Episode #2 - Lessons in Heartbreak & The Time-Fate Theory

In this episode I get real about my past heartbreaks and the life-lessons learned. I also discuss my theory on time/fate, and how that mindset led me to finding true love.

Transcript

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Hi, babies. This is Chloe from thereiqueer.com And welcome to The ReiQueer Podcast. This is our second official episode. If you haven't already checked out our first episode, please do so. It was all about my intro to Reiki and just my story of how The ReiQueer even came to be. If you’re tuning in for the second time, Welcome back! Thank you so much for supporting the podcast. Today's episode is all about lessons in heartbreak and true love. I really want to share my own journey on heartbreak and true love. What I've learned, what I've had to really get real with myself about, and just my transition period from leaving terrible relationships to actually being in my first ever healthy relationship. So I really want to take everyone through my own journey, not only through romantic heartbreak, but the other side of that, of finding true love, figuring out how to trust myself again and all the things that happen in between. I feel like I'm really still figuring out my podcast voice, which I didn't know was a thing until we started editing the first episode that we just did. And I realized that I do a lot of heavy breathing in between words, especially if I am super worked up. And I was really reminding myself, you know, what I was giving? I was giving those old Pentecostal pastors where they're getting so ramped up, and I was just like, my gosh, girl, relax a little bit. I was definitely on my T.D. Jakes moment, but I'm bringing it down. We're figuring out the podcast voice, we’re figuring out how to not make gross mouth sounds in the mic. And, you know, this is a this is a journey for the both of us. I want to start off by first giving some context of my own experiences and heartbreak. First of all, I am fascinated by this topic. Few years ago, I actually [created and] filmed a documentary because I was so fascinated by heartbreak in the Black community and the different areas that it came from. I realized that heartbreak is one of the greatest unifiers of human beings alike. Like, I don't think there is a single grown up, a single, even child or teenager who hasn't experienced heartbreak on some level. And it was abundantly interesting to me to talk about that, to dissect where that all came from. And I feel like there is definitely another podcast episode in there somewhere. So for the context of today's episode, I want to specifically talk about heartbreak in the realm of my own romantic experiences. I have been in love twice in my life, and both of those all three times, including obviously my current relationship. But in the past, twice in my life. And both of those relationships were very not good, to say the least. From these two relationships, I learned two fundamental truths about life and romance and relationships in general. Now, it took me a moment to really be able to distill those truths because I was really waiting and the trauma and there are a lot of things that I still had yet to learn about myself and the world for me to even come to the conclusion that I did. However, looking back now that it's been some time and not only helped me in the way that I was able to build my own discernment, but it also helped me in the way that I was able to learn new boundaries that I had and learned new, complete non-negotiables that I had moving forward, which not only helped keep me safe, but helped me to feel very loved in the relationships that I was [in] because there were just certain things I was just not putting up with anymore. The first fundamental truth that I learned was from my first ever real serious relationship. I was 19 years old and my goodness, I was so in love. I had no idea it could feel like this. I had no idea it could be like this. And I just felt like I was done living [omg so embarrassing to admit sksk] And I know that sounds like nuts to say I was still very much comfortable cloaking my queerness because I was also attracted to men. It was very easy for me to just date men exclusively while I figure it out, you know, how was going to handle actually coming out. And I happened to really fall in love with this person and it was just a win-win all around. I felt like, Phew! Okay, I can, you know, put that side of myself to rest. And it was I was starting off not in a place of complete acceptance about myself.*Wendy Williams voice* “Denial is a river in Egypt. Your husband is gay!” But it felt like that no longer mattered. Because I had obviously found my person. He was really, really sweet. So gentle and charming. Treated me beautifully. And it was not my first relationship. I had a relationship before that. But I mean, like, does that count when you're like 17? I'm choosing to expunge that from the record, personally. This was my first time really feeling loved, cared about, secure. It was, in my mind, the perfect relationship until I realized that this person was like a big fat cheater or harm. That was my first time ever actually dealing with somebody who was so good to me, so kind to me, so very much. There and present in my life who was so connected and emotional but at the same time was completely deceitful. I had no idea that people could act like that. I was truly so sheltered. This was my first relationship out of high school. All of my relationships prior to that were like these very long stand ing friendships from like elementary school. So it was really my first time going out in the world, meeting someone not from my own little community and experiencing someone who could lie so thoroughly. Now, I'm not going to get all the way into it, but we went through