Since I broke up 2 years ago from a serious relationship I found myself in the search of love for myself. It was a tough start, finding out I almost had no appreciation for me. I continued a journey of intense personal development, deep healing processes, and self-search. I could have never imagined that loving myself would be so difficult. But I found moments of deep love for myself, an appreciation I never felt before. As it continued to grow, there was now a basic self-love present in me, I didn’t NEED the affirmations from others anymore.
A year ago I started Compass to Connection and I was looking for a quote that would represent what I wanted to express with the stories I told on my blog. Then I found this one of vulnerability-queen Bréne Brown: ‘In order for connection to happen, we must allow ourselves to be seen, really seen.’. I felt with a stable amount of self-love I desired and felt ready to connect with others again. I remember a moment I was in the shower in Bilbao, Spain making the decision for myself. I’m done waiting for the right person to come on my path. If I feel an interesting connection I want to explore with someone, I’m going to show myself, allow myself to be seen. I will start living by the words I speak. Oh boy, that felt vulnerable. I started to be open to people about my attraction to them. I had small and bigger successes, a romantic kiss by the river, deep conversations under the stars or a mindblowing multiple orgasm night. Sometimes that was enough for me, sometimes I got rejected anyway because they didn’t want to continue a journey together.
I learned that the rejection wasn’t always because something was wrong with me. Most rejections are due to ‘fit’ and circumstances. I love myself enough now to know I’m a fantastic beautiful woman and I deserve to be loved. But when the rejection happens, it hurts. Always. I can feel the emotional pain coming in as if it is physical.
Connection makes us feel as we ‘belong’, rejection gives us the opposite feeling. It is so normal that it hurts because that desire for belonging goes way back when living in a tribe and being accepted was our only chance of survival and it was a warning to adapt behavior. Living in a different century we could ask ourselves if the feeling of rejection is still useful and may be able to change our belief system around it.
Most of the time if another person makes a decision for a different path or choice that doesn’t align with your desire, they might reject your attempt to connect. They don’t reject YOU as a person. It is us, ourselves, who makes it personal and so you reject yourself.
When I try to push it away ‘It’s all okay, it’s not a big deal’ it bursts out in lonely moments of calling myself bad names and blaming every rejection in my life as my own fault. Rejection makes me feel embarrassed, sad, disappointed or discouraged. But when I allow those emotions to be there, like I did yesterday, where I cried for 20 minutes at home, nurtured myself the whole evening and by writing it off in the morning... I feel only gratefulness is left. Grateful for the moments spend together, grateful for allowing me to fall in love again, grateful for the lessons learned.
Being rejected meant I went out of my comfort zone, it meant I tried, I was open and vulnerable. My self-love will be tested and will grow with every rejection, I will stop rejecting myself so much. And when I allow myself to be seen, the chance of rejection is bigger… but so is the chance for love! I trust now that the universe has something better for me.
