Spiritually Human - Episode 2 - Dating Patterns.mp3 - updated

Anastasia, the spiritual boss, discusses being spiritual and human, sharing insights on feelings, intuition, and experiences. She reflects on her childhood, shaped by her parents' divorce and her views on love. She opens up about her limited dating experiences, including a significant but tumultuous relationship in high school with an exchange student. Despite feeling loved and seen, her fear of vulnerability led to self-sabotage and avoidance, impacting her views on relationships. She acknowledges learning about self-worth and the influence of past experiences on her relationship patterns. I'm just a soul on a journey home. Spiritually human, never alone. Welcome to Spiritually Human, where being spiritual literally just means being a human being. Because spirituality isn't out there, it's in you. I'm Anastasia, the spiritual boss, and this is where we get honest about feelings, intuition, dating, cosmic experiences, and what it means to actually be a spiritual being having a human experience. It's an honor to share this space with you today. Thank you so much for being here, friends. Let's get into it. Hello, hello, hello, everyone. In this episode, we are going to talk about something that I love talking about, and that is modern dating as a spiritual person. So the way that dating invites you to heal, and what it looks like to choose yourself, because no one is going to choose you, so you have to choose yourself and love yourself in the best way possible, but it is something that is really difficult to do. This episode is for anyone who has loved anyone so deeply, but had to walk away in order to choose themselves. So a little bit of backstory. This episode is going to get very vulnerable, very deep. You're going to learn so much about me. I never really dated. I don't have a list of boyfriends that I could think about and reflect on and remember all of the lessons that I got from them. I just don't have that experience because I never let myself get there with anyone, really. So I really only have four relationships that I can refer to, but honestly, these relationships were super karmic and very much past life relationships, so there was a lot to learn. But before we get into my romantic connections, let's talk about my parents, because everything was kind of shaped from there, right? Everyone's relationships are shaped from their parents, whether they were together, not together, what kind of relationship they had, did they see love in the connection, all of that stuff. My parents got a divorce when I was around six or seven years old. It taught me that happiness was fleeting, and I'm not going to lie, as a kid I was very cerebral, a very just like nerdy, logical child. I knew that my parents were not supposed to be together. When they told me that they were getting a divorce, I was low-key happy because I was like, great, you guys argue a lot, you shouldn't be together. There was like this knowing that I had in my heart that that was not what love was supposed to look like. So I did not have the experience where my parents got divorced and it ripped me apart. It was more like this, okay, maybe now I can get a sense of calm and peace and enjoy my parents separately. That's just how I've always thought, I've always been a rational thinker. But in being such a rational thinker, it didn't allow me the experience to want love and to desire a wedding. I was not the kid who was dreaming of what my wedding dress was going to look like, or what my husband or even wife could look like. I did not think about any of that at all. I was just like, I want to get a job and make a lot of money and be an author. That's what I wanted when I was a kid. So my view of relationships very early on was a little cynical, I'm not going to lie. I had a little crush every now and then, but it was never like, this is going to be the person that I marry. And I'm in the fifth grade staring at my crush from across the room. It was just never like that. I felt that love was conditional and I felt that it was temporary. I didn't think that things lasted forever. And then after my parents got a divorce, my dad never dated, but my mom had a lot of different boyfriends. And I was sure they were present, but they were not emotionally safe. I did not see her in a healthy relationship. And if I'm really honest, I felt that my mom kind of lost herself in those relationships. I felt that those relationships became her identity. I did not see her as apart from the men that she was with. And so what that told me was that relationships were unsafe. Was that if I fall in love, I will lose myself. I will lose control. I am giving the other person control over my heart and over myself and my identity. And you all know that I'm a Sagittarius sign with a Venus Sagittarius as well. That's not happening. I did not want to lose any inch of who I was because I was very sure about myself from a very young age. I knew who I was. So to me, when I was in elementary school, middle school, high school, relationships, bad. I did have a really big crush on this boy in high school, in the ninth grade. And he didn't go to my school, but we texted all the time. I felt emotionally safe, but it wasn't really because he never said he wanted to be my boyfriend. He never asked me to be his girlfriend. He never chose me. In fact, the one time he did actually ask me to be his girlfriend, I said yes. And then he goes to school the next day, and he asks out another girl, and now he has a girlfriend all of a sudden. So I kind of had it in my mind that I just wasn't a girl who boys wanted to be their girlfriend. Because I was kind of just like one of the bros. I've always been a very, very big tomboy. I like things that boys like. I always joke that I have the interests of a 12-year-old boy, because it's true. I like wrestling. I like cars. I like boxing. I like anime. I like Marvel movies. I'm just that girl, and I always just hung out with boys. So it was just kind of, like I said, ingrained in me. I was kind of the girl that guys would have a crush on, but would never ask me out. That is until senior year of high school, when I met the Italian exchange student who was in my guitar class. He always used to stare at me in class, and I had no idea this boy had a crush on me until he Facebook messaged me one night. And we just talked for three hours until the middle of the night. And I went to school the next day, and then we introduced ourselves in person. It was just like senior year was magical, because I actually did fall in love. But this is where I knew that my childhood trauma was kind of blocking me from really receiving love in an appropriate way. I did not know how to be chosen, and I wanted to get ahead of not being chosen. So I told him I did not want a label. I just