Romantic love – an immature illusory ideal or an expression of freedom?

I must admit I spent a while being quite sceptical about romantic relationships.

I kept seeing people entering relationships to fill up holes within their own hearts, and believing that the other person could make them feel complete. I’ve witnessed the way couples often act as Band-Aids for each other – using each other not to feel the true ache of their hearts.

I remember saying pretty cruel unromantic things to fresh couples…
I feel sorry about this now, because we can never comprehend the tender softness of a heart in love from the harsh viewpoint of the intellectual mind.
After all, I was only sceptical because I was disappointed. Time and time again. And first of all, I became disappointed in myself.
All I was really doing was trying to hide that secret most precious place in my heart that has been longing for my prince ever since I was a little child…

I got to be ashamed of that place. I thought it wasn’t evolved enough. Too dreamy. Too soft…

And now not my prince, but my King is right next to me. Each time I look at him, each time I think of him… my heart bursts a little. My feeling for him is so big and intense, that sometimes I run out of breath.

I didn’t think I was ever going to be so deeply in love again. I thought I was too… old? spiritual?… bitter, perhaps?…

I did get bitter because as I witnessed my last big relationship fall apart I felt tortured. When we got together it had felt as if we were unbreakable.

After that breakup I decided it was time to put the dream away, along with the rest of my childhood toys.

Now, three years later I have found myself in a place where my experience and understanding of Love is deeper than it has ever been. And the romantic experience between me and my man is something that is revealing Love in a way that leaves me mesmerised and in awe.

Romantic love is one of the great possibilities, adventures, and challenges of our existence.

Romantic love from a mature space is a totally different thing than the romantic love of someone who doesn’t have emotional intelligence.

What fascinates me more than anything is that romantic love, just like any other form of love, can lead us all the way to the bottom of the Great Mystery.

I see that it has an added benefit that most other forms of love do not have. Romantic love comes together with an immense passion, chemistry and sexual desire.

If you are familiar with my work you probably know that I keep referring to sexual energy as the energy that is the source energy of all Creation. Of all of us.

So Life offers us a unique opportunity to discover the true essence of Love through the tender beauty of romantic love, having added to the mix the power that is sexual energy, fresh and alive.

One really big pitfall of romantic love is that it commonly blinds us and makes us imagine that our partner is that flawless prince/princess that shows up in our lives and makes all our troubles go away. Once the honeymoon phase is over and we start to see our partner’s flaws or feel exposed by them seeing our flaws, we start thinking that we have failed and the relationship is not working because it is obviously not living up to our imaginary ideal. As the relationship progresses, we keep comparing it to the romantic ideal and keep feeling bitter because the relationship that we have is not living up to that. This attitude inevitably leads to a separation.

But let’s say we have the maturity to leave this attitude aside. Let’s say both partners have done enough inner work to be able to be ready not to see challenges as failures, and not compare what is actually going on with an illusory ideal. If that’s out of the picture, what is the potential of romantic love?

One day my love and I had a serious conversation about how our personalities can co-exist together, both of us being very independent and uncontrollable… We both said we didn’t want to let any idealistic dreams take us astray from what we were born to do and that we were committed to staying true to our souls’ callings. We wanted to try and see how we could do this together. There was a lot of love in the space, but clearly we both were challenged.

When we came home and we lay down together I felt an ache in my heart.
I asked him: “Can we please believe in the romantic dream just for a little bit?..”

He looked at me with tenderness.

Tears started rolling down my cheeks.

He touched my face and asked: “What is your dream, my love?”

I couldn’t say much. Tears wouldn’t let me speak. “I love you so much. I want to always love you. I want to make love to you every day for the rest of my life,” – was all I could say.

He embraced me and brought me close to his heart. Our hearts were beating together. We stayed like that for a while…

He said he wanted the same thing.

I also could have said this:
“I want to believe that we will be together and deeply love each other for the rest of our lives, that we will live together in a beautiful house in harmony, have amazing sex like we do now even in 20 and 30 years time. I want us to raise our children together, be entirely committed to each other, be always honest and kind to each other, always stand up for each other, always hold a warm heart space of nurturing and support for each other… I want to believe that it is possible. I want to believe that we can really make it work. I want to believe that it can last a lifetime because it will always be so beautiful between us and we won’t need to break it off because we are making each other uncomfortable.
I want to believe that this beautiful love will only grow with time until we totally dissolve in it… I want to believe that this beautiful love will conquer any challenge on our path…”

…

Is all of it possible?
Is any of it possible?…
I don’t know.

But the forever romantic in me believes this like she believes that the sky is her eternal lover that will never leave and she will never feel that she has to leave him.

And I no longer feel entitled to deprive her of having this dream.

No one knows our destiny. But the purpose of romantic love is not about being logical, aware of statistics and then calculating what the chances are of having this dream come true.

The purpose of romantic love is to expose the excruciating vulnerability of the heart.

Because when we can be vulnerable, we are free.

Free from the need to maintain any personal identity. And that’s the true meaning of freedom.

True vulnerability is not about showing your heart expecting that the other will hold it. True vulnerability is about showing your heart for the sake of giving space to that heart. And that’s all our Heart really longs for: it longs to be revealed, so that it is realised in the eternal truth of what it really is.

That’s where the human heart becomes a pathway, a bridge, a medium. That’s where the human heart meets the Spiritual Heart. And the true nature of the Spiritual Heart is God.

What the other will or will not do is another thing. But when they have the guts to offer the same degree of vulnerability… the meeting has the potential to become immense.

It creates a circuit of opening: the more you open – the more your partner opens, the more your partner opens – the more you open. The circuit goes on.

Sooner or later through the opening we realise that there is no end to opening. The deeper you go the deeper you go. And through opening we realise that what we are really opening to is our godly nature, our true self, our innate purity. We open into our true nature as Love, as Freedom. And that’s where Love and Freedom not only co-exist, but are synonymous.

…

Within the month or so I will be officially launching my new Tantra Mystery School.
However it is already possible to sign up for Module One, that is taking place in Belgium at
the end of April. That’s a perfect place to explore meeting with your own Eternal Beloved. Both singles and couples are welcome. Check out the information and join our already beautiful group here.

Photo by @libkos