a lot of movement in that relationship where it's like I was finding things out. I was taking him back. I was internalizing so much shame. I was externalizing so much resentment. It was very toxic relationships, to say the absolute least. It was a very passionate, sex driven fever dream, emotional. That was a mess. It was a mess. Through this time, I really positioned myself in this relationship as somebody who had to make sure that certain things couldn't happen. So I was on high surveillance. I was up in that phone all the time, going through messages, going through everything, finding things out, throwing up and crying, fighting it out it out. It was just it was not. But through this relationship, I felt just so lost. I felt very disconnected from myself for my creativity. I was a terrible friend. I wasn't able to really maintain the relationships that I had spent so much of my life building. I had so much guilt, I had so much embarrassment at what I was allowing and what was going on and the things that I was covering up. And after that relationship, I really had to spend a lot of time not only understanding what it was that just went on and the gaslighting and, you know, kind of coming to grips with it. That was really not okay. But at the same time, I also had to take so much responsibility for the fact that I had placed in my head a hierarchy of relationships where my romantic relationship was the absolute highest tier, and then all of the other relationships came after that. And I had to really, really, really atone for that. In my close friendship, I had to spend a lot more intentional time rebuilding trust, rebuilding bond. And that was one of the biggest truths that I learned in that relationship, that in our life we must not prioritize this romanticized love over the other types of love that we also have in our life, like the love we have from our close friend, from our family, from our community. That at the end is what sustained me. That's what carried me. That's what reinvigorated me, reaffirmed me. And ever since that relationship, I've been very, very careful how I move and the way that I choose to spend my time, both with my partners, but also making sure that no time is taken away or no energy is taken away from the other relationships that sustain me. That's actually a red flag that I'm now able to identify when I'm not able to energetically or emotionally withstand or be present and the relationships that I have because so much of my energy is going to my romantic relationship. The second truth bomb that I learned in this relationship, which was a huge deal for me to finally understand, and this might be a little bit hard to hear if somebody is intent on betraying you, there is absolutely nothing you can do to prevent that. And what I mean by this is that you can be all up in somebody's phone, have someone's passport, your passport. my God. And what I mean by this is that you can be as involved in this person's life as you humanly can be. You can have their phone password, you can go through their messages, you can go through their emails. You can follow their location. You can do everything you absolutely, possibly can. People will find a way to be unfaithful if that's what their intention is. Now, this thought at first completely spun me out. It changed my worldview because I was understanding people at face value for the things they were saying and the actions that they're doing. How could I keep myself safe if there was no way to actually ensure that someone wasn't betraying me? Because in this relationship I was doing everything I possibly could? And yet there is always a way in. There is always a way that the betrayal found itself back to the relationship. And that's because the partner I was with had that intention and there was literally nothing I could do about that. Well, what we can do is make sure that we are holding not only our selves, but the people around us up to a standard that says you are not allowed to disrespect me in this way. And if this happened, we actually have to be able to follow through with changing that relationship. Had I truly understood that, I would have been able to extract myself from that relationship so much sooner rather than thinking if I just buckled down and tried really, really hard to insert myself in every crevice of this person's life that they couldn't possibly betray me because I would know what was happening. What this also was, was a false bid for control. There is no way I was able to control that person's action. I know that's a hard one to hear, but once I understood that, it really helped me understand how to further keep myself safe because I am responsible for keeping myself safe and for teaching those close to me how to do so as well. By that logic, I'm also responsible to make sure that I'm holding people to their responsibilities to me, the same way that we all have that shared responsibility to each other, to respect each other, to love each other, to affirm each other, and betrayal is just not a part of that package. Now, for my second relationship, things are very different. I was very much in this space of radical acceptance for myself. It was my first queer relationship. I was very excited to not only explore this part of myself, but be very loud, proud and out about it. Though when I look back, there was a lot of sacredness that I felt, and this period of time it's strange because it's it's a challenging thing to look back at a relationship and be able to now see it for what it was and now see it for the harm that it caused. But at the same time also be able to see the things that you really connected on, the things that you were introduced to and the things that you learned in the relationship. So I'm in this very interesting space when I look back at that relationship where I have so much more