I remember becoming upset when my now ex husband wanted his twin brother to move in with us shortly after we married. The hurt that arose the moment he requested this came from the thought that he doesn’t want to live with just me. I had made up beliefs that he didn’t love me enough and I wasn’t good enough for him for us to be partners together in life. Wanting to please him and not appear selfish or mean, I agreed to have his brother live with us. He also worked full time, as people most often do. This meant not seeing him all day and when he arrived home, he spent time with his brother and me. We were almost never alone. At that point I didn’t know how to ask for what I needed and quickly became resentful. It went downhill from there.
Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like had I not made those assumptions about him not wanting to live with just me. What if I had simply asked for alone time with my husband? I ask myself what the gift was of having a husband with a live in best bud and brother? At the time, I could see no gift, but in hindsight, there were many.
I was in a career that was killing me and my body was giving me health challenges to help me see where I was out of balance. This time alone actually gave me plenty of time to dive into my own healing and develop my spirituality. This man I married also encouraged me to take a leave from teaching in the district and see what else I might want to do. That is the same year I learned about Reiki and energy healing. It lit me up. It led to teaching Reiki and providing intuitive readings for people. The more I dove in, the further apart we grew from one another, which I didn’t want. I don’t think is a fault of growing spiritually. I think everything that we’re guided to is all along a path of our growth. Later after the divorce, I realized he was an angel in disguise to lead me to what I am doing now and our contract was over. As painful as that separation from him was, I can see the gifts and learned that I need to speak up for what’s important to me in a partnership.
In my last marriage I was with a partner who was also in a full time job and many projects absorbing his time after work and on the weekends, which I had wanted because as I became more sensitive to energy, I needed more alone time to recharge my batteries. It was also difficult for me to be with this man for extended periods of time as we were very different energetically. I remember asking myself why I married this man. I had a hard time answering that question, other than he was a good man, I loved him and we got along as friends. I would later find out through a past life regression, that he and I were brother and sister in a past life and he took care of me, but had horrible rage outbursts that scared me. This is actually what ended up happening in the end. In hindsight, what I was able to do with my alone time in that marriage was write my first book and start leading restorative retreats for people.
Here I am, once again, finding myself with a partner who has a three hour commute to work on top of a full work load, two children, one of which is his best friend, and a full docket of hobbies. All of this has brought me an enormous amount of alone time, which I generally cherish for restoration, as introverts often need a lot. I fought it at first as my belief was that when you’re with someone, you should be together during your off time. This belief wasn’t serving us as I’m not my beset self without alone time. When I first moved to Michigan we were together all the time and it was extremely draining for me. Then there was over a month or two where we didn’t have any alone time due to his son wanting to be with him every single day. When I realized this, I asked for what I needed instead of my past behavior of becoming angry and resentful. Resentment did show up, but this time I used it as a clue to what I needed that wasn’t there. My sweetheart said he’d also been wanting alone time with just the two of us, which brought me relief as the beliefs started creeping in about not being desired, blah blah blah crazy brain chatter. He was also torn because he told his son he’ll always have a place to stay. When his son asked if he could come over, my sweetie said he could, but that on one of the days over the weekend, just he and I were going to spend the day together and that he could hang out at the house, but we wouldn’t be there. I felt badly because I adore his son, but still needed this. While it didn’t go over very well with his son at first, he understood and has now been making time with his friends and his dad in better balance.
What this alone time has provided me with is lots of time to help clients clear energy, go deeper into my spiritual practices, recharge, write and have space to create what is next for my way of contributing. I love holding restorative retreats and have been invited to hold one with some dear friends who also love to contribute their gifts. Save the date for the second weekend of September 2019 in New Mexico!