wanted to be a, as we call now, situation chip. And he did not need to be my boyfriend. I did not need to be his girlfriend. So that was the setup at the beginning of the year. This boy was like every girl at school's dream. He was an Abercrombie and Stitch model. He was from Venice. What drew me into him is that he's a Scorpio. He was very deep, and people didn't really know how deep he was. He loved making art and making music and singing. And just like he really loved his craft, and he was very passionate, which is something that I'm really attracted to in people. And he also really saw me. He would always tell me, you are so beautiful. And at the time, you know, when you're a teenager, you like to hate yourself because it's fun. That's what I did. I knew that I was pretty, but I was very much just like, I hate myself. I look bad here, like constantly just complaining about the way that I looked. And he really helped me to embrace my looks and just who I was as a person. And he would always tell me, like, you don't need to refute compliments. Like, if we were out in public and someone complimented me in front of him, then he would be like, see, I told you. So, yeah, he taught me about myself and, like, loving myself a little bit more. And it taught me that I was emotionally unavailable. Once we got closer, I just was not able to maintain the connection because it scared me. It scared me so much that I stopped going to school. Like, I'm not joking. I just stopped showing up at school because I was so afraid of being hurt by loving him that I was just like, I'm going to leave first. And I knew he was an exchange student, so did I think I was going to move to Italy with him? Who knows? Maybe I could have, but I didn't even give myself the opportunity. I literally just ghosted him. And he would text me and he would say, like, come to school, I miss you. And I'm like, okay, I'll come tomorrow, but I just wouldn't go. And then I would go to school and I would just avoid him. Like, it was so mean and it made no sense. This is just, like, my disorganized, avoidant, fearful, avoidant attachment style. And this was the beginning of it. This was also the beginning of self-sabotage. I knew that once school was over, I was never going to see that boy again. And I still sabotaged in such a way that he would never forgive me, and he never did, honestly. Like, I saw him at graduation and I remember running up and hugging him because I was very excited that I graduated. And he hugged me, did not even look me in the eyes and said, how was it, and walked away. He just was so Scorpio hurt by me, and I could just tell and see it in his eyes. And I remember spending graduation crying the entire day because I was just, like, I literally just, like, ran away from the love of my life, and now I don't even get to say bye to him. So I messaged him and I asked him to say goodbye, and he never messaged me back. And in fact, every year, for the next, like, eight years on New Year's, I would think about him, and I would DM him on Facebook or Instagram, and he would ignore me. He would never read the messages. Don't fuck with a Scorpio. They will never forgive you. They will hold a grudge. Even if you're trying to apologize and be very sincere, sometimes you just can't fuck with a Scorpio. That's what I learned from this man. But, you know, I learned so much from that connection. I learned about my self-worth. I learned that I have a fear of relationships because I never saw a safe one growing up. And so that's the beginning of, like, my relationship patterns that really started to show me that I associated love with chaos. I associated love with inconsistency. I associated love with caretaking. And it shouldn't be any of those things. So I went off to college. I moved to New York. And I did not date a single person in college, all four years of college, not a single human being. I just lived my best New York life with my roommates, and we watched RuPaul's Drag Race, and we drank beer every night, and it was fun. It was fine. I needed to heal, I guess, and, like, I needed to learn myself. And I think we oftentimes need to take time for ourselves to understand our triggers. That's not necessarily what I was doing. I think I was more being avoidant. But it's so important to take space after a relationship. So often people will jump into another relationship without taking the space to grow and evolve. And this is no shame to some people who do get into other relationships that are healthy. You have to find someone who's willing to experience the work with you, and that's just really difficult. That's why it never works when people jump into another relationship after that. But, yeah, I needed to take some time to myself. And after those four years, I moved back to California, and I went to USC for my master's program. But before that, the very week that I moved back home from New York, I meet a boy. We'll call him S. S was a friend of a friend who I'd never met but always heard about. The second I met him, the day that I met him, I was like, I'm going to date this boy. And he had just come out of a four-year relationship the week before I met him. But we just clicked. Like, all of my relationships were just so—I met them, and I knew. I knew that they were going to be important. I don't think that S was a past-life relationship. I think it was a karmic partner, and my soul knew that I needed to learn a lot of lessons with him. When I look back on my relationship with him, we literally had, like, nothing in common. I don't know why we dated. We were attracted to each other. He had this softness within him. He was an Aquarius. And I really appreciated the softness about him. We were together for four years. By the way, this is the only relationship that I've ever had in my life where I was an official couple with someone. That person looked at me and said, I want you to be my girlfriend. And I looked at him and said, I want you to be my boyfriend. And it was mutual. And he did choose me. He's the only one who did. We were together for four years. But this is also the relationship where I did the exact thing that I feared I would do if I ever got into a relationship. I lost myself. There was literally a time where I did not hang out with friends because I was afraid of hurting him. We were so codependent. He started to get upset if I hung out with my friends. So then I started to get upset if he hung out with his friends. And it was just the most toxic thing in the world. And it also just does not even align with who I am as a person because I need so much freedom and personal space and adventure. And that just was not embedded into our relationship. It was really, really bad. And to be honest, what I've realized is that I manifested this relationship. I manifested the very thing that I feared the most, losing my