compassion for myself. And I'm also really able to understand not only what went on there from my point of view, but also what it is that I was able to take from that relationship for and to myself and reinvest into a relationship that I know could actually support being healthy, being honest and being actually compatible. In this relationship, the truth that I had to come to terms with is that being in love with somebody is not a good enough excuse to withstand mistreatment. So what I mean by that is it is, I think one of the hardest things that if, you know, you know, If you’ve been through this, you know, it is one of - Emotionally one of the hardest things to do to extract yourself from a relationship while still being in love with that person. Because now you're dealing with two things: You're dealing with the end of the relationship, but you're also dealing with the fact that your heart still is very much connected to this person and yearns for this person. And so you're really managing multiple wounds here. The caveat to that, is that that is what makes us feel as though we are stuck because we can recognize that this is not a safe situation. However, we are still firmly, deeply, fully in love with this person. Nothing emotionally has changed in that way. And so this is where the concept of “parenting” ourselves comes in or “re-parenting” ourselves comes in. So when I think of re-parenting myself in this context, I literally think of myself as my own baby or my own child, right? Just because I want to have the lollipop for breakfast doesn't mean that that’s something that's actually good for me. And so even though it feels good, it tastes good. I want it, I want it in my life. I understand that this is something that's actually not very good for me. So it's kind of like, you know, the mom taking away the the chocolate bar for breakfast. The kid’s going to cry, the kid’s going to be upset. Or the mom saying,“Okay, we're going to turn off the screen and wind down for bedtime”. That's not going to feel good because I really want to still do that. That's actually still very interesting and fun and cool to me. However, I still have to step in as my own parent and take away the thing that I want the most. That was the biggest challenge. However, this lesson, understanding that being in love with someone is not a good enough excuse to withstand mistreatment helped me to really reframe that and to lock in to the fact that my job here or one of my jobs here on Earth as a human is to protect myself, is to create for myself an environment where I'm able to feel free and loved and expressive and creative. And part of that is by choosing partnerships and relationships to have with people, platonic, romantic, otherwise that helps to encourage and support that. When it's come to my attention that somebody is mistreating me the same way that I would be furious if someone was mistreating my child or my baby, I have to have that exact same fire for myself. And that's exactly what had to happen. So I had to really step in and take away the candy bar. I had to step in and turn off the TV, take away the thing that I wanted, that I relied on the most, which at the time was this person. Looking back, that was probably the best decision of my life. I changed the entire course of my life, and as I explained in episode one, that was actually the catalyst to me even finding myself in the wellness sector and to finding myself as a Reiki practitioner. That destruction of that relationship and the destruction of the life that I knew, it really paved and built a new foundation for me to be where I am today. So I have a lot of gratitude for that decision. And truly that was the first thing that I did to earn back myself respect to earn back my trust. So that was a huge, hugely important lesson for me. After my second relationship ended, I was in a period of pretty intense distrust for myself. As I mentioned before, I really had to earn back my own trust because I was pretty unhappy with not only the direction my life had gone, but the things that I felt as though I allowed to happen in that relationship and the ways in which I really should have defended and stood up for myself And I didn’t. Because of this mistrust, I really decided to lock it down. And I mean, close friends and family only. And by family - There were really only two members of my family that were really supporting me at the time because I had just been outed and I was pretty much disowned from everyone. When I look back at this period of my life, though, it was truly so special. I felt really raw and reborn. I felt very incubated. The space I was living in was very cozy and I had so much more time to myself. I was very introspective. I had very deep, beautiful protective relationships surrounding me, and I just felt very safe. I felt like I was in this love bubble. And it was - It was really, really everything to me. It was in this space that I had to come to terms with the way in which I had truly yearned for romance my whole life and how that yearning had led me to really stay in situations with the hopes that things would match the ideal in my mind, rather than being able to be honest about what was actually going on. And this is where I started to understand something that I loosely call the time-fate combo and how much that matters when it comes to finding love or finding true love. Now, what I will say - And this is my theory when it comes to finding love, we have a part to play in that. However, that is not 100% our responsibility. I think that there are forces greater than us, namely time and fate that very much decide who and when appears in our life. So I always give the analogy, like, if you're interested in finding a date and you go out to the bar or you go out to the club, the part of that that is your responsibility is actually