Love: The Quest for Chemistry & Liberation - Mind, Body, Whole
I had the privilege to be a part of an incredible and very insightful Zoom call recently. It was POW-ER-FUL, not to my surprise given the hosts – Mark Groves and Shadeen Francis. These incredible souls are two individuals who I have grown extremely fond of over the past few years and have derived immeasurable insight and value from the content they share. If you’re committed to self-growth, interested in the intricacies of intimate relationships, and desire to better understand how to thrive in both, you’re missing out on some SERIOUS knowledge bombs and soulful content if you’re not diving into what they have to share on the regular, sooo go give them a follow and thank yourself later.
There were some key takeaways I found great value in that I wanted to share. I intended to do so on the ‘Gram, but in true Sarah-fashion, I got writing and the words wouldn’t stop pouring, so here we are…
One of the first statements Shadeen made that really struck me was:
“We often think there simply IS or ISN’T chemistry. The truth is, chemistry is about reactions and, those reactions are created by US. We often hope the reaction just happens, but the reality is we create it.”
This is a challenging concept for me, as I’ve felt time and time again that that reaction, or ‘chemistry,’ or ‘spark’ if you will, just simply was not there. I’ve struggled with this, in several relationships now – where I’ve found myself in a relationship with a seemingly great guy – someone who checks a lot of boxes, but when I subsequently check in with myself, when I tune into my intuition and listen to that gut-feeling and heart-voice, there exists a deep-rooted “NOPE!” Every time I’ve sat with my emotions, gone within, and asked:
“Is this my person? Is this my ‘One’, my ‘Soul Mate’..?” – each and every time it’s been a no.
Shadeen spoke to this element of ‘going within’ and made a very great point, being:
“It’s crucial to check in with yourself, to define exactly what it is you seek to feel.”
I think this is a really important statement to consider in conjunction with the above concept revolving the creation of chemistry. I believe, as much as there is truth that it takes the contribution of two people to create the “chemicals” to elicit said “reaction”, you need to clearly identify what kind of reaction you’re looking for someone to elicit for you. You also need to be honest with yourself as to what you’re willing to do on your end to help create that. Sure, two people can be compatible on many levels and both be great individuals, but together they may not ‘mix’ well, and the specific ‘reaction’ or ‘spark’ you seek to find may not be there. This has been my experience - time and time again - I find someone, we click in various ways, have similar interests, goals, etc, but as time goes on there’s just something missing, something that I can honestly feel to the core of my being is truly not in alignment with me in my entirety – mind, body, heart, and soul.
To say I’ve begun to feel frustrated with this repetitive cycle of find-a-nice-guy-dedicate-exponential-amounts-of-time-and-effort-to-discover-he’s-not-the-one would be an almost laughable understatement. So, if you’ve experienced a similar series of ‘good-but-not-great’ relationships and are feeling a little deflated, I GET IT, and my heart goes out to you with the utmost sincerity.
This internalized frustration, and confusion really, regarding this “chemistry,” and lack thereof in my experience, led me to making some poor choices. I stayed in my last relationships for FAR longer than I should have, and ended up hurting a pretty great guy because this repetitive feeling of frustration had resulted in me thinking that maybe it was me, and had been me all along…
“Maybe I’m expecting too much.”
“Maybe I’m just not being grateful for what I have.”
“Maybe my standards are too high”
The above are all thoughts that would constantly recycle themselves in my mind.
Why? Well, if I may be so bold, I think this is largely because society conditions us to find a partner who ‘checks the boxes’, makes us feel decent in their presence (ideally someone we could live with and not decapitate or burry in a field), and ultimately ‘fits the part’ to an acceptable degree. For a woman, this should be someone who is a ‘provider’. For a man, this should be a partner who can adequately raise the children, maintain the house and satisfy your physical needs. Ok, maybe I’m exaggerating a bit here. I would like to think society has come a bit farther than propagating the belief that your partner should simply assist in satisfying our hedonic needs. This is a touchy subject for me, so forgive me if I’m a bit jaded…
Nevertheless, I began to accept this belief that I was too much and, in turn, was expecting too much. I compartmentalized all of this and reasoned with it by telling myself I just had to work harder. I just needed to put more effort in. So, I got the idea in my head that I could, indeed, create the relationship I envisioned. This led to me trying to fit my partner into a mould of which he was not destined to fit. I tried to shape him into the person I envisioned as my ‘One’. In doing so, I lost myself along the way. I tried to justify that giving up important parts of myself were “necessary sacrifices”and, in turn, expected my partner to make sacrifices just the same.
