The real lover isn’t the version of you that’s trying to get it right. Also it’s not just the more confident, more open, more aware you.
The real lover is who you are when you feel safe enough to be fully yourself.
Do you feel safe to be fully you in relationship?
Do you trust that you’ll be appreciated and loved? Not just for your warmth and openness, but also for your sensitivity, your fear, the parts of you that hold back?
Many of us don’t realise how much we manage ourselves in relationship. We soften important boundaries. We adapt and try to be easier to love, less demanding, more contained. We’ve been hurt before.
Or we restrain our masculine intensity – our strength and direction. Or dilute our feminine flow of devotional love and feeling. We pull back from our full expressions of love and freedom.
I see this repeatedly in my work.
In dating, someone feels a genuine connection but holds back their interest or desire. They don’t want to seem too much, too keen, too vulnerable. On the surface everything seems ok, friendly and harmonious, but something essential isn’t being revealed, and the connection slowly fades or goes into the ‘friend-zone’.
Anger is often repressed rather than expressed in longer-term relationships, Someone feels hurt or frustrated but stays quiet — not wanting to create conflict or seem unloving. The anger doesn’t disappear; it turns into distance, and intimacy slowly dies. I’m not at all advocating angry violence but making room for it as an emotion and finding ways to feel and embrace it safely.
When there isn’t enough safety, the body doesn’t open. It freezes, guards, withdraws, shuts down.
And when this happens over time, our capacity to give and receive love is limited. Our passion is diluted, our wild animal energy is nowhere to be found.
Then we start to wonder why the spark fades. Why we feel disconnected from ourselves and our relationships don’t go anywhere. Why connections that once felt alive start to deaden.
This isn’t a failure of intention or love. It’s often an unconscious response to not feeling safe enough to fully arrive.
The real lover emerges when the nervous system feels safe enough to stay open, present, and real. This is something that we can cultivate within ourselves, in small groups and with a beloved.
The real lover is able to be all of themselves, the gentle and wild, the light and the dark, the deep and the humorous. To be vulnerable and powerful. To offer their gifts in relationship, to be of value, to be free and loved.
Firstly we give ourselves permission to reveal more of ourselves. We discover who we really are. We trust to show ourselves in both ordinary and spiritual aspects. Secondly, we show up in our relationships and see what happens. It’s ok to take it slowly, after all you are exploring new ground. Thirdly, we also open to embrace the other’s realness and expression too. Life and love can become a wonderful exciting journey, and also rooted in everyday life.
This is the exploration at the heart of my work, and of the Attraction, Intimacy & Love Workshop – a space to meet yourself honestly in relationship, and to discover what becomes possible when you no longer have to hold yourself back.
Love,
