This is Part 4 of my online dating "docu-blog" series... If you'd like to catch up, start here... Going to Pick Some Greens: An Online Dating Profile. Then navigate to here... Going to Juice Some Weeds: An Online Dating Profile, Part 2. Next, take a short trip to here... Journey to the Center of Me: An Online Dating Adventure... And now for the "Final" Destination or "Season Finale." Picking up from the last paragraph of my very last blog post...
In one of her talk show interviews, Jill mentions The Bachelor TV reality show. When we finally met in person last weekend, I mentioned to her that my daughter Naomi was on Episode 13 of the show which aired back in January of 2010. As a matter of fact, because Naomi made it to the final four, she had a hometown date in which we were featured as the "quirkiest family" in Bachelor history. Because entertaining inherently runs through my veins, I experienced the show as sur-reality entertainment, with a twist of real relationship issues. Well, it has been more than five years since then, and the two-year "gag order" was lifted three years ago. So, I can write about it now. More on that in my next feature, which may or may not conclude this series.
Fast forward to this "next feature" at the time of this post... In January of this year, it has actually been over six years since Season 13 of The Bachelor aired on National TV. Ironically, the show's hosts and some of the longest-time fans of the show still recall and talk about Week 6 of that season. Why? Because it's not every day that a young woman's date and prospective partner is asked to perform the eulogy at a backyard funeral and burial site for a dead dove. Granted, it is movie-worthy, like something straight out of Meet the Parents, but keep in mind that there's a reason these sur-reality shows are often called the Producers' Reality. I won't tell all in this post... maybe some other time... but I will refer to it for my inspiration for Dating Game shows for which I can easily draw parallels to online dating.
Imagine that...! A dove - the symbol of peace and love - providing a metaphor for the fate and final destination of many of our most promising relationships and where they now lie, after we lied to ourselves about the whole "promise" thingy. So, what did I learn from my own relationship journey and all of the dead doves and loves (not literally) lying in my backyard cemetery? I have decided to rename it, my Sacred Burial Grounds, because when I honestly review the whole journey, it has been a sacred one.
I studied myself and my own thought patterns and processes along the way. After watching the film, The Secret, I presumed that I could use the Law of Attraction principles to determine what I wanted in a mate and how to go about getting it. Nevertheless, the truth of the matter is not always a matter between the Conscious and the Subconscious. The actual principles that really matter are operating undercover all the time, as I have found them lurking somewhere I hadn't thought of looking before this journey... somewhere deeper within... somewhere called the Unconscious Self.
Pulling back the curtain on all the belief systems I had been operating behind, within and under for years - beliefs about love, relationships, partners, soul mates, twin flames and ulti-mates - I narrowed my relationship objectives down to one single, simple word in my internal search engine: playmate. One of my favorite quotes in life is, "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and entrances..."
Nonetheless, while the Shakespearean speech borrows ancient concepts from Aristotle and goes on to describe every stage of each of the seven-ages-of-man that humans live and learn through, I borrow it from time to time to make metaphors in my own life - places, players, plots and props, included. So, why not pair the Dating Game to the same metaphors? As I've grown, I have known many players (pun intended) and others who were just plain players in the Dating Game stages of my life. They all had their exits and entrances for one very specific reason in my life: my spiritual development. Although they were chronologically adult-aged men, they manifested traits of the different ages and stages of man.
Some were stuck in the puking infant stage, with their dependency on me to do everything short of wiping their snotty noses. However, as much as the nurturing instinct is still alive and well in me - even after raising five children of my own - I grew weary and life grew dreary before I became leery that I had full-grown eternal infants on my hands. Although they may have relieved my empty nest syndrome for a while, those dynamics do not make for a satisfying mutual love relationship.
Others were at the whining school boy stage. They'd complain about everything from how I messed up their meals to how I folded their shirts. I was so focused on their happiness and working for such short-lived praise and appreciation, that I hardly noticed my self-esteem slowly starting to slip. When I woke up and smelled the manipulation percolating, I knew I had to take a "do or die" approach: leave now or die trying to please the eternal whiner. I facetiously told some of the older men stuck in that stage, "The longer I stay with you, the more I feel like a pedophile."