I’d like to note here that this was not apparent to me until we were well into our relationship, and much of it not until after the relationship saw it’s final end. At the time I wasn’t consciously self-sacrificing and expecting my partner to be someone he wasn’t, but when I reflect on it all, that IS, regrettably, exactly what I was doing…
So, as I began to lose bits and pieces of myself, I abandoned my quest to find a partner who was compatible on all levels. I gave up hope that I would find (and deserved) someone who not only ‘checked the boxes,’ but brought to the table the elements that created that magical chemistry I once thought to be attainable. I gave up on the love I once dreamed of – the love I no longer believed was real.
I told myself I was being ‘unrealistic’. I chalked it up to me just falling victim to the ideal version of love we are subjected to in movies, music, love stories and various other realms of media and society. Don’t get me wrong here, this IS a real issue in itself – the glorification of love and relationships and the portrayal of ‘picture perfect’, ‘fairytale’ love. However, for me personally, the awareness of how society has wrongly depicted loving relationships led me to lower my standards. I began to demean my own values and my own worth through adopting the notion that my expectations were some self-conceived pipe-dream. I deemed the needs, wants, and values I had laid out for what I was seeking in my forever-person to be all but starry-eyed, delusory figments of my imagination that had been formulated over years of conditioning…
Instead of standing in my worth and honoring my truth, I knelt before the notion that I was seeking out a fantasy that didn’t exist…
Before I get carried away with my story, let’s reel things back into the Zoom call.
Shadeen and Mark shed light on the importance of setting clear boundaries and expectations. Boundaries are still something that are very much so a work-in-progress for me. I like to say I’m a recovering people-pleaser, but some days I feel like I’ve broken out of the recovery facility and run wildly back to old tendencies. Like I said, it’s a work in progress. Expectations though, oh baby, the OCD perfectionist in me LOVES expectations!
For me, the journey of coming home to self and embracing the validity in my relational wants and needs was not bounded by any lack I had in defining specifics of what I wanted in a person and relationship -- I’ve written those down many a time and now have 12 pages worth of “clear expectations” {*insert sweating emoji*}. Granted, they have grown and evolved significantly over the years, and I’m still learning to speak up and stand in my worth when they aren’t being met. My missing piece was not in clarifying what I wanted, but rather something deeper…
The recognition that I wasn’t, after all, living a life of false hope came through several means. One of those was developing a solid foundation of self worth. This was so beautifully addressed in this call with Mark & Shadeen, as we were invited to ask the question “What do I want?” followed by [*pause, grab a pen and paper for this one*] – “Do I believe I deserve what I want?”
I’ll let that one resonate with you for a moment. I know I needed more than a second to internalize it myself…
HELLOOOOOOO emotions. This question elicited a resurrection of former self and a lot of reflecting on the toxic patterns I’ve spun through in the past akin to a hamster spinning round its wheel…
Over the course of my healing journey following each consecutive past relational rupture (and the journey I am still very much so immersed in today), the foundational concept behind this question is something that looked me dead in the eyes, stared into the darkest depths of my soul, and subsequently forced me to do the same.
As I sat with this question - “Do I believe I deserve what I want?” - I sat with the recognition that, my values were (and are) not, in fact, unrealistic. The real issue has always been that, deep down, I didn’t wholeheartedly believe I deserved what I wanted. Even when I told myself I believed I deserved the love I wished to find, my actions and the respect I demanded from others did not reflect that belief.
I knew what I wanted. I could feel it deep down. I knew what was right. My mind, body, soul, and intuition KNEW all along. I just didn’t have the wherewithal to say it, to live it out through my actions, and to stand for it in how I allowed myself to be treated by others.
I believed what I sought was too much. I believed I was too much. I still do, sometimes, if I’m being brutally honest. In the ending of my most recent relational endeavor, this thought crossed my mind more than once – “Maybe I am, still, too much”…
Some affirmations I’ve had to sit with, and need to re-affirm for myself time and time again:
I am worthy of the love I seek to find.