sense of individuality. And that's because I was in such a negative headspace back then. I literally manifested a mirror. S was meant to show me that I had the ability of losing myself if I didn't choose myself. And I did not choose myself. I chose him every single day. And I abandoned myself every single day doing that. This is a relationship where I just truly stayed way too long. We had such a codependent, addicted love and the connection. And I think a lot of that was because I feared what would happen if I left because he was in such a terrible, terrible mental health space. So I tried to be the glue to keep him together at the expense of myself. And it's really sad to say this, but there was a lot of addiction in the relationship. I would find alcohol bottles that I just did not know were in the house. He would drink and hide things and just be very emotional, and we would have very explosive fights. And I just didn't know where a lot of it was coming from. There was a point where I just did not feel safe in the house at all. There was never any physical abuse or anything like that, but the mental and emotional abuse was enough. And I knew that I needed to get out. I knew that I needed to get out of that relationship. But I was also tangled up in grad school, becoming a teacher, teaching full-time without any full-time job pay. I was working at Starbucks part-time, and I also had two dogs. And I just did not feel that I could leave because I did not have the emotional bandwidth or the mental or physical bandwidth to leave him. So I ended up leaving him on the day of my master's graduation. He did not come to my graduation. His parents did, but he did not. And that was it for me. I was like, okay. I literally sent him an email, even though we lived together. And I was like, I'm done. I can't do this anymore. I had to choose myself. I had to. And after that, that's when the universe did something amazing for me. The circumstances of this is extremely sad, but my best friend's father passed away, and this was right after my breakup. And I was living with S for months, and he was just completely erratic, and it was really just scary living with him. I didn't want to be there anymore. When she called to tell me that he passed away, I had offered to move into his room in the house that she now owned. And so I was able to leave and move in with my best friend, and I still live here to this day. Shout out, Mel. I got this cool little spot in an ADU all to myself, and I feel that the universe was like, now you're choosing yourself. Now you are not abandoning who you are, so let me give you something. Let me provide for you. When you stop abandoning yourself, the universe provides, and you'll see that so much throughout my story. And, you know, after I left and we stopped talking for a while, I actually found out that he was on much harder drugs throughout the last year and a half of our relationship. I had zero clue, so I was very grateful that I was able to get out of that situation. But like I said, it's only because I finally chose myself and put myself first. So I literally did not date for so many years after that. I only had situationships. But they weren't even like situationships. They were more like friends with benefits, people that I would just hang out with and, you know, we had benefits. There was actually this joke that my friends and I had, and we would say, all we want is three emotionally unavailable people on rotation. And so that's what I did. I found my three emotionally unavailable people. I had them on rotation. They were really great. I really liked them a lot. But I never liked them enough to date them, so they felt very safe until I met Jay. And I met Jay four years after S. So four years of being single and just like kind of living my best life, getting to know myself outside of my relationship with S, traveling the world. I did like a five-week trip in Europe, and I did so much stuff before meeting Jay. But once I met him, there was another pulse. And just talking about the story, we'll really just get into like the lessons here instead of like the details. But this relationship was actually really pivotal because it was the start of a pattern for me. This relationship started in March of 2021, and it went until late November, early December of 2021. So it was like an eight- to nine-month relationship. My relationship with Jay was quote-unquote official, but we had the opportunity to see other people because we had a long-distance relationship, and I didn't want to lose my rotation. And maybe this is also a way of keeping him at distance because I was afraid of what it would be like to once again let someone choose me fully. So I put the boundary that we were not going to be an official couple, and he could see whoever he wanted, and I can see whoever I wanted, and I was very okay with that. This person, let me just say, was very manipulative and emotionally unintelligent. He was very good at playing roles. I do believe that he was a narcissist on a very huge level. But on the surface, he was really nice. He was very nice, PhD, worked at a really amazing job, just had his life together. But, you know, the first month of us dating, I didn't know that he had a child and an ex-wife. That truly should have been my cue to leave, but instead, I was just like, well, let's look at the pattern of the last relationship. S lied to me a lot, and I didn't really know who he was. So with Jay being so honest and coming clean, I was like, oh, he's so honest. So let me just date him so much longer. So we dated for, like I said, around eight to nine months, and at the end of our time together, his mom was actually really sick. So he would spend time with his mom in Maryland, time with me in L.A., and then time with his son in Illinois. So our relationship was very long distance, which also felt safe to me because I got periods of time where I didn't get to see him. So for me, I was like, oh, this is healthy. It's like so healthy that we're able to have our own lives and then come together whenever we want. And when we weren't together, I would literally just be like, yeah, you don't need to text me throughout the week. You're good. Just always trying to keep him at arm's distance because it made me feel very safe. The final straw in that relationship and ultimately why it ended and just catapulted the most incredible lifetime movie part of my life was when he started dating this girl who was way younger than me. She was 21, and he was 38. And he wanted to spend years with her and tried to manipulate me into allowing him to do that so that he can just continue and, you know, date us both. But I was like, absolutely not. If you go on this trip with her, then we're done. And so he's like, let's take a break for a month and pick back up. And I was like, absolutely not. We're