I laced up my black trainers while simultaneously texting a WhatsApp message. “I’m running a tiny bit late… time just ran away with me! If I leave now it’ll take me about an hour to get to you. Does that still work for you?” Rosie responded, “Okay why don’t I meet you halfway at Dalston, then we can walk down the canal to Victoria Park back towards mine.”
Rosie is a journalist, and one of the most thoughtful, intelligent and considered women I know. And she’s a prolific, well-balanced writer. Her monthly emails are amongst the very small handful that I am subscribed to and actually read. A few years ago she interviewed me for an article titled ‘Life coaches on Instagram break the first rule of therapy — that’s why it works’.
We remained friends and, whenever I’m in London, make an effort to catch up.
“Can I ask about what’s going on in your love life?” she asked, eventually, inevitably. We spoke about the brief 3-month relationship I had been in recently, and how it didn’t quite support my natural independence and freedom-focused values. Somehow we moved on to the relationship before that; the one where we bought a house together and made life-plans. The one where I learned that love is not enough.
“You were so brave to leave,” she said. “Not really,” I responded “It was more like choosing between life and death. I was like a plant wilting, slowly dying. I had to choose life.”
For someone (me) who has dedicated their life to growth and expansion, in ways that are unfamiliar to others, I explained that I felt suffocated and like I was forced to contract in both recent relationships. Both of them gave me what I needed at that moment, they taught me lessons and shone a light on things that I needed to see, in the particular context that they were shown to me. The recent one distinctly revealed to me the areas in my life where I was playing small, believing that I needed the support of a partner to make certain big life decisions, and holding back in my creativity and my work.
The way I see it, I explained, is that each person has a particular sized container within which they feel safe and comfortable in, to be themselves with another. That container is determined by their upbringing, their conditioning, and their personal life experiences and life choices. Women require a man who can hold a container small enough for a woman to feel secure and big enough to give her space to explore, grow and experience herself in.
John Wineland articulates this beautifully when he says that it’s a deep responsibility, to hold a woman. He gives voice to 3 key factors to be able to do so:
- Breathe deeper than she does.
- Get stiller (develop your inner stillness) than she does.
- Get wider than she is, so she can feel the infinite.
My ‘container’ has exceptional breadth and depth. I’ve spent the past 15 years dedicated to exploring the limitlessness of myself and how I can create a life that reflects the vastness of our Universe. Some would say that I have no limits, but that’s no true. I know where the boundaries lie: in the areas that I am still peeling away the layers of myself.
It will take someone truly exceptional to hold that kind of space for me. It’s something that I am willing to be patient for.
Outgrowing a relationship is a sign that your container is expanding. Neither partner is wrong. Rather each partner is working within the confines of what they consider safe, and how much they value their own limitlessness and expansion. Sometimes we grow together. And sometimes we grow apart.