The Truth About My Break Up

I wrote these two notes in December 2015 right after our break up, but didn’t dare to post then.
Now seems to be the right time.

“I have arrived in Lisbon and moved into a tiny little flat in the center.

I don’t feel like going out today, so I am sitting here quietly and settling in within myself.

Sometimes I get frustrated that the internet is not working, or I try to force myself to make some decisions, to come up with a schedule, or to respond to offers that come my way, to engage people…
Doesn’t seem to work.
No wonder.
Things don’t usually work when you are using them to fill in holes inside.

I move about in this little flat. I put on music. I lay down. My head is empty. I cry. My heart is naked and soft. And I feel grief.

Grief of a goodbye.

I know the choice has been made. It is time to move on.
Our relationship has outlived itself.
We are no longer serving each other’s evolution.

Although I am terrified. Terrified of collapsing, of change, of jumping into the unknown, of being by myself, of having to start driving the fucking car again, of not having emotional support, of what my parents and friends will say…

I thought that true love would hold us through all difficulties, that in true love we would hold onto each other no matter what came our way…

But now I have learned to see bigger.
And I know that even in the goodbye true love never ends.

This process of unwinding our lives is powered by love. There is immense greatness to it. Immense spaciousness. In this love I am letting go of attachment to create a form in which I would like to see this love. I am letting go of my idea of a perfect marriage. Letting go of the dreams of me as a little girl who so much wanted to find her soul mate and spend the rest of her life with him… to prove that her relationship, unlike the one of her parents, would work.

The little girl is the one who hurts the most. So tender. Her beautiful dream has been crushed against the reality  of life, and I cannot fool her into believing that it really works anymore. Even though I love her with all my heart and I want all her dreams to come true. I have to move on. And I have to let this love shine.

I will remember your tenderness, your beauty, your passion and your depth. I will remember all the joy we shared, all the challenges we faced, all the times where we would choose each other over anything else, again and again. I will remember how deeply you cared when I was going through illness, mine or my mother’s. I will remember how you chose me with your entire heart even when I was behaving like an angry bitch or trying to manipulate or own you. I will remember being held by your warmth in the deepest challenges. I will remember how you supported my growth and introduced me to the most influential teachers of my life. I will remember it forever as all this and every single moment that grace gave us are imprinted in my heart.

I will dream of you happy and free. I will remain forever grateful to you for sharing your life with me during all these years. These were the best years of my life. My gratitude is infinite. My love is forever. You are an incredible man.

I thank you.
I love you.
Please forgive me.
I let you go.

And now I am jumping into the embrace of life with open arms. With open heart. Without a safety net.
There’re no guarantees that I will be happier or more fulfilled in this new life. There are no guarantees that anyone will ever love me as much as you do.
The call for change is stronger than my fears.
I dare to take the risk and change my entire life. Again.
I dare to let go of my idea about how things should be. How love should be.
Full trust.
Nothing to lose. Nothing to gain.
Only love is real.

Love is a dangerous path and only those who have courage can travel it. ”

The second one:

” When two fires meet… What’s left is ashes.

When two intense people meet and fall in love…

This love takes them on a wild ride, it squeezes their most vulnerable parts, it shakes them, it devastates them, it gives them heartaches and heartburns, it plays cool sometimes but only to fuck the shit out of them, it hurts them so bad so next morning your neighbour J. comes and says “I don’t know what you guys were doing but it was way too loud”, and you wish you had been making love, in fact you were mourning yet another death of dreams… You get initiated into desire to possess, to dominate, to torture, to hide, to open through the biggest closing of your life, to show up with utmost integrity, to lie, to say devastating truths, to please. Your heart burns, your ass is on fire, and then… it breaks you apart.

When two emotionally intense people meet what’s left is ashes.

And…

Here I am, trying to figure out how not to get sucked into guilt. How not to miss the comfort, sharing and your warmth… How to take care of my stupid needs, like the 4th broken suitcase of the year, how to be independent which I thought I knew, learn to order taxis and remember that people are actually willing to help, how to release the need to have your emotional support, how to go to cafes alone and ignore the weird effect that it has, how to be ok with other people’s interpretation of our story, how to love when all my ideas about how love should be got burnt,  how to stand tall when all I want is to collapse with my face on the ground, how to collapse when I so want to stand tall…

I love you more than ever, even if you don’t believe it.

