happiness is an obstacle to wholeness

“I don’t know how to be happy alone. I have fantasized about being in love. I have chased after men I thought I was in love with. I have had sex with men I hoped would love me. I dated men I thought loved me. Tonight I am alone. No one to talk to. No one to hold me. No one to confide in. No one to understand. Just a glass of wine. Or two. Third one actually. […] How do I learn to be happy alone? How do I wake up in the morning and look forward to the day when there is no one to look forward to seeing or speaking to?”

From My Journal, Day 80

I had actively searched for and chased after love for more than a decade. Despite my relentless efforts, and despite being fairly attractive and interesting (according to others’ opinions), I found myself alone, incapable of tolerating my aloneness sober, and not knowing what to do about it.   

All I had were emotional bruises and scars from dysfunctional relationships and failed attempts at relationships. Clearly, what I had been doing - what I was taught and encouraged to do - was not working. I was at a loss, and the Internet, and expensive self-help courses, and friends, and family, and therapy were not helping. It seemed everyone and everything encouraged me to get out there, to be positive, to be open, to be social, and to build friendships, hobbies, career, finances, muscles, and find a romantic relationship in the process, or to sign up for a dating service and sift through hundreds of men until I find someone who sort of fits (if I polish and lubricate my edges). But I no longer believed in any of that advice, and I did not trust myself.   

I did not trust that I could make a healthy choice. I asked myself in one of my journal entries, “How do I get my life to a place where I am not at risk of settling?” It is necessary to clarify that by “settling” I meant willingly chaining myself to a man who was unsafe – who did not respect and accept me – just so I could feel the validation of having someone by my side or rather being by someone else’s side. At the time, I did not know what it actually meant to feel enough, what it meant to love myself, and what it meant to respect and accept myself. I did not know how to go about it and where to start. All I knew was that I wanted to be able to sit across a table from a man and see him exactly for who he was, and accept or reject him based on that knowing. It sounds rather simple. How else would anyone do it?

The truth is most of us do not see our lovers, nor do we see ourselves. We are unconsciously attracted to the likes of people who hurt us (more often than not a parent we have a more complicated relationship with), and we project a fantasy of what we want to see, which is changed behavior on behalf of said parent, onto a significant other. We form trauma bonds and we call it love, and we get defensive whenever our fantasy attachment is threatened by the slightest hint of reality.   

Although it became evident to me (after many years of disappointment) that no one was coming to rescue me, I still searched for saving someplace else. I believed I would no longer be at risk of settling for the next man to come along if I derived love and fulfillment from within, if I was happy with myself and I was happy with my life, and I was at peace, present and able to enjoy the moment. I placed a lot of emphasis on filling my cup, building myself up, feeling confident and worthy, and finding fulfillment in my work and love in self-care. Whereas previously I looked for happiness, love and fulfillment in a romantic relationship, I now earnestly hoped I could find it all in the life I thought I was building.  

I naively trusted that as long as life was good, I could make good choices.  

I believed I would not be at risk of settling if I was healed. I presumed I could undo the effects of trauma and rid myself of pain if I connected with my inner child, and embraced her with love and tenderness, and provided her support and protection that she lacked. Whereas before I projected an image of a parent onto my partner, I now assumed responsibility of said parental figure, and expected I could heal all my wounds, meet all my needs, and free myself from all my aching desires, and at last make it all OK.

In reality, I needed to accept that it is never all OK, that there are always unmet needs and unfulfilled desires, wounds that ache from time to time, and scars that are distasteful to the eye. I needed to accept that there is no absolute healing or forgetting, that there is always a void, and that sometimes it feels uncomfortable. I needed to accept that there is no parental figure to make it all OK – not a father, not a mother, not a mentor, not a lover, not God, not myself – and there never was, and that is OK.

The truth is it takes years to get to a place where one is not at risk of settling, and that place is not some fairytale land where we are miraculously filled with and healed by love for all, and we become one with everything. It is not a place where we gain superhuman abilities to meet all our needs and free ourselves from all our desires. It is also not a place of intoxicating success in finances, career and business, and unworldly perfection in art and beauty, which take us even further away from reality. Rather, it is a sobering grounding place where we can see our unhealed wounds and unmet needs and aching desires with acceptance. We are not at risk of settling when we are able to tolerate the perceived lack rather than deny it. Only when we can see the void and accept the void without attempting to fill the void, can we have the discernment and wisdom not to settle.  

This knowing is not something that can be taught. It is not enough to recognize it on an intellectual level. It must be experienced. It must be felt rather than conceptualized. It must be trained and built over time and with repetition like a muscle. It is something we simply arrive at after years of daily practice, during which we learn to spend evenings in our own company, to lull ourselves to sleep and greet the morning in solitude and without desperation, to witness our demons without pushing them away, to talk about painful memories without losing ourselves to anger and grief, and to hold space for hope and desire without the urgency, and entitlement, and helplessness of a child.    

I did not need to learn to be happy alone. I needed to become stronger – strong enough to observe reality as it is and see people as they are, strong enough to endure without the compulsive need to numb myself with substances or escape myself by forging fantasy bonds.

For the time being, however, I continued to drink wine and envy those who still managed to get away with unconscious relationships.