I am more than enough, and also not ‘too much’ - the right person will see that. Most importantly, though, I must see that myself before I can ever ask to find another who sees it too.
- - -
Shadeen and Mark also talked about shame. That word alone feels heavy just as I type it, but it is a very real contributor to why I was always so hesitant asking for and standing up for what I wanted. In my most recent long-term relationship, I began to feel shameful for not being grateful for what I had. I fell victim to comparison – constantly telling myself I was lucky to have what I had compared to many. I would hear friends talk about their relational struggles and tell myself “Man, I should really just be gosh darn grateful for what I consider ‘struggles’ in my own relationship.” This led me to staying when I was unhappy, which then led to me feeling shame for staying and prolonging a relationship of which I knew the inevitable end.
Am I starting to sound like a broken record here? Well, I sure felt like one in how I kept living out the same scenario in relationships. I’d like to think I am very much so not alone in this cyclical pattern. And I’m also here to tell you that you and I have the power to stop that pattern.
Onwards…
I think it’s important here to distinguish between shame and guilt. Shame being the notion that “I did something wrong, or bad, thus I am a bad person”. Guilt, on the other hand, denotes feeling remorseful for one’s actions while recognizing those actions do not contribute to your identity. You can make a mistake and know that makes you human, not an inherently bad person. You can go one step further and use this emotional charge to motivate you to be better. Feeling guilt or “healthy shame”, whatever you’d like to term it, thus opens the doorway for constructive change and subsequent growth. Thus, this shift from shame to guilt; criticism to awareness; is a shift from self-sabotage to self-empowerment. There’s so much to be said for that!
If this is a new differentiation for you – shame vs. guilt – I invite you to sit with this and ask yourself:
What have I shamed myself for? How can I revisit that and transform that into healthy shame or guilt through which I can grow from?
Moving forward, how can I encourage myself to transition from feeling shame when I make mistakes (which are inevitable for us all)..? What habits and thoughts can I implement today and in days to come such that may enable me to start to see my wrongdoings not as failures, but as opportunities for growth?
In learning to decipher the difference between guilt and shame, we can learn to shift our reactions and the internalization of our emotions accordingly. I have begun to learn how to recognize when I am in a state of cognitive dissonance – where my actions and values do not align. When I am able to identify this (which, I would like to think is becoming easier), I can take the necessary action to realign, and prevent myself from inflicting undue hurt - on myself or another being.
Mark said something (not in this particular talk, but on a prior podcast) that I found to be SO powerful – “Do not shame the part of you that chose the decision that taught you the lesson of what a “wrong” decision means for you in that set of circumstances.”
Read that again.
This is such a beautiful reminder. There really is no such thing as a “wrong” decision, is there? Unless, perhaps, you make a “wrong” decision and consciously choose not to derive a lesson from it. Any decision we make, whether or not it leads to the desired outcome, has the potential to teach us. We simply have to be open and willing to receive whatever lesson it has in store. When our seemingly “wrong” decisions create awareness, we are given the opportunity to take our power back and to change ourselves for the better. And that, I think, is a gift in and of itself. So, may this be a reminder to not fear making the wrong choice, for in the end you always have it within you to rise again, redirect yourself, and use all of your “wrong” choices as information through which you become better equipped to make right decisions in the future.
Affirm:
I am worthy of asking for what I need without shame or guilt for having the wherewithal to do so
“Your standards are your values” – another little piece of golden advice (and forgive me, Mark and Shadeen, if either of you ever grace this page and read this, I don’t remember which of you spoke this beautiful line, but it was powerful nonetheless).
High standards do not mean we are high maintenance. High standards mean we value ourselves to the utmost degree. High standards are indicative of high self worth. A reminder, to myself and to those reading this, that your standards are not only a reflection of the love you seek to find, but a reflection of the love you direct towards yourself. The love for yourself is the one you should never have to question, and it’s the love that’s with you every waking moment of this life. Don’t deprive yourself of that love. Hold your standards accordingly.