getting up, going to the club, what time it is you decide to go, what you decide to wear, the intentions you have, etc. Those are the things that you can control. What you don't control is who is there when you get there, who leaves right before you arrive and the connections that you will make. There is a part you play in that. However, there are factors such as who is going to be there and for what time and for how long that you really have nothing to do with. When we are ready to find our partner or find our partners, we have to understand that we are not 100% in charge and responsible for that whole process. There is a significant part that is our actions, what we say, our intention, how we put ourselves out there, where it is we're seeking a partner. That whole realm falls under the umbrella of things that we are personally responsible for or things that are at least within the reach of our control. Everything else, and when I say everything else, I'm primarily alluding to both time and fate are two factors that we will never, ever have control over. Say you are ready to date and you're on the dating app. You might be ready. You might have spent the time necessary to address and spend time with your trauma, to truly know yourself. To truly know what you need to truly be in a space to give to a partner and receive from a partner a love that feels expansive and generative. You could truly be in that space. However, the harsh truth is that if it's not your time yet to meet your person, you're not going to meet them. And if it's not fated for you to meet your person, you're not going to meet them. It's not going to happen. And that's, I think, the formula. When I think about a formula, it has to be one part our actions and then equal parts, fate and time that truly decides who is in our life, especially in a romantic setting. And the fact is that, as I said before, I had that moment where I realized, oh my goodness, this is 50/50. I could be with someone or I couldn't. But that doesn't mean that all of my life had to have this yearning, this idea that if I didn't find this, that there was something wrong with me or that there was something that I was truly missing out on. Because a life could be fulfilled and lived earnestly and lived honestly and lived with integrity and fun and joy and amazing times and even dating can be a part of that, sure. But this “I'm going to find my person!” It could happen, or it couldn’t. It was 50/50. It happens for some people. It doesn't happen for others. So I had to really understand that and devalue that to a degree in my mind, because growing up as a little girl, that's kind of the prize, right? That's really what I think is the condition of a small girl is being really imbued with what we should want or what our life should look like and the partnerships we should have and the family. The cis-heteronormativity of it all. I think truly understanding that allows us to be aware that it's a good and albeit stressful thing to know that we are not 100% in control of the show. And as I always say, nothing before it’s time and I know that sounded really harsh, but it actually really liberated me. And that's when I said, Do you want to know what? I am in a space right now where I really can't trust myself, so I'm going to take a step back and I'm going to let time and fate handle this. I was on my “let go and let God” sh*t because I thought to myself, okay, I really don't have the emotional capacity, I don't have the energy and I don't even have the wherewithal right now to make dating into a verb, to date, to actually go out with the intention to date, to go on an app or to be where the singles are, or to enter a room and be like, “Ooh”, I didn't have the space for that. So I decided that that was going to get shelved and I made a deal with the universe and I said, It's either it's going to happen or it's not. So if it's going to happen, these are my non-negotiables and this is what led to my infamous letter to the moon. I tell everybody this story. So it was one full moon in 2019. I remember I wrote a letter to the moon, and this is because I felt finally ready to welcome in a partner. I had been celibate for over a year. Honestly, I was pretty over it. And I'm like, alright, time to party! Let's get this engine started again. However, just wasn't time yet. And so I was very patient. You know, I was going on dates seeing people here and there, and I decided to write a letter to the moon for the things that I absolutely needed and a partner. This was my first time ever doing something like this. I wrote to the moon all the time, but it was, you know, to ask for protection or to say thank you or to to say I love you. You know, I had such a very intense relationship with the moon, I cried to the moon. And so in this letter to the moon, I wrote an entire list of traits that were complete non-negotiables for me in a relationship. Things like faithfulness, honesty, a partner that I could have fun with. Someone who I could truly be friends with, someone who I could truly trust and be trusted in return. Someone who was gentle, someone who was emotionally in tune. I wrote a bunch of sh*t. I also wrote down two random things because I wanted to test the universe. And so I said, I'm going to know for sure that this is my person. And then I was like, hmm okay. I threw out two random things. I was like, If they can speak French and if they can play the violin. I'm like, if things are seeming too good to be true, I'm going to look for those two traits. Those will be my final confirmation that this is the person for me. Silly, I know. But this becomes relevant later on. So after writing that letter to the moon, I set it on my windowsill with some citron, some sea salt, and I really just went about my life. I opened myself up energetically to a romantic connection.