done. And I won't get into all the details about everything that happened next, but if you want to listen to Bailey Norton's podcast, Good Lo, episode 10, you'll hear the entire story. It is definitely some tea. He ended up choosing someone else who was younger and just not in the state of life that I was in because at the point where I was dating him, I had already started my spiritual business. I had already started my spiritual awakening. I knew that that relationship wasn't for me, but I also wanted so badly to be chosen that I tried to hold on a little bit longer. So we tried to give our relationship another shot over a weekend, and he decided to choose the other person. That whole relationship really messed me up because he chose someone who then stalked me, and it really messed with my mental health a lot, just not being able to get a clean break from this person when our relationship ended. When it's over, you want it to be over, but it was not going to be over because I should have chosen myself sooner, and I should have completely walked away, and I didn't do that, so I had to deal with the karmic consequence of having to be a ghost in their relationship the entire time. Let's talk about some of the karmic lessons that I learned from my relationship with Jay. Trust your gut the first time, even if the fantasy feels better than the fact. He lied. My intuition also knew that he was lying, but I wanted to believe the version that he was selling to me, this version of him that was ready for me. My inner healer was like, someone to save, yes, Chiron and Virgo, let's save someone, and that is what I kind of viewed this relationship as, an opportunity to make someone better, to save him. I also learned that chemistry is not compatibility. He and I had so much chemistry, probably the most chemistry of anyone I've ever dated or been with, but a soul spark means nothing without emotional maturity. Yes, it could feel intoxicating to be with someone, but it doesn't build anything solid. That's because trauma bonds feel like twin flames until you're in therapy wondering why you're always crying. And at this point, I really did think he was my twin flame, which, by the way, I do not believe in. That's like the most toxic spiritual concept out there, and we'll get into that in another episode for sure. I also learned that if someone can't be honest about their basics, like their age, having a child, their divorce status, they're not emotionally safe at all, no matter what else they have to offer. Transparency should be a baseline for relationships. You need honesty. Otherwise, the foundation of the house cracks, the house falls. Also, I learned that you don't need to say and prove how ride-or-die you are to be lovable. I tried so hard to just, like, power through things, and it's like, why? I stayed through life. I stayed through chaos. I stayed through confusion. He never made me feel safe, ever. I thought I felt safe with him, but having experienced another connection after that one, where I did actually feel safe for the most part, I realized that I did not experience emotional safety with him at all. I think the biggest thing, though, is that you're not responsible for someone else's chaos. You do not need to be a personal rehab center. You are not someone's safe landing unless they're also your safe space. So there were some really big things that I learned in that connection, and then there were some really big patterns that happened in my next relationship. Okay, y'all, before we get into this last one, I am going to do the thing that I used to do when I was a teacher. I would do brain breaks. So let's take a little bit of a brain break. And here's a spiritual fun fact. Your heart has an electromagnetic field that is 5,000 times stronger than your brain. Did you know that? You literally radiate energy when you feel something deeply. That's why you can actually feel someone else's vibe before they speak. That's from my impasse out there. Okay, so the last person that I was with, that was D. This one hits a lot different. And you're going to notice some similarities and patterns in this connection because that is how the universe works, and that's why I'm sharing my story, so that you can recognize the patterns in your own relationships. Okay, so D. This one, like I said, hit way different. It didn't feel like fantasy. Like it felt so real, and it came at a time in both of our lives where we were both breaking open. And in so many ways, we saw each other so clearly, and sometimes when you see something so clearly, that doesn't mean that you can hold it. With D, it wasn't that something went horribly wrong. It wasn't that like it was the worst connection in the world, and he lied to me, and then he left me to someone else who then stalked me for two years. It wasn't that. It was just timing and wounds and fears getting in the way. But I can actually really say that like this is the second time that I really loved someone post, you know, Italian exchange student. The year before D, I was completely celibate. I had done my yoga teacher training in Bali. I had done so much to detach and energetically cut cords away from J. I just did not want to be in that energy anymore with him or his girlfriend. I had nothing to do with them. But it took me a really long time to get myself back to feeling good about who I was again and to recognize my own identity apart from all that drama. And when I met D, our first date was the most magical first date I have ever been on in my life. I don't know if anything can ever top that date. We met on Hinge and we texted for like a week before meeting. And I remember the day that he was going to take me out on a date, he offered to pick me up. This is actually where the biggest shift in my life started because I found someone who treated me like a woman. Like I felt so much in my feminine with him, which is exactly what I was working on in that period of my life. And I didn't know how to receive it. It was really difficult. So having him pick me up, drop me off at my house, having him pay for everything, like every meal. Like you would hate it if I offered to pay for anything. He would open my car door for me every single time without fail. He chose the restaurants and didn't make me do any work. I did not have to do work. I felt so taken care of with him. He would be like, I just researched these restaurants, pick these two. So he made me feel like a woman in my body and I had never ever had a man make me feel that way before, ever. So I learned how to be soft and I learned how to be vulnerable because it was really hard for me to be vulnerable. I had never felt so safe sharing my feelings and emotions with someone before. And I'm always very open about my feelings, but that didn't mean that I felt safe sharing them. He made me feel safe sharing who