Just our time to be physically together is complete.

This love has no end.

This love will never die.”

It took me over a year to come to this place.

To the place where I am feeling the need to share openly what has really happened with my marriage and what I did learn from this incredible ride with one of the most beautiful people I have ever got to know.

I feel the need to share because in the last months I have been receiving lots of questions about it, so it feels like it is alive, the time is ripe for this sharing and it will be of benefit for some or many.

I will admit – it makes me feel very vulnerable to share this openly. But that wild rebellious side of me seems to be chasing this feeling, so here I am – exposing myself in full vulnerability, yet again.

When H. and I first met, we wanted two different things. He wanted to be open and explore, and I wanted only him, to get married, and make babies.

That first year was a hell of a ride. With me pleasing, swearing, crying, yelling, proving, doing anything I could to make him fully choose me and only me.

Once I even said: “Let’s give it 5 years. Let’s grow some roots and then open up to other people”.

And again and again I would get burnt by his fire. That fire didn’t want to settle. And that fire was burning holes in my ego.

Through those holes I could finally see God.

It was the first time in my life when the amount of pain opened me to a profound realisation that I cannot hold onto anything but the divine.

That blasted me open. The heat of devotion took over. I started seeing the divine in everything. It became really wild.

At the same time we committed to practice with the Great Goddess Kali for 6 months. In tantric terms it meant that we were calling in transformation, acceleration in our spiritual evolution together as a couple and individually.

At the end of our first year together I went to Australia to take part in a deeply transformative 3 week journey. In the first week I met a guy who on day 10 of knowing me offered to get married to me, introduced me to his family and said that he would make babies with me.

“WTF,” – I thought, “So I am in fact worthy of this! And I cannot just suffer next to this bloody spiritual dude who cannot appreciate my love.”

On the last day of our 6 month practice commitment (tapas) with Kali I broke up with H.

We were separated for two very painful months. He was in agony that entire time. He realised what he had lost.

I was in pain too… And I was so deeply touched when I saw his heart finally opening to me.

And the night we got back together, he proposed.

I was in heaven. It was 2012.

We got married while we were living in a tantric community. It was something unheard of. It was pretty unusual to even be monogamous, and there we were – married!

To us it felt delightful! We were wrapped in a yummy cocoon, and for the next year it was so wonderful, and brought so much healing.

At some point people were really challenging us: “Aren’t you attracted to other people? He is so gorgeous, you have to let others enjoy him too! She is so young and hot, why don’t you let her be with others?”

To which I responded: “If you only had an idea how much healing monogamy has brought to us, you would not ask these questions.”

And yet, I was terrified of the idea that he might connect with someone else. And he was terrified of that same idea.

In secret I did desire to explore… But I would not admit it, because I was scared to hurt him. Or that he would want the same.

I found out that he had cheated on me during our first year. And he never told me for 2 years. Then his friend pushed him to reveal it in front of 20 other people. It hurt so bad, I thought I was going to have a heart attack. First I wanted to kill him, then – myself, then – the woman that seduced him. It did get pretty bad, but it put me in touch with my rage, which was really good for me but not so comforting for others. Kali was still around.

It took some time, but we moved through it somehow.

I actually came to realise that I was also responsible for his cheating. That whole first year I was obsessed with having things the way I wanted, of course it pushed him away. He said that he didn’t even feel attracted to that girl, but something pulled him there.

In the years to follow, the fire of spiritual practice was shaking and testing us.

At some point I realised that I actually never wanted to have kids! My mother was in shock. I also realised that marriage was a dream of my inner little girl…

Things started to change. I was teaching tantra more and more. He was a great teacher, but he never really felt inclined to teach.

And at some point an acute realisation of what was my dharma came.

I realised that I had committed to the tantric path, and it happened way before this lifetime.

My progress on this path has been incredibly fast, which has been surprising to the people who have been around. It is not surprising for me, because I know that I have been merely remembering rather than learning.

After almost four years of being together we decided to open the relationship, to give each other space to fulfill some of the desires that we had; we liked the idea that it might bring more freshness to our relationship. The thought was terrifying. But I knew things couldn’t stay the same. I knew that my commitment to truth and freedom was greater than my attachment to the comfort of the relationship.

A year later I met someone with whom I decided to connect… Almost five years after I had got together with H.

