*Rated: contains cussing.
First thing first: I am not a relationship expert. In total transparency, I write this Valentine’s Day Blog with heartbreak behind me. The past few months I’ve been a little sad & questioning myself. Though, I don’t actually see this as a problem for giving love advice.
Even broken hearts need a little love boost today.
This will make you feel better!
Did you know St. Valentine was beheaded on Feb. 14Th? Romantic celebration, right.
Kinda actually. Valentine was executed for performing secret marriages. The Roman Emperor banned warriors from marrying (men don’t fight well when they’re in love). Valentine married them anyway.
He gave his life for a man to marry the woman he loved… Think about that ❤️.
This leads me to my #1 piece of romantic wisdom for sad-hearted singles, inspired by Valentine himself—Let the rapture of love banish your fear of future loss (& even death).
Look, I’m speaking from personal experience. I experienced a stabbing once. Cue, the first cut is the deepest 🎵 In return, I built a steel fortress around this heart of mine for many years. Part of this fortress was thinking things like:
“I cannot bear to go through heartbreak like that ever again.”
“I would die if I had to lose a 10-year relationship like that again.”
“It would kill me to lose the man I imagined I’d marry again”
“I could not deal with someone [lying, cheating, abandoning, betraying] me ever again”
When we say or think these types of things (even on a subconscious or flippant level), we’re basically asking the universe to bring us partners who will help us survive love NOT thrive in love.
Here’s the science:
Neuro-Linguistic Programming teaches us that your subconscious mind (the part of your mind that deals with our flight-and-fight, survival instincts) is choosing what info to let into your mind. There’s a massive amount (2 million bits) of information coming at you every second of every day. Only a small fraction of that info will make its way into your conscious mind. The subconscious mind’s main goal is to protect you from perceived threats—heartbreak, death, loss.
If you’ve been thinking It would “kill me” to lose love like that again, then your friendly subconscious mind will make sure you never experience the threat of being in passionate love again! Please know. Your subconscious mind has no sense of humor. It does not compute cheeky sarcasm. It’s listening to all the metaphors you think. If you say it will break you, then it believes you. No questions asked.
Your subconscious mind is very powerful and it filters info as it pleases (generalizing, distorting & deleting to its unique safety standards). It literally won’t let you see love. It will block you from sensing love. It will send you negative emotions (fear, worry, stress, ugh) when someone offers you love. It will set off an internal alarm system if love is approaching you. ALL IN AN EFFORT TO KEEP YOU MUTHER’FUCKING SAFE!
Even sneakier, it turns out we often project our own fear of losing love onto people who are interested in loving us. We don’t want to hurt them in the ways we’ve been hurt. We don’t want them to feel loss in the ways we’ve felt loss. We don’t want to danger them in the ways we felt endangered. We actually do care, so we protect them. This cookie 🍪happens to be one my personal specialties. I have been so afraid of hurting men who show up with their full heart on their sleeve.
Good, loving men. Smart men. Hot men. Talented men.
Trying to impress! Sending me bouquets of flowers; cooking me amazing dinners; taking me on tropical vacations; helping me with my golf swing; breaking out rare bottles wine to swoon me; working late at night to help streamline the way I run my business; sending me love letters composed on typewriters; one man wrote me an entire music album and another flew to my city just to take me to flippin breakfast. Are you shouting, “YOU DAMN IDIOT EMILY! How could you not feel romance? What’s wrong with you?”
I’ll tell you!
I should’ve been wearing a glowing neon sign on my forehead that said, don’t do something too great, it’s not safe for me to love you. I prefer if you’re unavailable and slightly an ass. I will actually like you better, you don’t threaten my survival.
Yep, it’s a bit sad. Reptilian even. However, here’s the silver lining— Would I go back and love when I wasn’t ready?
Would I enter a long-term relationship with a man who I didn’t trust myself to love fully?
Would I force something that still needed healing inside me?
NO. 100x over I would go back and choose the lover who could lift my wounds to the surface so I could see where I was abandoning myself. Looking once again, ever again, for the beautiful mirror relationship provides. I am confident & grateful for all the love I have been able to receive and give on my journey falling a bit short. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Now. What does all this (St. Valentine & Neuro-Linguistic Programming) mean for you?
Here’s the real skinny. Tell your subconscious mind that you CANNOT be broken by love. You WILL NOT die of heartbreak. It’s okay to open your heart. You need to tell your subconscious mind it is SAFE TO RECEIVE LOVE (even if you do die). Channel Valentine. Every morning when you wake up.
SAY IT NOW: It is safe for me to love. It is safe for me to feel love. It is safe to be loved by another. It is safe to love back. I am safe when I open my heart. I am safe when I let someone in. It is safe to be seen. It is safe to fall and it is even safe to fail in love.
I’ve been repeating this. And think about it. It truly is safe.
A broken heart won’t kill you (well as long as you don’t live where the red fern grows).
There are moments I feel so much love sweep into my body that I get tears at a cosmic degree. Tears in my soul. I know Love is benevolent, it will not kill you. It will never leave you. It will always be here waiting.
Here’s what I would go back and tell my younger self.
Emily Jayne, love is alignment. Yes, timing. Very important. But, alignment with YOU. Eternal. Clear. Enough. Weird. Sexy. YOU. Love is all your past experiences, self-awareness, lessons learned, revelations discovered distilled into beauty and magic. Love is the mystery of mysteries. Go for the greatest mystic journey ever created. You are safe, even when you can’t see the horizon.
Last but not least. I do think some people might just be better at relationship. But, for those of us who have a longer love journey this life, here’s a little poetic Rilke to light your way:
“For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation. That is why young people, who are beginners in everything, are not yet capable of love: it is something they must learn. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered around their solitary, anxious, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love. But learning-time is always a long, secluded time, and therefore loving, for a long time ahead and far on into life, is: solitude, a heightened and deepened kind of aloneness for the person who loves. Loving does not at first mean merging, surrendering, and uniting with another person (for what would a union be of two people who are unclarified, unfinished, and still incoherent?), it is a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world in himself for the sake of another person; it is a great, demanding claim on him, something that chooses him and calls him to vast distances.”
YOU ARE SAFE MY SOLO VALENTINE BEARS. Go the distance. Find that beautiful being who helps you thrive & grow on planet earth. ❤️💕 💗
Xx