If you’ve made it this far, I’d like to say thank you, as you’ve consumed 2700 words of which I can only hope a few may have left an impactful mark (whether that was through the impactful Mark himself, the equally prolific Shadeen, or my own verbiage). If you’re in it for the long haul, we’re not done yet…
This next prompt for introspection was a question Shadeen spoke about asking many of her clients, and one that I needed to hear in that moment more than I knew…
“What do you need permission to do?”
We often know what we want. As I said above, I knew that within every cell of my body. I knew what I wanted and needed, I just hadn’t found out a way to ask for it, and certainly didn’t have the wherewithal at the time to demand it. So therein lies the question – how do we identify for ourselves when to trust our intuition, to hold tight to our values, wants, needs, desires and ultimate truths; to give ourselves permission to do all of this, and subsequently invite those we love to rise and meet us in this space?
This is where counseling, journaling, meditation, breathwork and discovering where I find ‘Flow State’ have served a profound role in my journey. The truth is, more often than not, knowing isn’t enough. Sometimes you’ve gotta say it out loud (whether that’s to a counselor or loved one, to your dog, to a tree in the forest or some inanimate object is entirely up to you and unique to your journey). Other times you need to write it (I’m sure you can’t tell by now that this blog is very much so a form of therapy for me, and journaling has provided me with a similar outlet). Meditation and breathwork, on the other hand, are forms of emotional and energetic release. These are both practices that I have found I have been able to see things in an entirely different light, come to truly transformative realizations, and develop an even more intimate connection between my mind, body and soul.
Mark spoke to this additionally in talking about somatic healing. For those who are not familiar with this term, somatic work revolves around the release of physical and emotional stress through healing trauma. This healing is done through the expenditure of energy that has built up over years of internalizing feelings (many of which we are not even aware we have internalized until we do the work to bring them to the surface). I’m sure Google can provide you with some very precise and some very broad definitions of what somatic therapy entails, but when it all boils down to it, somatic means “having to do with the body.” It really is about developing a more intimate understanding of the mind-body connection. Somatic work involves a wide variety of practices and techniques, each encouraging a state of being fully present with your thoughts and emotions, and recognizing where in your body they are held. This deepening of the mind-body connection can (and most often does) have profound effects.
I personally don’t believe true healing exists in the absence of this somatic work. It has taken me, personally, into an entirely different realm of physical and emotional awareness, which has translated not only into a better relationship with myself, but better relationships with others. I encourage you to explore this realm and let the results speak for themselves.
A final thought on this topic relates to the words of Glennon Doyle, which Mark so graciously reminded us of in the context of this discussion:
“There is no such thing as one way liberation”
This quote evokes several meanings. One being that, in giving ourselves permission to live in alignment with our truth, our purpose, and all we desire from this life, we invite and inspire others to do the same. Additionally, this work is not solely our weight to carry. Yes, there are times where it is entirely necessary to be with your own thoughts, to sit in silence, to FEEL all the feelings and to work through things in solitude. However, our wounds are products of more than just our own individual doing. Our trauma is generational, cross-cultural, and inter-relational. As much as I love Denice Frohman’s words – “Your wound is not your fault, but your healing is your responsibility”, healing is your responsibility as much as it is mine – as separate entities and as a collective. This means we need to do our own work, but we also need to do work with others – in sourcing counselors, therapists and other experts to assist us in our healing, and also in holding space for our partners and loved ones to join us in healing within the context of our relationships. Trauma, heartbreak and grief are heavy weights to carry. They are not yours or mine to carry alone, so don’t ever think you are alone in this journey.
To wrap up what has been quite the marathon of dialogue today, and in lieu of this week’s love-bird-laden holiday, I know many are feeling a little less-than, and I’d like to offer a gentle reminder:
You ARE worthy of the love you seek to find. It DOES exist
The question isn’t when, where, or how, it’s:
Are you willing to do the work to become everything you hope to find in someone else, before you seek that ‘someone else’?
Embrace the love you have within.
Discover your own magic first.
Then…Just stay the course. Because the truth is, ‘The Work’ never ends. Nor will the bounds of that love when you do find it.
In the mean time, don’t settle for any less than you deserve.
Don’t spend your life looking for your other half. Become whole. Then invite your other whole to meet you.
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As always, thank you for joining me today.
With Love & Grace,
From my Big Little Soul to Yours
♡