10 Reasons To Appreciate The Ex That Blew Your Mind

I just finished being personally mortified in a Law of Attraction / vibrational sense by an otherwise great guest post over on the Dating Goddess website, and am now about to reset my vibration to clear out anything that I picked up while thinking about what I skimmed over in the article.

Actually, thinking again - the contrast I experienced from reading that article was SO INTENSE, I should probably expose myself to it again and practice turning it around in my head from what it's talking about (which is what I don't want) to one that matches what I DO want... Doesn't Abraham say that they wish for us to experience strong contrast so that we create even more passionately in our futures?

Yes, I think I'll write a response to that article, from another ... more positive angle :) More reflective of what kind of boyfriend I see myself having and loving next.

10 Reasons To Appreciate The Ones That Blew Your Mind

I know that the habit for most people is to get down on themselves if a relationship with a truly great person breaks up. It usually does it because of our own insecurities and therefore we know, deep down, that if we had just been a bit more secure with ourselves and not acted like such a nut so often, we could still have them with us, and that thought pains us.

According to the Law of Attraction, as we think about "lack" in our lives, we attract more of it. So the more we think about how we screwed up and how we wish we could go back and do it again and how we wish this person was still in our lives, the more we attract feelings of screwing up, wishing to escape from current time and escape to the past, and we alienate ourselves from more and more people as well.

On the other hand, if we are to use the Law of Attraction to our advantage, we could purposely put ourselves in a state of appreciation about the many aspects of past relationships that we recognize were good and healthy and rewarding, and send out (via our attention to it) the vibration of appreciation about the good things that came about via love, therefore attracting more good thoughts and good feelings and healthy versions of love into your thoughts and life experience.

So, with appreciation in mind, I share this 10-point ode to the various ex boyfriends, husbands, lovers and friends I've had in my life:

10 Reasons To Appreciate The Ones That Blew Your Mind

10. He taught you that joy and happiness and sexual passion are closely linked, and you learned to value making love out of happiness instead of sexual passion being associated with soothing your anxieties or self-esteem.

9. He taught you that "still waters run deep" - on the surface you couldn't have realized how deeply passionate he was about his personal interests, nor how much he knew and loved to share with others. Once you and he were close enough for you to "touch" those parts of him, it was like they lit up like a city within his eyes!

8. He helped you understand the true meaning of commitment, devotion and deep love, and helped you trust your own senses of those things more deeply than anyone else ever had.

7. You learned from him to fully trust the difference between natural human instinct and the power of the choices that we make when it comes to our physical actions. By watching and talking to him, and by watching and listening to yourself.

6. You learned from him that it can be completely comfortable to take personal space time when required, and his smile upon your return (and yours upon his) helps remind each other that you love to see each other come back around after taking their personal time. With this personal space you feel a sense of freedom and trust beyond measure.

5. You learned more about what truly thoughtful lovers look like, think like, value, and are capable of inspiring within you. You've experienced passions that you didn't realize were there - animal in nature yet intelligent and rational as well. And isn't it great that he knows exactly where it's appropriate to act like lovers, and where more indetectable inside jokes are a better form of foreplay (when others are around)??!!

4. He taught you that every relationship provides contrast - even the most rewarding ones with the most passion, love, devotion and shared dreams. He gave you WAY more good stuff than bad stuff to focus on about him, which made him even easier to love as you practice keeping your attention on what you want, not what you don't want.

3. You learned, while being in a relationship, that a man's love of life in general, and confidence in things always turning out for the best, along with his innate trust in the people around him to make loving, responsible decisions CAN influence your personal will and strength to strive to be the best person you can be. Your trust of your judgement combined with his trust of his judgement is incredibly powerful, and you learned what a gift it was to return that trust and power to others around you.

2. Once the relationship ended, you were fully convinced that a lot of what other women talk about in their relationships doesn't HAVE to happen, and by trusting your own instincts (aka emotional guidance system) you'll be so relaxed with yourself and how life is going that you'll have your choice of men and be able to find an even BETTER match next time around.

1. All of your boyfriends in your life - good, bad or indifferent - have helped you clarify your "perfect" relationship: What you don't want, what you DO want, what's important to you, and what you hadn't thought about but would like to think about more. Be open to your own internal guidance and learn from it, and reap the rewards!

