My relationship with Bloody Good Chap was one of the most transformative and healing experiences of my life.
For both him and I, our relationship was wonderful. Nurturing, playful, accepting, loving, supportive…
I’ve loved men before, but Bloody Good Chap taught me how to truly love – fully, unconditionally.
After the most beautiful 5 years together, the happiest years of my life, we realised that we couldn’t keep ignoring the fact that our values were too different to stay together forever.
No matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t meet each other’s needs in certain areas that we felt we couldn’t compromise on long term, though we really wished we could, and had planned to.
There were parts of both of us that were not able to fully thrive while we were together.
We were like two yachts moored in the harbour. My yacht yearned to set sail for unknown seas that would challenge me and help me grow. BGC’s yacht yearned to set sail in a completely different direction.
We couldn’t do both together, so instead of parting ways, we stayed moored together in the harbour, loving our lives together, but also feeling the yearning growing stronger in both of us.
Over time, suppressing those parts of ourselves started to dim our vibrancy as individuals.
But our relationship was so full of love and joy, we didn’t want to let go.
Many times in life I’ve clung to things that I knew I needed to let go of, because the grief of the loss and the fear of the unknown was too overwhelming to face.
But all of my work with Project Self is about following our gut instinct no matter how scary and unknown the path is.
Our gut instinct is all we have to guide us through life.
When we ignore it, which I’ve tried to do many times, we start to lose our way. Our light starts to fade. We start to feel stuck, demotivated. We lose our excitement for life. And if we ignore our gut too long, we can even become anxious and depressed.
That’s our body telling us in the loudest way it knows: CHANGE SOMETHING.
So I knew we needed to do what I’ve coached many of my clients to do.
It was time for us to take the scary leap into the unknown, again.
There was a lot of doubt, as we both sailed off in different directions to unknown oceans.
We kept in touch via satellite radio, and helped each other when we hit periods of strife and intense grief as we got further out into the waters.
I didn’t know where I was sailing, and neither did BGC.
We still don’t.
But we knew that our time together in the harbour had served its purpose to heal both of us and form a love and a deep friendship we’ll share forever.
I spent 9 months at sea, focussing on business, friendships, family, and then on getting back on track after the Covid tsunami first hit.
I could never have known that my boat was on course to collide with the boat of New Secret Man only 9 months after Bloody Good Chap and I set sail on our own.
It was a complete accident. NSM had only just sailed to Melbourne and was very busy pursuing his career.
He had no plans to moor up to any other yachts, and neither did I.
So we started out as friends, drawn into 4 hour long conversations by our mutual love of neuroscience, psychology and consciousness.
For me it felt way too soon to meet anyone serious, I was keen to sail alone for at least a year more.
For NSM, he was very content sailing alone, following his mission, and had no plans for a serious relationship for the next few years.
Then the 4 hour conversations became 7 hours.
Still we avoided turning it into anything more than a friendship.
But then 7 hours turned into 13 hours, with a side of Covid-safe bushwalking.
It became clear that this was more than just an insane intellectual connection.
The pull felt unavoidable.
So we tentatively started to sail together, navigating some strange Covid-y waters together.
Sometimes I’ve hit fearful patches and considered sailing off in another direction to continue grieving BGC alone.
I was not ready to not be single.
But sometimes you meet a yacht that you just can’t help being drawn back to.
There have been times I’ve sobbed on the floor grieving Bloody Good Chap while New Secret Man holds me. Gratefully, New Secret Man has the emotional intelligence and secureness that he can allow me to grieve openly without taking it personally.
It is possible to love more than one person at once, and that will always be the case for me.
I love all three of my beautiful ex boyfriends, and I always will.
And now I know, the scary as hell leap of blind faith was worth it. My gut was right.
New Secret Man and I are aligned in a way that would seem completely unrealistic even if you read it in a romantic novel.
We have intellectual, physical and emotional chemistry like nothing I ever dreamed possible, and we (more or less!) want the same things out of life.
Our yachts are on track to sail in a similar direction, exploring many islands along the way, since we both share the same insatiable desire for curiosity, play and growth.
Who knows what will happen in the future, but for now, this relationship with NSM has already opened up possibilities in my life that I never even knew I was missing.
When you leave behind something so beautiful, yet not quite right, you have no way of knowing what else is out there.
To take the courageous action, to let go of the things we know are nearly but not *quite* right for us, even with no promise of a better future… it’s all we have.
In our relationships, our friendships, our career, our home.
We will never get to 90 and feel grateful we took the safe option and hid our desire for a more fully expressed, alive version of ourselves.
Safety is a false promise that will leak your energy over time.
The unknown is where the magic is.
If you know what I’m talking about… it’s time to start preparing yourself to throw off the ropes. There’s no rush, you’ve got to do it in your own time.
But at some point…
It’s time to set sail.
