what it gave to me. These are all in my belt of acknowledgement now but my perception was bleak, accompanied by powerful shame and judgement before.

For the sake of my impatience, I'm going to spare your eyes the long read and get straight to it; I have been abstinent for some time, with intentions to hyper-focus on my sovereignty. I had previously stated I was doing so at the beginning of the year and had a relapse, shall we say? Either way I definitely missed the mark but was surprisingly cool about it. In fact, doing so was probably my first real extreme act of sovereignty. I was working on a philosophy about how life is about making decisions and being able to accept the consequences, yada yada, and this was one of those situations. I did not take extra time to condemn myself to shame or linger in my inability to follow through, instead I learned that I still preferred to abstain. The act in that moment itself was not unpleasant but it also wasn't anything I hadn't previously experienced, and I found myself unfulfilled from it all in that very moment. The relationships, the sex, co-dependency, all of it. Partner seeking had finally gotten old.

A friend is the first thing I look for when thinking of getting to know someone, but my need to set friendship as a main component for the foundation has mislead me a time or two. This has also kept me in stagnant relationships that lack romance and has been a major factor in my decline in interest in sex over time in relationships. However, I could spend the rest of my life with a friend before I could spend the rest of my life just in a relationship. By this I mean that romance isn't enough. And by that I'm saying that I don't just want to be in a relationship, I want a partner. Though I prefer to work alone, I find it extremely pointless to dedicate my time towards building something with someone if I bear most of the burden. My past experience with this has also greatly impacted my decision to focus on other parts of my life.

In my second relationship I manifested what I wanted based off what I felt lacked in my first one. I recommend this to a certain extent... be careful what you wish for. Because I had forgotten to be grateful and take the love I received moving forward, I ended up getting all the qualities and components I thought were lacking, and not all of the ones that I had actually enjoyed.To top it off, I found that some of the things I thought were missing from my experience were actually not that great. Life has a funny way of making you humble yourself. I realized that I was only able to bring the things I wanted and needed into my life if I knew what those things were, and clearly I did not.

In all my attempts to love and be loved unconditionally, I certainly lacked the ability to set boundaries and balance all aspects of my life. I left every relationship with less than I had when I walked into it. Don't blame the fellas just yet though, I was certainly the one funding endeavors in the name of love. It was me who had stopped seeing myself, stopped nurturing myself, stopped honoring myself. It was me who chose to focus solely on building and maintaining my romantic relationships, instead of recognizing the importance of moderation in this life. The best part about spending time to get to know and work on myself as woman is that I now have the ability to be real about myself and take accountability for my role in creating experiences that can honor everyone involved.

I thought I would have more profound realizations to discuss, but the truth is I am still uncovering the many layers of impact the last few months have had on my life. I can't explain the sense of inner power and confidence that comes from taking time to indulge in yourself, but I can say it wouldn't hurt to explore that for yourself. This isn't a men-bashing piece or anything of sorts, it's more of a self reflection. This is a call to women to take responsibility for whom and what they attract, and to discover what you really want and need so you may have that in this life. If we continue pushing the narrative of there being so many unworthy men, we will have to admit that many women haven't been as worthy either.