The attraction was so strong it was hard to resist. Although, after my second date, H. said that I was getting too emotionally involved and it was hurting him. He asked me to stop.

That hurt. But I did stop. Sort of. I felt held back. It didn’t feel right to break that new connection so abruptly. And I could not connect with H. for the next month. I felt shamed. Guilty. I felt he was trying to control me. I was suffocating in my own perfect container.

Three months later I met someone else. That hurt H. even deeper. And that was a verdict.

It seemed like it was about sex. Even though he was a beautiful lover, at some point I felt that I wanted to have sex with anyone except my husband. I felt resentful.

Actually it was never about sex. Challenges in sex are only a reflection that something else in the relationship is not working. 

Yet, we didn’t have the clarity to see it.

We both were so wrapped up in trying to make the dream work.

And it was working so nicely! Over those years he became such a perfect husband! Exactly what I wanted him to be when we first got together! He was not interested in other women at all, he was totally fixed on me. And there I had it, and yet… I didn’t feel happy about it. I wanted him to be on a mission, like I was.

I felt he completely lost himself in me. And I didn’t like it…

Over the years that we were together we went through many spiritual adventures together. He was my initiator in so many ways, he was my voice of clarity, he had all the compassion I never had. He had the heart and the integrity I always wished at least 5% of humankind would have. He still has.

And also he had lots of anger and resentment that he carried after our break up. Yes, towards me.

When we broke up to me the real reason was that I needed to let my wings grow, and it needed to happen without him by my side. I felt my dharma (purpose in this lifetime) wanted that. My mission is that of a tantrika. And it is different to his. He never had this conviction in his heart for this path. And for me – it is the most important thing in this life. My dharma is how I carry my Spirit.

I don’t think that a couple should be on the same path, I don’t believe in models and I am not claiming to create one.

What was important for me is that he didn’t get what I was about, and it was and is everything to me. He could not see it. He could not really see how important my mission was for me. It hurt me, that so many people could see me, could see what I am holding in this world… – but my closest person could not.

What did make sense to him was thinking that I needed to explore and find my independence.

There was truth to that too.
But it was only an outcome of the commitment to my dharma.

Part of it at that time was that I needed to expand in all possible ways.

If we were to stay together I knew that I would need so much freedom, I would possibly need be able to disappear completely for 3-4 months, but I knew it would be too painful for him.

He didn’t want it.

Once he said: “You are shining too bright, it burns me. You are right – we cannot be together”.

After we split from time to time he would reappear and sting me badly.

He told me that I used him.

At first this idea seemed ridiculous to me. I offered my body, my life, my soul to this man, I loved him like crazy, how on earth could he say something as foolish as that?

But then I saw, yes I did use him.

In the last year or so of our relationship, there were many times when I didn’t feel so good about being with him, but it was so comfortable so I didn’t even consider changing anything. Also, I was just hanging in there and waiting for things to change… So yes in fact I did use him… but only because I didn’t have the clarity to see what was really going on.  I was still hoping that things would shift, not understanding that we had completed our work together. If I had seen it, I would have left earlier, and maybe that would have saved him at least some of that pain.

Another thing I did that hurt him badly – I disconnected. Abruptly. Once I made the decision to leave, I completely cut him off for a few days. I was emotionally unavailable. It hurt him like hell…

And I only did it because of my fear of feeling his pain. I chose to disconnect rather then feel.

This is a protection mechanism that I developed as a child, when the environment was way too harsh for my sensitive being.

I tried to make it up and we had a 3 day “unwinding ritual” during which I thought I was going to be suffocated by my own tears on several occasions – an unbearable pain of leaving someone I loved so much.

Yet… at the same time there was so much beauty in that sadness.

Although later he said that these were the saddest days in his entire life.

The secret of the best relationship model is that there are no models.

We have to make it up ourselves. And even go beyond all models.

Not all relationships are meant to be long lasting. We tend to think that if it didn’t last, it means we failed. As if there is some kind of ideal state that we need to arrive at.

I had this feeling a lot. I thought I had failed. My dream of being the example of a perfect tantrik married couple didn’t work out.

But this type of thinking is only a product of a goal oriented mentality. And yes, dreams of a little child that learns about the ideal of this world through fairy tales.

I say we succeeded from the start. From the very beginning.

Meeting each other, being with each other… was an incredible gift that this life has given us.

