"I don't date anymore,
I just foster men
until they are ready
for their forever homes."
Newsflash
Most relationships don't last a lifetime. Rather, almost all relationships have an expiration date. As Empaths, that expiration date is often attached to the time when the person we love has learned what they needed from us, about love.
As Empaths, our super power is directly connected to our capacity to love and love deeply. Quite often, people fall into relationship with us when they are broken, raw, and in dire need of TLC and extra healing. Because we have a heightened capacity for empathy and compassion, we are gifted in our ability to hold space and nurture people through the hardest and worst emotional pains of life. We are emotional doctors, nurses and surgeons who cut out the cancer, stitch up the wounds, and tend to the recovery process. Then, when the individual remembers that they are worthy of love, and their rehab recovery has taught them how to use their own love muscles in better ways, they often walk out the door, loving us and leaving us.
Quite often, we watch them walk away, in utter shock and awe, our hearts broken. We love 'em, and they leave us.
But perhaps we shouldn't be heartbroken. Rather, we should feel accomplished. We did our job, and we did it well. They came to us broken, and they left whole. They were able to leave us and go find and spread love in the world in a better way. One thing I know about doctors, they are happy when their patients don't need them anymore. Perhaps we empaths should be too.
Case in point
When I met my first husband, he was 30 pounds under-weight, living in a dank basement apartment, and drowning his divorce drama in his own sweat at two or three hot yoga classes a day. Ten years later, we lived in a four bedroom suburban townhome, he had his yoga teaching certificate, and was well on his way to becoming a well-known meditation and spiritual teacher. He left me to become a monk, with intentions of moving into an ashram. A few months after the ink was dry on our divorce, he met another woman and married for a third time, his charm.
And I'm not just talking about romantic relationships. I'm talking friendships too. I cannot count the number of times I have had friendships, deep friendships, close friendships, what I considered to be BFFs come into my life, only to float happily away or gradually drift apart from me. Leaving me feeling lost and lonely.
Until I changed my perspective.
An Empath's Best Friend
In terms of friendship, the best friends are the ones who float in and out of life, and always pick up where we left off. For example, my BFF from the fourth grade. We were inseparable for nearly a decade. Then we went off to separate colleges and just lost touch. Over a decade later, she called me up out of the blue and asked me to be a bridesmaid in her wedding. As if nothing had changed. And it hadn't. She still gets me. She still sees me. She still loves me the same way she did when we were kids. And I feel the same about her. Living in different states, we are lucky to catch up in person once a year over coffee for an hour. Another example, a sorority sister from college showed up randomly at a yoga event I was leading in Rhode Island. Over the next ten years, our business travel schedules magically aligned us in the same cities several times. we met up for brunch in Cincinnati, pedicures in Denver, empanadas in Boston, and more. When I was in the deepest woes of my divorce, she made a pact to text me an "I love you" note every single day until I felt better. We can go years without seeing each other, but we know, our connection is golden.
But these kinds of relationships are rare.
True Partnership
When the Hobbit and I met, we were both broken. It was a very rare circumstance of two raw Empaths whose hearts had been stretched too thin. The tears in our cardiac tissues were leaking empathic love everywhere. We both walked away from our prior lives without resentment, but filled with gratitude and love, and a desire for stronger boundaries so our hearts wouldn't tear again. We didn't stitch each other up. Rather, we offered each other a place to put the love spilling out of the tears. We acknowledged each other's capacity for love. We accepted it. We also know, having been through our own private chaos, this kind of love is rare and sacred.
Love Isn't Fair
In most relationships, love isn't mutual, and in many cases, it isn't even close to reciprocal. Most relationships are not an even trade of love for love. Rather, they are a trade of one type of lesson for an entirely different one. While I taught my ex-husband how to receive love, he taught me how to have better boundaries. It didn't seem fair, but it's what happened.
As Empaths, we teach love. We help people learn how to receive love. We give love freely until they figure out how to accept it. And when they do, they leave us, stitched up, healed, and rehabbed. Perhaps if we consider ourselves fosters, healers and teachers rather than lovers, we might feel accomplished rather than broken when those we've loved go on their merry ways.
Are you tired of being loved and left? I can help you change your perspective, and shift your energy so you do attract the right and perfect partner. Book an Appointment
Learn more about Love & Relationships in our Hobbit & Owl Program