These Men Are Gifts

Photo by Abhi Ryan; creative commons license.

“In your search for love, you’ve helped a lot of people,” my daughter says as we walk along the fields of the farm in Georgia where we’ve evacuated for Hurricane Gustav.

She’s been away at college for several weeks, so I fill her in on my suddenly very active social life since she’s been gone.  I tell her about Cancerian men I’ve been out with who have no depth and no connection, ones I won’t see again.

I tell her about the sweet-mannered Pisces I’ve been out with twice and really seemed to connect with but he suddenly seemed to lose interest, literally overnight, much to my disappointment.  He has old wounds yet to deal with–where have I heard this before?–and needs some solitude to work things out.

But since then, I’ve met someone new who amazes me, but just as quickly as the Scorpio Sun with Scorpio Rising has come into my life, he’s leaving, being moved to the East Coast by his superiors, and neither of us wants to get into a long-distance relationship.  And he, too, has wounds.  He’s a bittersweet blessing to me, but Gods, I am so grateful he found me becuase he’s done more to heal some of my oldest hurts than he can ever imagine.

It seems I most often attract men who are still licking their wounds from the last women they loved, men who are idealists, men who are rather “different” in their mindsets.  My compassion and uniqueness seem to fill a void for them and when we make that kind of connection, it’s very good and very intense.  Actually, it seems that the men are either still emotionally frazzled or they aren’t at all in touch with their emotions, and the latter of those, I don’t tend to connect with at all–you know, the ones where you’re trying to figure out a polite way to escape through the restroom window  half-way through the first date.

“These men all needed something to help make them whole, and they got it from you,” my daughter points out, “even if the relationship didn’t last.”  She’s met enough of them and knows their stories in a way that I have a harder time seeing with any objectivity.  But there were men who found nurturing from me, or a way to ease themselves out of feeling awkward in the social scene, or simply gentle friendship or a helpful conversation.

For as much as whatever gift each has received from knowing me, I have to admit that there were sweet gifts from each of them as well, no matter how long the interaction before they either moved on or were moved on. One gave me confidence dating again.  One restored my sense of innocence and wonder, and showed me a different way to regard myself.  Another made me look hard at why I wanted certain things and tweak my desires.  One showed me that I’d come a lot further in my healing than I’d dared to think.  And one gave me back my sense of myself as a passionate, sexual being.

I doubt any of them knew at the time how much their gifts patched old wounds of my own and helped make me “more whole.”  For now, I keep my heart open and allow them to come and go, and perhaps one day, to return again.