I was, how I felt, and he always held what I said and listened and understood. And we would have a discussion. So we never fought. It was very safe and I could tell he liked me really so much and I liked him just as much. I never questioned how much he liked me because he texted me nearly every day. If we went a couple days without texting, he would call me. I just felt so top of mind for this person and I felt so chosen. But here's the catch to all of this. I wasn't. He never chose me and he was never going to choose me. I met this man just a few months after he separated from his ex-wife. So pattern number one, men who are divorced. That's a pattern. I met him at a point where he was in a really bad spot emotionally. And I knew that. But the fact that he let me in to how he was feeling and how he would tell me that he was struggling, I was really surprised to get that amount of vulnerability from him because I have never had a man tell me, some days I just don't want to get out of bed. And that was just really vulnerable and honest. And if we had an issue, an interpersonal issue, I could see that he was used to dealing things in a toxic way. So he would have this reaction and kind of like shut down. But then he would see that I was calm and I felt him be able to mirror me. And we were able to have a really good discussion. We were never ever truly upset with each other. I literally couldn't be mad at him because I just felt that he always came from a good place and I could see his heart. And I would just tell him, I was like, I just feel like you're light. You are light and you are love and I can see that. And so I really gave my honest self to him and I let myself be close to him because I had always put people in a subway car five cars down. But him, I was like, no, you can be in my car. That's okay. You can sit next to me. You can sit across from me. As long as we're in the same car, that's fine. I just felt very cherished by him and I found him to be very vulnerable with me. And I was really surprised to get the level of vulnerability that I got from him because I had never had a man tell me, some days I just don't want to get out of bed. And that was just really vulnerable and honest. And if we had an issue, an interpersonal issue, I could see that he was used to doing things in a toxic way. So he would have this reaction and kind of like shut down. But then he would see that I was calm and I felt him be able to mirror me and we were able to have a really good discussion. We were never, ever truly upset with each other. Like I literally couldn't be mad at him because I just felt that he always came from a good place and I could see his heart. And I would just tell him, I was like, I just feel like you're light. You are light and you are love and I can see that. And so I really gave my honest self to him and I let myself be close to him because I had always put people in a subway car, five cars down. But him, I was like, no, you can be in my car. That's okay. You can sit next to me. You can sit across from me. As long as we're in the same car, that's fine. He would tell me how he saw that I gave 100% to everyone around me and how much that meant to him. He really appreciated how honest I was and how I just blurted out whatever was on my mind, which I thought was a character flaw. But he really appreciated it because I communicated. And time and time again, he would tell me how much I helped him learn communication. And for a while, he was a really good student. And I made it a point to applaud him for his communication skills because I felt that he always told me where he was at with me. Even if I didn't love the answer, he always communicated his feelings towards me and our situation and towards his situation. So I just felt that we had this closeness, this intimacy that I had never found with anyone else. If we ever had an issue, there was so much physical touch. Whenever we were bringing up frustrations, there was a lot of hugging. There was a lot of just, I got you, I'm here, I'm still here. And I really loved that. And I could just tell that he really tried with me. He did. I would tell him that I needed something to feel more comfortable. He gave it to me. I told him that I wanted to be included into his world more. He invited me to his birthday party where I got to meet his friends and family and I got to help him decorate and be a part of it. And that was probably really hard for him because it was his first birthday without his ex-wife. And there was a lot of pressure on me because I knew that he wasn't quite ready to jump in, but he was trying. And I just really appreciated how much he tried. I just felt very cherished by him. And there were a lot of times where I would feel spiral because ultimately he never chose me. He did not feel that he deserved, I will say, I don't think he felt that he deserved to be loved the way that I was willing to love him because he was going through a divorce. I don't think that he thought that he should have someone take care of him. I just think that he operates through a fear lens. He has a pattern. He's in relationships with people who are not compatible with him. He stays too long. He's a people pleaser. And he does not choose himself at all. He puts himself in positions that make him probably resentful of himself because he doesn't go based on his heart. He goes based on logic and rationality. And that's not good because he never actually follows his heart. And I believe that I broke the mold. I broke the pattern. I was unrecognizable for him because I was someone who he had both chemistry and compatibility with. I was someone who he had vulnerability with. I didn't ask him to show up any other way. I wanted him to just show up as himself. But that means that I expected more from him. I expected honesty. I expected him to show up. I expected him to hide with me because I knew him too well. And that requires him to continue to be vulnerable and continue to be open. And it just wasn't something that he was ready to do. So it's so much easier to fall back and date people who are not asking you to step up, who you can hide from, who you can show only the parts that you want to show to them. It doesn't work that way with me. If you're in a relationship with me, I see you, and that's scary. And you can't hide from me, and that's scary. It's like I said, he runs away from true emotion and vulnerability. And I learned so much from that relationship. Number one, I learned that I could love someone the way that I loved him. I let myself just be so free with this person. Like he saw sides of me that I didn't even know existed. I could be annoyed at him. I could be mad at him. I could be kind of a bitch sometimes. And he was very loving and respectful. And I didn't even know that I had those sides in me because other people didn't