Insights on Love and Romance

A Tale of Two Shadow Lovers

Learning What Love Is Through What It Isn’t

In my last long term relationship, I met someone who at face value had incredible confidence and charisma, sex appeal, a beautiful, healthy body, and a penchant for comedy, mindless entertainment, and having lots of fun. He was the life of the party in a town where everyone knew his name, and he was also the best f*cking speller (yes, speller, although the best lover as well) I'd ever met.

When he met me, I was an attractive, successful, "put together", driven, and educated woman building her life and vision to become what she wanted. I was silly with a naive and playful kind of ignorance, zero street smarts, and a dry sense of humor who was ready to let her hair down and have the time of her life. I was the air of confidence, stature, and could put anyone in their place.

Deep down, he was an insecure artist hungry to be seen as he was and recognized for his work. He was desperate for purpose and emotionally volatile after a life of dysfunction, chaos, and incessant psychological abuse and complete emotional abandonment and neglect. He was an addict finding numbness and self-medication in near an infinite number of expressions from collecting to hoarding to substance use. He was self-absorbed and desperate for love.

Underneath it all, I was clingy, desperate, and craving the attention, love, and approval that I never felt that I got as a child. My having it all together persona was a cold and distant cry from the insecurity, outrage, and anguish of an inner child never seen, recognized, or heard. While I didn't allow myself to be irresponsible, what I wanted most was to be taken care of.

While I built a persona of success and accomplishment to gain the love I desired, in truth, I threw myself at anybody who would give me the time of day and devoted myself as a martyr to their needs. I was self-absorbed and desperate for love.

At first glance, we were all of our coping mechanisms, numbing strategies, and efforts to fit in with society, and we - shockingly as unauthentic as we unknowingly were - looked pretty damn good.

But, we can't judge a book by its cover, can we?

Beneath the masks, we were two kids desperate for love and up to our necks in toxicity with a sh*t ton of "shadow work" we didn't even know we were missing.

It's no wonder then:

When a tornado meets a volcano, it didn't all turn out for the best... Or did it?

Ultimately, we met each other's shadows, and we had to come to terms with the fact that what we signed up for was a hoax (unknowingly, of course), and what we needed to do was the deeper digging to uncover our wounds and find and grow and love ourselves in all the places we were seeking for it in somebody else while discovering who we are authentically as people who love themselves - the coping and defense mechanisms no longer needed.

(Once we do this, we are positioned to not only receive love from someone else but actually *feel* it.)

As those masks dissolve, the relationship between two shadow lovers often does, too.

Ours did.

Despite all the trauma, drama, and tragedy of it all, I can't say I'd have chosen anyone else to do the dance of unconsciousness while uncovering shadows and learning to love myself with.

It was painful, and it was tumultuous, but it was also the time of my life, and I couldn't be where I am today if it weren't for the path I've walked and for the other shadow lover who journeyed into the valley of the shadow of death alongside me, the person who walked with me and I him on our pilgrimage to the underworld to find - and free - ourselves.