Are you romantic, lovelorn, or cynical about true love and finding your soul mate?
Can you identify with my near misses?
Take heart. I've learned that fate flirts with us.
I realize...and thank God for it, many potential soul mates walk among us. Maybe, they represent different vibrations of the same spirit?
ARTICLE CATEGORY: Romance/Other Loves
Passion's Playground: Soul Mates I Missed
Helga's Heartlines: A Journal
March 2, 2001
Newmarket, Ontario
They were different from each other, yet the same. Three different men - three heart-stopping, extraordinary episodes - at different points in my life - happened to me. Tall, dark and handsome, they were almost too beautiful to be. Brooding, serious-minded types, though definitely not devoid of humor, whose very demeanor would involuntarily unnerve me. Well proportioned and physically fit, they exuded strength and masculinity. I was mesmerized by their magnetic combination of firm, chiseled features and deep-set, lustrous eyes, which wore an intense, unreadable expression most of the time. Naturally, these attributes made them the type of men all the ladies love. I’m such a realist and pragmatist about romantic relationships - in the sense that I’m only interested in a sure thing - that I honestly was quite content to admire them from afar, in the way of a casual, detached, and unobserved, observer.
But, then, in each situation, something inexplicable occurred. I was stunned - Suddenly, they saw me! Almost before I was fully aware of it. They sought me out; they stared, they followed me with their gaze. What did they see? They made me look at myself in a new light. I’m sure they made other females look at me, too, and ask themselves the same question - What does he see in her?
I’m not stunning, not a knockout. “Quiet beauty” I’d call it. Petite, attractive, curvy rather than willowy, I would have preferred to be model-mold svelte. Overall, I’d sum up the effect of my figure and face as soft, pliable, pleasingly proportioned. Cute and cuddly? For whatever reason, they liked what they saw. Perhaps because I appeared to be their antithesis...?
Once I realized it - too late - I was hooked, drawn to them, irresistibly. To the degree that I attracted their attention, I automatically felt myself respond. Yet, not without ambivalence. Oh, how I went to great pains to be subtle and not show I was smitten.... It’s laughable, when I think about it, now. (Would I do it again, given the chance? Probably - My compulsive perversity!) Even though I was fascinated and emotionally, psychically, physically, stimulated, still, the overriding feeling in me was apprehension. The more I liked them the more I felt driven to keep them at a distance. Thus, the first time it happened I was the least able to deal with it. Mind you, I was a young thing at the time, still legally a minor. He was the most compelling and unrealizable, because of my age; the last of them, the closest I got. The story has been one of gradual but natural progression – Alas, at best, an unforgettable, but fleeting one.
Cruel fate. Why did you do this to me? Why, more than once? Why did this happen - always, only - in impossible situations? When circumstances were in the way of fostering a relationship? Why have these men been the ones to look at me in that special, soul-stirring way, to say the things they said? These are moments that are magical in my life, that my mind seizes upon, sometimes, in quiet moments.
When I soul-search about these “soul mates” I missed, I recognize how my pattern of relating has derived from concepts of Love which I learned from literature and mythology, and unwittingly, internalized. I have actually played out in real life the traditional and evolutional gamut of idealized Love between a man and a woman –- Spiritual Love, Courtly Love, Romantic Love. Short of dying for love, that is - the Romeo and Juliet, Tristan & Isolde tragic hero, doomed love stuff. Nevertheless, I suspect I’m deep down convinced the course of true love is fraught with hurdles and obstacles, and must be won, to be deserved. I’m working at unlearning this notion. It’s not been a very helpful one to have.
More fundamentally, though, my pattern of relating plays out the deeply ingrained, ultimately self-defeating relationship to which I had adapted, in childhood, with respect to my father – one of fear and awe. It might have been different had I truly been an unqualified Daddy’s Girl, like every little girl should be, but that experience, unfortunately, was all too brief. I had a taste of it, only, when it mattered the most. I lay no blame, honestly, but emotionally, I know some kind of damage was done...I’m still working on fixing it.... A healthy father-daughter relationship is critical for a woman, they say, and I have come to realize.