And then one day I got the download: 23:55

Someone was on the way. I was pretty excited. I was I wouldn't say I was on the prowl, but I definitely had more of a desire to find a partner and my eyes were open because I was just aware that it could be anyone at any time. A pansexuals worst nightmare. Like, which one are you? It could literally be any one of you. I forgot to mention too, one of my non-negotiables this time was that the partner that I was supposed to be with had to come with references. I decided I wasn't going to do the app thing. I decided the person that I want is not interested in being on these apps, no shade. And I decided that this person had to come with at least one or two references who could vouch for them. People in my life who I knew, who I loved, who knew and loved me, who could vouch for them. I'm like, I'm not doing this meeting a blind stranger thing anymore. I was feeling like, okay, I tried it. I gave it a shot. At this point in order to make sure that my healing is not ruptured and that my trust issues are allowed an environment to regrow and regenerate rather than be damaged again, that I had to make sure that there were some references this time. And before I knew it, I met Orion. I actually got referred to him. He had a podcast. It was called Queer Black, and Awkward Check it out. And our good friend Roya had recommended me for the podcast, and then I showed up, he opened the door and I was like - Instantly I recognized him. And it's funny because I'd seen his picture before. I looked him up online. I was like, hmm. And then seeing him in person, it was like recognizing someone who I knew a long time ago and I was like, my goodness, it's you, it's you! And it was. Four years later, I think that when I look back to that moment, when I look back to the person who I was and I opened myself up to loving, I really wasn't expecting the aftermath of that. I actually think I'm going to do another podcast episode about the aftermath of being in toxic relationships and the struggle to be in a healthy relationship afterwards and the unexpected things that come up when you're in a union that's actually generative and secure and safe and and what that feels like. And as for my letter to the moon, he does speak French and he plays a guitar, not the violin, but it's a string instrument. So close enough. I hope that hearing some of my revelations and experiences through heartbreak and true love was something that was affirming or helpful or even helped you feel a little bit understood on this journey, which is really, truly such a massive condition of the human experience. Wherever you are on this path of understanding yourself, synthesizing your heartbreaks, alchemizing your pain, wherever you are in that, sending you so much love, abundant care and just hoping that we all understand how much we deserve to be in partnerships and communities and relationships of all different types that help us to feel safe, affirmed and protected. So if you like today's episode, please let me know by leaving me a rating. Please feel free to subscribe to my YouTube channel at The ReiQueer Podcast on Apple Music, Spotify, wherever you listen to your podcasts. I also wrote an accompanying blog piece which can be found on my website www.thereiqueer.com If you have any questions about the podcast, send me an email chloe@thereiqueer.com. And lastly, If you're ever interested in booking a session, booking with me for a workshop or any equity training or consulting, you can always send me an email: chloe@thereiqueer.com or check me out on Instagram @thereiqueer On our next episode I'm going to be giving you all a storytime. So we are going to be talking about the summer of my spiritual attack, what that looked like, how I even knew what the f*ck was happening and how I overcame on the other side. Until next time, everybody My name is Chloe from thereiqueer.com