It hit me after watching A Big Bold Beautiful Journey — that quiet ache of wanting someone again. Not to fill my emptiness, but to walk beside me with his own fullness. Five years of solitude had shaped me into something I never expected: a woman so whole in her own rhythm that love now had to arrive differently — clear, conscious, uncluttered.
But life, as it often does, sent me a reflection instead of a match. A good man, kind in many ways, but not yet awake. A man who runs from his pain by running on the beach, drinks away the silence, and calls it balance. I recognised that energy too well — the charming chaos, the unspoken voids. Once, I would’ve stayed to help him find himself. This time, I watched the pattern instead.
Because I’ve learned that what looks like attraction is often just energy remembering where it once felt safe — their darkness seeking my light. And I, with my healer’s heart and open soul, had spent too many years mistaking that pull for love.
The Pattern
It’s always the same in essence, though the faces change. Men who are magnetic in their own ways — curious, funny, restless, alive — yet carrying a quiet heaviness beneath it all. They move fast, talk fast, live fast, as if stillness might expose the parts of themselves they’re not ready to meet.
They’re drawn to me not because of romance, but recognition. My light feels like home to their lostness. They sense the safety, the acceptance, the way I can see through the walls they’ve built. But what they call connection is often just their spirit reaching for oxygen.
For years I mistook that longing for love. I called it chemistry, destiny, even spiritual union. But really, it was my old wound — the little girl who once wanted her father’s love — stepping into the role of saviour again. I kept offering warmth to men who were frozen, believing that if I loved them enough, they’d thaw.
But light cannot save what refuses to see itself.
And I finally understood — I wasn’t meeting lovers. I was meeting lessons.
Outgrowing Codependency
For years, I didn’t know what it was called — this constant pull toward men who were incomplete, chaotic, or lost. I just knew I wanted to help, to nurture, to be needed. I wanted love, but I was unconsciously looking to heal what they could not heal themselves.
That, I now see, is codependency. It’s when our love is not free, but transactional — not of equals, but of imbalance. It’s when we give ourselves away in service of another’s growth, hoping they’ll meet us in return, and often ending up drained, unseen, and disconnected from our own needs.
Outgrowing codependency is subtle. It starts with noticing the pattern, feeling the tug of old wounds, and saying quietly to yourself: “I am not responsible for someone else’s darkness. I am responsible for my own light.”
It’s a sacred liberation. The kind that allows you to walk away from drama, to protect your energy, and to finally understand that being alone — whole, sovereign, free — is not loneliness. It’s clarity.
And it’s from this clarity that real partnership — if it comes — can meet you on equal footing, in presence, and in truth.
The Realisation
It came softly, like truth often does — while talking to my close mate. I told him how it always begins the same way: the spark, the pull, the sense that someone finally gets me. But underneath it, there’s always a current — not of mutual recognition, but of need.
And that’s when it clicked.
I am walking around like light. People don’t fall for me; they fall for the way they feel in my presence.
My energy becomes a balm for their ache.
My groundedness, their temporary high.
My clarity, their mirror — too bright, sometimes, for them to look into.
Their attraction isn’t of the body; it’s spiritual hunger disguised as desire.
And in every connection, I was being asked the same silent question: Will you heal me again?
But I no longer want to be the medicine for another’s unhealed parts. I want partnership, not patients. I want presence that expands me, not darkness that feeds on me.
The truth is — every “dark” man I ever loved showed me another layer of my own light. They came to teach me boundaries, self-respect, discernment.
They came so I could finally remember that I am not here to fix what refuses to rise.
The Inner Conflict
There’s a strange tenderness in realising that I no longer crave what the world calls love. I don’t miss constant messages, shared closets, or someone sleeping beside me every night. I love my space — the stillness of my mornings, the order of my home, the purity of my own energy untouched by anyone else’s noise.
And yet, sometimes, I feel a quiet ache — not for company, but for understanding.
For a man who doesn’t need to consume my light to feel alive. Someone who has sat with his shadows long enough to know they are not monsters but mirrors. Someone who speaks the language of stillness, who can meet me in the silence without needing to fill it.
So yes, maybe I am scared of commitment — but not because I fear love.
I fear losing myself again.
I fear shrinking my wildness to fit inside someone’s comfort.
I fear clutter — emotional, energetic, and literal. Men who leave their mess behind, both in my space and in my spirit.
For years I thought something was lacking in me — that I was too spiritual, too detached, too self-sufficient. But now I see that I’m simply unwilling to return to the drama I’ve outgrown. My solitude isn’t loneliness — it’s sovereignty. And if love ever enters again, it will have to honour that.
The Deeper Truth
Maybe I’m not avoiding love. Maybe I’m simply refining its frequency.
The old ways of loving — the saving, merging, losing — don’t fit anymore. My heart has learned discernment. My soul, boundaries. My energy, self-respect.
I don’t crave intensity; I crave integrity. I don’t need fireworks; I need depth — a steady flame that doesn’t flicker with every wind.
If love comes, it won’t demand my healing power; it will bring its own. It won’t take from my solitude; it will deepen it.
I used to think I had to choose — between being spiritual and being in love, between being wild and being safe, between being free and being held. But the truth is simpler: love, when it’s real, won’t ask me to choose. It will meet me where I already am — in light, in truth, in freedom.
Until then, I’ll keep tending my own fire.
Not waiting — just being.
Because sometimes, the most beautiful thing a woman can do is stop healing others and start honouring the light she already is.
I don’t know if love will ever arrive again, or if it even needs to.
Maybe it’s already here — in the way I live, the way I care for myself, the way I protect my peace.
I used to think I was hard to love. Now I see I was simply waiting for love to rise to meet me — not the kind that clings to my light, but the kind that stands beside it.
If it never comes, I’ll still be whole.
If it does, it will be a meeting of equals — two beings who have faced their own darkness and learned to hold their own hearts first.
Until then, I’m not guarding my heart. I’m honouring it.
That, I think, is what real love starts with.