I realize, too, and thank God for it, many potential soul mates walk among us. Maybe, they represent different vibrations of the same spirit. Seen in that light, perhaps this story of mine isn’t over....
~ Helga Marion Ross ~
Copyright 2001
March 2, 2001
Newmarket, Ontario
They were different from each other, yet the same. Three different men - three heart-stopping, extraordinary episodes - at different points in my life - happened to me. Tall, dark and handsome, they were almost too beautiful to be. Brooding, serious-minded types, though definitely not devoid of humor, whose very demeanor would involuntarily unnerve me. Well proportioned and physically fit, they exuded strength and masculinity. I was mesmerized by their magnetic combination of firm, chiseled features and deep-set, lustrous eyes, which wore an intense, unreadable expression most of the time. Naturally, these attributes made them the type of men all the ladies love. I’m such a realist and pragmatist about romantic relationships - in the sense that I’m only interested in a sure thing - that I honestly was quite content to admire them from afar, in the way of a casual, detached, and unobserved, observer.
But, then, in each situation, something inexplicable occurred. I was stunned - Suddenly, they saw me! Almost before I was fully aware of it. They sought me out; they stared, they followed me with their gaze. What did they see? They made me look at myself in a new light. I’m sure they made other females look at me, too, and ask themselves the same question - What does he see in her?
I’m not stunning, not a knockout. “Quiet beauty” I’d call it. Petite, attractive, curvy rather than willowy, I would have preferred to be model-mold svelte. Overall, I’d sum up the effect of my figure and face as soft, pliable, pleasingly proportioned. Cute and cuddly? For whatever reason, they liked what they saw. Perhaps because I appeared to be their antithesis...?
Once I realized it - too late - I was hooked, drawn to them, irresistibly. To the degree that I attracted their attention, I automatically felt myself respond. Yet, not without ambivalence. Oh, how I went to great pains to be subtle and not show I was smitten.... It’s laughable, when I think about it, now. (Would I do it again, given the chance? Probably - My compulsive perversity!) Even though I was fascinated and emotionally, psychically, physically, stimulated, still, the overriding feeling in me was apprehension. The more I liked them the more I felt driven to keep them at a distance. Thus, the first time it happened I was the least able to deal with it. Mind you, I was a young thing at the time, still legally a minor. He was the most compelling and unrealizable, because of my age; the last of them, the closest I got. The story has been one of gradual but natural progression – Alas, at best, an unforgettable, but fleeting one.
Cruel fate. Why did you do this to me? Why, more than once? Why did this happen - always, only - in impossible situations? When circumstances were in the way of fostering a relationship? Why have these men been the ones to look at me in that special, soul-stirring way, to say the things they said? These are moments that are magical in my life, that my mind seizes upon, sometimes, in quiet moments.
When I soul-search about these “soul mates” I missed, I recognize how my pattern of relating has derived from concepts of Love which I learned from literature and mythology, and unwittingly, internalized. I have actually played out in real life the traditional and evolutional gamut of idealized Love between a man and a woman –- Spiritual Love, Courtly Love, Romantic Love. Short of dying for love, that is - the Romeo and Juliet, Tristan & Isolde tragic hero, doomed love stuff. Nevertheless, I suspect I’m deep down convinced the course of true love is fraught with hurdles and obstacles, and must be won, to be deserved. I’m working at unlearning this notion. It’s not been a very helpful one to have.
More fundamentally, though, my pattern of relating plays out the deeply ingrained, ultimately self-defeating relationship to which I had adapted, in childhood, with respect to my father – one of fear and awe. It might have been different had I truly been an unqualified Daddy’s Girl, like every little girl should be, but that experience, unfortunately, was all too brief. I had a taste of it, only, when it mattered the most. I lay no blame, honestly, but emotionally, I know some kind of damage was done...I’m still working on fixing it.... A healthy father-daughter relationship is critical for a woman, they say, and I have come to realize.
I realize, too, and thank God for it, many potential soul mates walk among us. Maybe, they represent different vibrations of the same spirit. Seen in that light, perhaps this story of mine isn’t over....
~ Helga Marion Ross ~
Copyright 2001
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