Subsequently, as the Law of Attraction often operates on desire, in order for me to bring back my self-esteem, my desires started attracting the young, sighing lovers who neither puked nor whined, but wined and dined me as they pined for my love as their one and only. Awww... How endearing is that? Anyway... I'd eventually have my fill of that romanticized version of love, when a relationship would start to feel creepy and stalker-ish. Enter possessiveness, suspicion, paranoia, and accusations of things that never happened - at least, not in my waking state. I've come to run from early signs of men who are in that stage of the game. They wave bright red flags - of insecurity and low self-esteem - and I no longer choose to be the enabler who will mend those flags.
So, after that stage had run its course from center stage, downstage and right off the stage, I started feeling the magnetic pull of lovers who were in the soldier stage of life. They were the ones who never complained and always did more than pine for love... they'd live, breathe and die to nurture and protect me. They never whined about pain or anything that bothered them deep inside. While that was admirable for a time in several lovers who shared this quality, there was a missing link, not to mention the danger of imminent explosive behavior ahead. Holding things in and not feeling free to share what's going on inside could lead to miscommunication, resentment, and ultimately to walls that block and interfere with a healthy relationship. Ask anyone who's been in mentally, emotionally, and physically abusive relationships: ask me about all three.
Finally making progress towards the "justice" or upstanding leader type, I have been able to attract men in that stage of life who command the attention and respect of others. Over this past year, and through this journey, one encounter leading to another, I have met several conscious and aware men. I had at one time or another considered each as a potential mate. Although the one factor of chemistry might have been missing, they could hold my cerebral attention span and my respect long enough to prove themselves worthy of a meaningful long-term relationship. I reasoned that as long there are no hidden agendas, power-hungry thirst for ego-boosting attention, and/or condescending attitudes, I am willing to engage with and invest in a man who is in this stage of life. However, they must still know how and when to be the perfect playmate, because that is what a real woman really wants.
Now, as I have been on this topic of online dating for the past year, I can finally wrap up this docu-blog series with my own take (after Take 1- Cut- Take 2- Cut, and several more Takes and Cuts). Through this particular online dating site, I learned to pick some good greens, juice some healthy weeds and take this journey right to the center of me. Jill had asked me to write my success story several months ago, because I finally met someone who rescued me from my imploding inbox in this particular dating network. He has been my perfect playmate for the past ten months, which is why I chose to deactivate my account.
Because this has been a long-distance relationship (partially coast-to-coast and partially overseas) with no formal announcement or pronouncement of commitments "till death do us part," I told Jill that we are still in the flow-state of holding no expectations over one another. My playmate and I have not changed our Facebook status to "in a relationship with..." or publicly branded ownership of one another. You may wonder why I had been reluctant to call it a wrap, given the societal pressures to stake claims. Not speaking for him, but for myself only, part of me simply wondered what if it doesn't last after I share our story? Then what? Would that turn our "success" story into an unsuccessful relationship?
Well, after having done some serious soul-searching and reflecting on how we've all been programmed to see our romantic relationships in black and white (like the old Classic AMC movies), I realized that the "success" part of this story is that I learned I can choose to love anyone, whether or not it ends in physical intimacy. My playmate and I are compatible on so many levels, including on the level of loving others openly, minus the fear of stepping on each other's toes. Now, this is not to be confused with non-monogamous. I learned that I am not built that way... I personally cannot merge my whole being with more than one lover at a time. However, for me, my love and appreciation of others does not have to be of a sexual nature to be considered quality.
Nevertheless, although my playmate and I have spent weeks on end together during the course of the year and I have a round-trip ticket to his home overseas, I have basically released him from the pressure of feeling that he cannot enjoy the physical pleasures of love with another. Whether or not he takes me me up on that offer is his business. Yet, I jokingly told him that if he should decide to do that, just to let me know, so that I can even the score. He found that amusing and at the same time, he feels the release of undue pressure at this stage of the game, because neither one of us is at a place where we can just pick ourselves up to permanently relocate. We have only explored the potential of that type of commitment.
This, however, is my success story: knowing that I have found someone to love for the rest of my life - with or without the perfect playmate. I have found my true love, my true Self... me, and I'd rather happily exist knowing me and my Self than to unhappily exit this world's stage attached to someone who does not share the same love and appreciation of me, their Self and all the other players with whom we've shared this stage.
Yours Truly,
Joanne of Frank