bring them out of me, like the sides of myself that just felt so safe to just feel however I wanted to feel in front of them and not hide my emotions. But I also just felt like we weirdly had the same interests that I've had since childhood, so we were able to just talk to each other for hours and hours and hours. It literally just felt like he was my best friend that I was extremely attracted to. So it was just like the perfect connection for me. For me, I was like, this is it. This is what I want. I will fight for this. But, you know, even when the connection is strong, even when there's chemistry and compatibility, you cannot fight for someone who is not ready for you because ultimately that's what happened. I told him that I loved him, and then he left. He wasn't able to hold that truth. And I genuinely just think he just did not feel that he was worthy of being loved or deserving of being loved. So I learned a lot of karmic lessons here. I could love someone and feel safe with them. I didn't know that I could do that. With Jay, I just wasn't as affectionate and loving. But Dee, I just wanted to hold his hands all the time in public and just be super loving and affectionate and fall asleep on his chest. And every time I did, I would wake up in a pool of drool, which was gross, and he didn't even care. But that's just how safe I was. I had no idea that a man could make me feel that safe. I had no idea that a man could make me feel that seen. And it's also hard because my reality of our relationship is very different from the way that my friends see that relationship. They see it as someone who just did not choose me, who, correct, was very emotionally immature. But for me, I'm like, this relationship hits so different. And I learned that someone choosing not to love you out loud does not invalidate the depth of the connection. He may never even say what it meant to him. I don't know. But it doesn't really matter because I can just hold my truth. So if you have had this experience where you love someone and everyone else is like, let him go. He was shitty. You're not crazy. You're not making it up. You felt it. You felt the connection. That's what matters. It doesn't matter what other people think. They weren't in those moments, those tender, vulnerable moments with you. So you need to hold your truth there. Some of the karmic lessons that I also learned is that, yeah, love is not enough if someone is emotionally unavailable. I felt something real, but real does not mean ready. And I did genuinely feel that he loved me in the way that he could, in the capacity that he could. But he wasn't ready to go there with me because he knew that he would have to go there with me, and that was scary. You don't have to become smaller just to be loved. With Dee, I saw what it was like to be almost fully seen, and it taught me that almost is not enough anymore. For a long time, my friends would say, he's giving you breadcrumbs, he's breadcrumbing you. And I was like, no, he's not. He was so honest about where he was at with me every single time we had a conversation. He would just say, I'm not ready. I need more time. I'm not ready. I'm going through a divorce. I can't have a whole girlfriend while I'm going through a divorce. So I was like, but he's being so honest about where he's at. He's not breadcrumbing me. But no, he gave me just enough that I needed to stay in it. So sometimes we have to face some facts, and you cannot fall for almost. You should not fall for crumbs. You need a buffet. Sometimes the lesson isn't to fight for love. It's to honor that it happened, okay? So it didn't work, and that doesn't mean that it wasn't sacred. Some loves, they're not here to last. They're meant to awaken you. But this love awakened me. It showed me so much. I learned myself. I saw parts of myself that I really liked, and I saw the part of myself that was willing to be all in for someone when I have never wanted to be all in for someone in my entire life. This wasn't like leaving a toxic ex. This was walking away from a maybe, a hope, a dream, and I chose myself. I could have fought harder for it, but I knew that there was nothing to fight for. Once he checked out, checked out, I knew that I had to choose myself. I could not be in that situation anymore. And, like, I think it's obvious. There's a part of me that still loves him, but not in a way where I'm waiting. I'm actually just grateful. I'm grateful that I met myself through him, like, fully. He was a mirror. He was an activation. And for a moment, we did see each other, but he could not choose me, and that is not a reflection of my worth. That is a reflection of his capacity. The truth is, I want someone who is courageous and strong, who has the courage to fight for what they want and not run away from things that are real. I'm not settling for anything less than courage ever again. I want someone to be like you are someone with depth. You are someone with emotional maturity. I want to meet you where you are at because you deserve to be met there and because you see me and I want to keep seeing you. That's what I need. That's what I'm looking for. He didn't choose me, and that's okay because now I choose me. And loving someone and letting them go are not opposites. You release them in order to come home to yourself, I cannot tell you how much I found myself after that relationship ended, even though it was really hard to leave, and I still carry a lot of the memories with me. So now that I've shared these two very different connections, one chaotic and karmic, the other soul-deep and ungrounded, really, I want to talk about the patterns that they revealed. Because if you don't pause to name the pattern, you're going to repeat it just with a new face. I do not want to date another divorced man who strings me along for the same amount of time and never chooses me because they are afraid of me. That is not what I want. So this is why we identify patterns. Let's be very vulnerable here and talk about my emotional patterns. So I attract emotionally unavailable men. Jay lied and withheld. Dee did not lie, but he could not step in. Both of them kept me at an arm's length in different ways. They were different, but I always felt like I was reaching for someone who wouldn't fully meet me. I also overrid my intuition both times because I saw potential. With Jay, I saw the potential to heal, and with Dee, I saw the potential for a partnership that felt very soul-level grounded. But neither of them showed up fully in the present moment. I was loving the version of them that could be, the version of them that was potential, not who they were actually showing up as, potenched. I abandoned myself in these relationships. I stayed too long. I gave grace that wasn't being reciprocated. I was very gracious to them. I was also waiting to be chosen instead of