So, here's the best thing to do with the one that got away: say "thanks," appreciate the great things he taught you ARE really out there, and get ready to attract the next one that will be EVEN BETTER!

The Girlfriend Code of Ethics, Dealing With The Ex

Ha ha ha, I asked for more contrast in my life, and I got it!

I'm now beginning to clear out some old cobwebby, socially-programmed habits regarding The Ex (and Ex can be plural, but Exes doesn't look as good), and have also run into an Ex from almost a half a lifetime ago who I've been talking to lately.

First I'll talk about the social programming regarding the more recent Ex, and then I'll delve into information about the Dusty Ex (you know, the one I found up in a box in my attic that I didn't think I'd see again).

Social Programming and The Girlfriend Code of Ethics

What do you think, people?

If you were workmates in a small, intimate company with both sides of a couple who had been married for nearly 10 years and divorced in the last few, and you got involved with the man after he was divorced, what respects, if any, would you extend to the ex-wife?

What if you kept in contact on a social site with the ex-wife (liking almost every status line and making cheery comments on others), and agreed to meet for coffee to "catch up" after many years of not seeing one another?

At what point would you admit to being more than "just friends", and therefore having had access to his innermost deep thoughts ... about MY relationship with HIM?

And why do I even CARE?  Or DO I even care...  I wax and wane between these things, but I really do think that all those questions above come from my social conditioning and from the Girlfriend Code of Ethics that I somehow learned about in my early teen years.

I'm confident that we broke up for good reasons, that it was about the only thing we could really do since counselling failed so miserably (with him giving up or walking out, claiming we had only one problem in our relationship, yet he asked for a divorce from me after that one problem was resolved) and I would have had to have given up my very soul to stay with him.

He's always wanted to "be friends" and every time I've had any contact with him, or heard from others within my social circle who have contact with him, he comes across as a depressed, lonely, self-loathing guy, which repels any interest of mine in fostering a friendship with healthier boundaries than I managed while we were married (moved in together way too fast).

I guess I care because I know that at the end of our relationship, after "the talk", the stuff he was spouting about why he thought I was doing what I was doing was flabbergasting.  Utterly flabbergasting.  I was shocked and speechless that he'd ever think that I'd be that kind of person.

But I realized very quickly that he was just re-writing his vision of me into something that was more in line with the fact that we had broken up and weren't going to be together forever anymore.  He needed to feel like I was the bad guy in order to make the transition.

So I did pretty well at not taking it personally.

Until going for coffee with this old workmate (I'm looking to increase my quota of girlfriends too, not just boys to date), and finding someone who is nice and cheery to my face, but if she's as "tight" with my ex as she claims to be (and oh god, he's her "life coach"! *boggle*) then what lines of BS has she been fed about my part of our breakup?

But again, Law of Attraction... I'm doing my best to focus on what I want, not what I don't want.

As a result, I'm putting more efforts into finding other female friends to fill my Friendtris (like the Mantris, but more for my girlfriend social needs), planning to "squeeze out" this girl from the wee spot she holds.  I'm also not initiating meet-ups where we may talk about what's going on in our lives, because I don't want to feed her anything she can bring back.  If she asks me, I will conveniently be busy.

Oh, and I think I should add... the story she told outside of any interaction with my ex was a scary one as well.   Not thought processes and life habits I want to bring into my close circles that can influence my vibration!  She's not a good girlfriend choice, but she sure has made me think.

Filling My "Four Man Plan" Mantris

I've decided to jump on this Four Man Plan bandwagon, and have signed up for some online dating sites, and have some conversations going on there, but when I read the Four Man Plan forum and see other people starting out with week one, I feel like I'm way behind, and way slow compared to them.

Some of them seem to be able to put 10 Plan Men onto their graphs within the first week, and I've only managed two!

I think my challenge is that right now I feel like I'm in a "waiting" phase in my life.

I don't have a normal J.O.B. through which to get exposure to socialization (I am a self-employed writer), and a hobby that used to consume a large portion of my life and thought time has been put by the wayside lately, and I haven't quite found that "new thing" yet to dive into.

And as a "mesovert" (one who vascillates between introvert and extrovert) I have kept only a small group of friends because my overall social needs are low. Being a happy person who believes in the Law of Allowing, I can be happy alone or with others, after all. But that doesn't help in terms of finding new potentials for dating and for a long term relationship.