With some people we come together to walk a certain part of our life together, we give the best we can, we love, we transform together and then it might happen that in order to expand further the best thing we can do is to separate from the person we love the most.

That was what happened to us.

People were saying: “you are simply running away from difficulties”.

And this is a very logical argument, especially in “spiritual” environments.

It did get me thinking: was I running away from challenges? Or was I moving into an entirely new phase where I had to be single?

All I could say was: “Who am I to know?“.

In fact I lost one very dear friend, who just refused to understand how I could leave such an amazing man who was willing to do anything for me. Maybe I will lose more dear people after exposing this whole story. How can I know?

The only thing I know and knew was that I was guided by my Spirit, and the instructions were very clear. And I cannot pretend it is not there. I cannot not follow. Even if it means that every single person in the world will turn their back on me.

Now, over a year later, looking back at what has happened during the last year I can say that it was the right decision to make and a very important one. And I know that I would not have been able to be anywhere near to where I am right now had I still been married. I would not have been able to progress as much as I have, I would not have been able to manifest as much as I have.

I would not be able to serve to the degree that I have been serving.

In my case it did take an intensely painful break up. I don’t think that that has to be the case for everyone. For some people it is important to manage to combine things, find compromises. But such a radical shift was absolutely necessary in my case.

I feel in complete alignment with my soul’s calling and it’s a very special place to be.

Within a month of the break up my dharma (purpose) unfolded with such power and beauty that I could have never imagined. Finally I could really serve.

I needed to have had the separation in order to let my wings spread. And once they did spread… I knew that there is nothing more important than that. My dharma is what I am here for, what I am to serve, and what I am committed to with all my being, all my heart. No relationship will ever replace this.

Because this is my relationship with the divine. And it will always come first.

Over the years that we were together, we opened up a lot of doors for each other, and at some point we became a limiting factor on each other’s journey.

Our paths are very different now, even though we both are fully committed to spirituality. No one paths is better than another.

And our separation liberated both of us to be on that path that we really belong on.

I learnt how to love with him, even when he was cold and closed off, I was right there, loving him. I learnt that I deserve to be loved even when I feel ugly, unlovable, numb and bitchy.

And the most incredible thing of all – now I love him more than ever. Because my capacity for love has expanded. Yet I have no need to be in his physical presence.

One thing I know for sure: love is too incredible to be figured out by the mind and placed into boxes and marked with labels, even the most beautiful of all.

For an entire year grief came in waves. The waves were getting bigger and bigger. On several occasions I completely dropped down to the bottom.  I was doing shamanic rituals of letting go and crying over parts of myself that died together with this relationship.

My inner little girl was the one who suffered the most. Poor thing. She so wanted to make it work.

What an intense and marvelous ride.

Sometimes I would ask: “Is it because he is intense? Or because we are both intense and we just make a wicked mixture? Or do I make a wicked mixture with everyone I meet? Are some other relationships different or is it always like this?”

I don’t know.

But it feels like we went through a cosmic washing machine. The growth that happened in these 5 years is something that took us both from the earth to the sky.

It bashed us up. It squeezed us. It made us real. Over and over again.

There is no blame. I have nothing to forgive him for. I was holding onto a need to be connected with him, to have him in my life… But he doesn’t want that. So I had to let go of that need too. It’s ok.

There is only gratitude in my heart. Never ending gratitude. Never ending.

And if one day he opens up and is willing to speak to me again… I will celebrate. And if it never happens… it is ok.

In terms of intimate connections, after our break up I kept attracting men to help me heal the wound that came to the surface for me. I kept attracting men who were helping me heal the guilt of leaving him…

I could not have a relationship with any of these men, because they appeared as angels in my life, to help me heal, but not to anchor into something new. I in turn was also helping them heal, and in fact some amazing things have happened.

Over the last year I did a lot of wild grieving, releasing and rituals of letting go.

And now… I sense that I am in a place of complete clarity again. I don’t feel any residual influence from any of my past relations. I am clear of any energetic imprints.  And what is really amazing is that almost immediately as soon as I had this realisation and my field was completely clear, a beautiful man showed up in my life.

He approached me in a dance, and instead of leaving after a minute or so, he stayed.

And I stayed.

Disarmed. Fascinated.

In surrender to eternal beauty of this existence.

Photo by @mosunomedia