choosing myself. The pattern wasn't just about them. It was about me and what I thought I had to endure in order to be loved. So going back to my childhood, I thought that you had to earn love. I did not know that love could just be freely given because I did not see love. The real shift didn't happen when I walked away from them. It happened when I started to walk toward myself. So really, when you really think about it, it's not really about them. It's about me. Now I ask, can my nervous system relax when I'm around someone? Can my inner child exhale in their presence? Can my soul speak freely without having to shrink who I am? Identifying patterns is one thing, but we also need to know how to spot them before we fall back in. So let's talk about the red flags and green flags that I look for now as a spiritual person who's still human, still hopeful, but I'm way less willing to bypass my own intuition and my truth. It's so easy to be like, oh, he love bombed me or he ghosted me. But, you know, a lot of times red flags can be subtle too. So red flag number one. If you're always seeking signs instead of clarity, it's a red flag. It's a red flag. With these guys, I was constantly pulling cards, looking for synchronicities, trying to decode my dreams. I just never felt grounded in these connections, and I didn't trust what was actually happening. So I clung to signs to keep the fantasy alive. That is a red flag. If your intuition feels louder than the relationship itself, something is off. If you have to consult your tarot cards every single day or every week or every month about the relationship because you don't know where it's going, they are not being clear and honest with you. They're making your nervous system go into fire flight mode. You need to walk away. This leads me to red flag number two. Your nervous system is activated more than it's regulated. That is a red flag. With S, I really did care for him a lot, but my body was always on edge because of his addiction. I wanted to fix him. I wanted to help him. I wanted to stay, and I never felt relaxed. I was emotionally breaking myself all the time. And now I know if my nervous system can't feel settled with someone, it is not love. It's in survival mode. Even with J, my nervous system did not feel calm. I was constantly in fight or flight mode because I did not know what he was thinking. He never let me in. We did not have a deep emotional connection to the point where he talked about his feelings towards me. We did have a very close relationship, so he told me a lot of his feelings, but they were never about me. They were his feelings about, like, things happening in his life. Red flag number three, you feel a deep connection, but they avoid intimacy, just like I just said about J. With D, it felt really spiritual. It felt like I just knew him in a past life, and I know it. But when it came to actually showing up consistently and being emotionally available or claiming me, he couldn't do it. And he was the most emotionally available of everyone I've dated, surprisingly, but he could not be consistent. It was too scary for him. Red flag number four, you abandon your truth to keep the connection. I mean, this showed up for me in, like, every relationship. I kept questioning whether I was asking for too much when I was asking them to show up. If you have to betray yourself to keep someone, if you have to quiet what your desires are, they're not for you. Now, let's look at the green flags because, you know, I did recognize my green flags through these connections, too. If you feel safe expressing your truth, green flag. If I can say how I feel, even if it's awkward or messy, and they don't make me feel wrong for it, that is a green flag. That is emotional safety. You should not be having to ask someone, what does this mean? Where are we going? What are you doing? What do you want? The right person will never make you ask those questions because you will always know where you stand with them. You will always have clarity. Green flag number three, your inner child feels seen and protected. When you can let your inner child shine and be really silly and be like a little kid with someone, that is when your inner child feels safe. You should be able to allow yourself to be silly. Things shouldn't always be so serious. Things should feel very easy, and you should just not feel like you're putting on a face, having to feel serious or put together or sexy all the time. It's not about that. Green flag number four, the connection feels grounding, not overwhelming. Even if it's intense or passionate, there has to be an anchor. Relationships shouldn't always feel like this person sweeps me off my feet. A relationship should feel like this person makes me feel safe and grounded, and I don't need to stress out and figure out where the relationship is going. Every relationship that you are in should feel like home. That person should make you feel like home. You know that feeling when you are on vacation and you're sleeping in all these different hotel rooms and you don't really quite sleep the same because it's not your bed, but then when you go home, you sleep super safe and sound because it's your bed. It belongs to you, and you know that your bed's not going anywhere. It's always going to be there. You need someone who makes you feel like that. You need someone who makes you feel like you don't need to keep the light on because the hotel room is a little dark and scary. If you're around someone and you're dating someone who you can just be completely yourself with as if you were with one of your family members, it's a green flag. They're safe. They make you feel safe and whole. You can talk to them about anything and not feel like you're going to get in trouble. You can be yourself and bring up issues around them. Even if it's going to hurt their feelings and they don't make you upset about it, that is safety, true safety. So let's get into our collective tarot poll. It is time. You guys learned a lot about me, and I hope it was helpful because I've processed through all of this so much, and so when I speak about it, I'm hoping that there's a lot of little areas where you can pick up some nuggets and help to process your own past relationships in the same way. Recognize the patterns. A lot of the times, we think someone is safe, we think that we love them, and then we date someone else, and you're just like, oh, that wasn't love at all. That's what happened to me. I didn't actually love Jay at all. I thought I did, but I didn't because I never felt safe and held the way that Dee held me. And none of this is to say that Dee was perfect, but you don't love someone because they're perfect. You see their flaws, and you love them anyway. That's what real love is. So hopefully, you can look back at your last relationships and find out what