I have to keep telling myself that getting involved in a bunch of new social groups is ultimately the best choice for me right now, and the dates will flow along naturally. I'm an athletic, attractive, single, happy, mid-30s woman without children... the only thing that is missing in my life right now to fill the mantris is the social connections.

So part of my building my mantris for the first while, ultimately, is to discuss what I'm doing to increase my socialization exposure in the world.

So on that note, I've spent some time thinking, with the Law of Attraction and The Secret as a fundamental basic portion of the thought process, about what my life would be like if it were PERFECT.

Not saying we ever GET there, but the aspiration towards the eternally blissful and energetic state is a noble one, in my mind.

I've come to terms with the fact that there are some people who thrive on teaching other people what they've learned, and then there are people who thrive on learning what other people have to teach. I'm sure there are people who fall into other categories, but I'm looking at the contrast of my roommate (who is my also adult brother) and myself in this example, where he's the teacher, and I'm the student.

Not that he's MY teacher, or that I'm HIS student... but when we talk about what inspires us and what excites us, he often talks about being out in front of other people and sharing his knowledge and helping others along their path. For me, however, I am excited by the thought of learning and understanding the various ideas and structures around me, and exploring the human emotional connection to the ideas and philosophies and rules. If someone wants to talk with me about my observations, I'm always up for a conversation, but generally I'm more interested in exploring and learning and understanding and asking questions.

With this realization that I am an eternal student, I've begun to refer to myself as a wide-eyed student of the world, and have begun to look around the world with a student's eyes instead of worrying about student equaling "child" in some way.

Allowing myself to be a student, I am looking around my local area for opportunities to learn. And being child-free but believing that children need outside-the-family positive influences just as much as they need loving parents, my eyes are heading towards sports.

Every organized gathering needs people to fulfill different functions, and sports are a great foundation for those little humans growing up into adulthood.

I have started to make contacts around regarding getting into Officials and Referee clinics for various sports in my city - baseball, sailing, swimming and badminton being the first four. I fully expect that once I get into those social atmospheres and start to gain familiarity and make friends, I'll be able to fill up my empty Mantris spots without much effort.

But until then, I spend time in my workshop thinking about what the perfect, ultimate relationship would be like. What would it be like when I walk into the door of our shared abode? What passions would I take on as mine, that he would appreciate, and what passions would he have that I could appreciate for him, as well? What agreements would we come to that would be mutually beneficial and life and energy-affirming?

It will be very interesting to work out the thoughts that are inspired by this whole process, especially once I start actively going out on dates more.

I hope you'll subscribe and come back to read about it, and share your thoughts and reactions!

Welcome to my Four Man Plan Dating Blog

Welcome to my Four Man Plan Dating Blog!

I am a divorced, mid-30s female who DOESN'T suck at love, but does enjoy having a structure to follow in terms of how to make good decisions to build a good future.

Probably doesn't make sense to anyone else but me, but if you stick around and read my thoughts you might get some idea of it :)

What Is The Four Man Plan?

It's a book by Cindy Lu, and it's also a "dating structure ruleset" designed to help women (and femme gay men?) find an awesome long term relationship while not allowing themselves to get snagged into a poor quality one.

Having been part of a the dynamic of a codependent relationship in the past, despite the fact that the man and myself are both awesome people (just not awesome together), I aspire to greatness in this next one, and finding the Four Man Plan has been a blessing.

Within its rules I find comfort and relief, because I can not only see guilt-mongering techniques (those are the ones that I allowed myself to be sucked into previous bad relationships with), but I have new strategies for how to handle them, without worrying how "hurt" the guilt-mongerer will tell me they feel.

Within this blog, I will write my thoughts about applying this dating ruleset to my life.

And oh yeah, I'm also strongly influenced by the teachings in The Secret and the Law of Attraction:

Rule to live by:  Think about what you want, not what you don't want.

Rule to live by:  The universe will match your vibration, so be mindful to imagine yourself having already accomplished or achieved what it is you want to accomplish or achieve, and bask in the glory of that feeling, instead of thinking about what "is" right now, what is missing, or what doesn't feel good.

I'm using this diary to work out my thoughts and feelings.