you still need to process through so that you can move forward. There's always more work to do, and it took me a really long time to get to the point where I'm at now where I'm like, this is exactly what happened. Karmic patterns are repeating themselves. I was pushing people away. I had an avoidant attachment style. I wasn't letting people in. Then I found someone who also has an avoidant attachment style, so they weren't going to let me in. Maybe it was a defense mechanism. Who knows? Okay, let's get into the collective tarot reading. I am using the ethereal visions deck once again. I'm pulling out two cards for us. Then I'm going to pull a love oracle card. So let's see what the cards have to say for us, the collectors today. Take what resonates. Leave what does not. We have the ace of swords. Oof. The ace of swords and the four of wands. This is beautiful. Clarity. This is clarity around home. Clarity around what feels safe. Clarity around manifestations. So clarity and celebration. The ace of swords is truth. It's that moment where the fog lifts and you start to break away from your delusions. You finally see things in yourself clearly. This card is your permission slip to name what is not working. To be radically honest about the patterns that you have kept stuck and the people who never deserved your softness in the first place. The people who you kept saying, maybe this will work out because they have potential. The four of wands, that's your reminder that peace is not boring. Safety is not settling. This is the energy of love that feels like home, as I keep mentioning. Not survival. This is the relationship you build with someone not who you chase. Not someone who you have to decode. Together these cards are saying that once you tell yourself the truth, you open the door to a completely new kind of love. One that honors your nervous system. One that meets you where you are, not where you used to be. Every relationship is a mirror so that you can see your growth. And you can choose how much more growing you want to do. These cards are not about settling. It's about finally seeing what you are worth and knowing you don't have to fight for it anymore. You are deserving of love. You are worthy of love. And here's the thing about the four of wands too. It's not about comfort zones. It's about real belonging. Settling is not the same as peace. Staying with someone who doesn't challenge your growth just because it's easier or convenient is not the four of wands. It's a pattern. So this card is a reminder that just because something looks stable on the outside doesn't mean that it's aligned on the inside. And a lot of times we stay with people who are not aligned on the inside because of what the outside looks like. But it's very important for us to honor our true selves. Why stay in something if it's not feeding your soul? Real love should feed your soul. Get clear on what you want in your life because you deserve it. Everyone deserves love and happiness. If you have to ask yourself every single day if you're with the right person, you are not with the right person. Remember that. Love is a choice. And these cards are saying that you have the clarity to make a choice for yourself so that you can feel so much more at home because everyone deserves that. And here is a journal prompt for you. I cannot express gratitude enough for you coming to listen to this podcast. I knew that today's episode was going to be very vulnerable and I'm just a really open person. You can ask me anything. I'll tell you. I'll never lie. I'll never hide anything. I just say what's on my mind no matter what. It's who I am as a person. And it means a lot for you to listen to my story and I'm really hoping that it triggers something in you to help reflect on your story. That was my intention in recording this podcast. Every relationship is a mirror. It's a mirror to your childhood, therefore a mirror to your inner child, a mirror to your 3D self, and a mirror to your soul. You have to start trusting yourself and you have to start listening to your soul. If your intuition says stay, stay. Fight. As long as the other person is putting in the same amount of energy. If your intuition says leave, leave. Leave. Go. Because there's always going to be a greater love out there for you. There will always be someone else. A lot of times we say because we don't think that we can find something better. You can. And this is not to say that I have found someone else. I haven't. But I have faith that I will. I have faith that there is someone out there who is going to see me and choose me and love me because I love myself a lot. I'm really, really happy with the person that I am. And I'll do a later episode about how I've quantum leapt through all of this healing. But this episode is about looking at the basics. Looking at the patterns. And recognizing that you are not your pattern. You have so much control. You have the ability to soar beyond everything that you've ever been through. And you are worthy of love. I cannot say it enough. You have to recognize that if you're going through heartbreak right now, if you're struggling to let go of someone, if you keep going back to the same person who just treats you like shit every single time, you're worthy of so much more. So much more. If someone decides that they want to choose you and love you and be honest and open with you, keep them. Keep that person. If you love them back, don't run. Because they might be willing to work it out with you. There's a lot of healing that can be done when it comes to love. And to be honest, step one in finding love is loving yourself. I'm not sure if any of the people that I love love themselves. And I think that was a huge issue. Like fully, truly love themselves. You have to find someone who loves themselves. Because someone cannot love you if they don't love themselves. That's how I know that I'm ready for love. Because I love myself more than anyone. And I'm looking for someone else who loves themselves too. Thank you for being here and listening to Spiritually Human. If this episode resonated with you, I'd love for you to leave a five-star review. And in the comment box, drop a question you want me to answer on the show. It could be about love, career, your spiritual path, or anything that you're navigating. I'll be pulling cards and channeling guidance for select questions in future episodes. So yes, you might get a free tarot reading, just for showing some love. You can find me on Instagram and every other platform at thespiritualgoth. Learn more about my services like my tarot, past life regressions, reiki, and courses at thespiritualgoth.com And remember, being spiritual is not about being perfect. It is about being a human being. I'll see you next time, friends. I'm just a soul on a journey home. Spiritually human, never alone.