impRAWvise 

Once upon a time, when I was a little girl I have somehow decided that I have no interest in ever having kids or getting married. Things that, you know are societally expected and sometimes even imposed, especially when it comes to being a woman. Not only that, but being an accomplished woman. A real woman. Hopefully things are continuously changing, and even though I am not an activist in any sense, I do still somehow adhere to the “no kids, no marriage” mentality, a mentality that I validated when I turned 18, about 16 years ago and a mentality that I like to convince myself that I keep evaluating and updating constantly. But sometimes I still ask myself: “is this really true? Is this actually what is right for me? Or could it be that I am just being scared, or haven’t found the right one yet?” Perhaps the divorce of my parents, which also took place when I was 18 might have played a role as well in the implementation of this belief. Therefore I do believe that kids and marriage are not a part of my values, lifestyle, or life choices that I make or that define me, but still, I also like to keep an open mind about it and sometimes question this belief in order to make sure it still represents and defines me accurately. I know that many people also think that its just about commitment issue and trust issues, but I assure you its way more complicated than that. Its so easy to tag something as dysfunctional and to call names, but what really and truly helps is just trying to see things from another perspective, be more gentle and graceful when it comes to mindful interactions and conscious relational choices.

Even within this context, divorced parents and not actually having a proper model for how a functional marriage and household looks like, I did have a nice childhood. I wouldn’t call it traumatic necessarily, but there were definitely some aspects that could have gone better. At the same time, I do not want to blame my parents for this, I like to think that they did their best to the best of their ability, and I do like to take full responsibility for the choices that I do make in life, in this case no kids, no marriage. What I find really interesting is that even when I was little, I was more focused on giving sense and meaning and playing all kinds of kids games, but mostly in a way that pretty much referred to career options and not necessarily family dynamics. What I really liked about my parents, and I also have a brother, is that I didn’t feel like we had to play in a certain “boys / girls” way, there was certainly no conditioning on that matter, and very few references to things like “boys shouldn’t cry” / “girls shouldn’t get angry” type of mentality and so on. I could play with the trucks and the toys that are usually for boys and I didn’t have a certain affinity for dolls, “girls toys” either. Sure there were some as well, but in general we were encouraged to colaborate with each other and to play more of a gender neutral games. And that I find to be absolutely fascinating and great parenting as well.

As I grew up and left the family household at 15 in order to attend a private school in a different city, I also really liked and appreciated that they did indeed let me choose for myself and take accountability for my actions, even though it was very hard for me to transition into this new life and I struggled with this for a very long time in order to find my place, my space and get back to a sense of “this is my home now”. But they did cultivate a sense of independence which I am deeply grateful for every single day, and they also encouraged us to focus on our studies and put ourselves first in order to be able to provide for ourselves later in life. As I then navigated adolescence, which was extremely stressful and left a second time, for college this time, and to an even further location, they did indeed support my choice this time as well. They also supported me in making a choice to go to arts school, even though everyone in my family is basically either an engineer of some sort or anything related to that but not arts. Still they encouraged me to pursue my dreams, even when it didn’t work out the way I wanted it to, they were still encouraging me in order to find a new more suitable path for myself. But, they never put any pressure on me that I have to get married or have kids in order to be a complete human being, the values that were cultivated in our household were pretty much around studies and good work in order to be able to be independent and provide for ourselves.

In college I also had my first serious relationship. We have been together for about 3 years, we have also been living together for pretty much the entire time and we were also spending a lot of time together since we met in college as colleagues at the study program which we were both attending at the time. It’s been a wonderful experience and a unique experience. Together with this guy I got to adopt my first dog, our first dog, Tara, a wonderful and super calm and peaceful Rotweiller which we found abandoned at an industrial park within the city that we lived in. He taught me so many things and we were deeply in love at the time. And very young as well. But even though, as it goes with any relationship, we did have a passionate but also very challenging relationship, as we were both fighting our inner demons, when I look back at the experience today, I am really grateful that it happed. I strongly believe that he was the one who truly and fully saw me for exactly who I was at the time, and loved me unconditionally. Can’t say I reciprocated this because I do have a tendency to pretty much focus on myself, but he was really doing the work in understanding and supporting myself and my dreams and my own healing at the time. But, as I already said, it was really challenging as well.

So, after many ups and downs, and things we have been through together, we talked about the next steps of our relationship, and I found out that he got the ring and he was going to propose (we did have open, honest conversations about this before, in order to check in with each other and the status of our relationship). That was in the spring of 2015. More than 10 years ago. Its was a very emotional as well as tense moment, but I am sure we made the right choice, so we did not go thought with it. We did not move forward, instead we moved apart from each other and each on its way. We did have some further encounters and I like to think that not only time heals, but also that we have made peace with what happened between us as time passed by and we each worked through our stuff in therapy and with other means of therapeutic support. So how could it be that I thought he was the one and I was feeling loved unconditionally and he knew me so well, but we still didn’t move thought with it? Well, as we all know, life its complicated, and sometimes, things like aggressive behaviour, eating disorders, substance abuse, can make healing pretty complicated and when two people get triggered so easily it might seem impossible to ever get to a functional outcome. But, its best to cherish the experience, the learnings, the journey as it unfolds and know that its also ok to let go, to work on your own healing on your own, and just trust the process as it unfolds.

To answer the other question that many people ask themselves: did I actually see myself in the long run with this guy? Building a life for ourselves? Having similar values? Rescuing lots of dogs and living in the country side? is Yes, yes, yes. YES! Did I see myself getting married to him? Maybe. Having kids and stuff? I don’t know. And that is ok. It is ok to acknowledge that we have / have had these dreams, these feelings and even expectations that things would / could work out in a specific way, and even when they don’t, we can still have faith that we will find the right context, partner, relationship that will be the right one for us and contribute not only to our overall wellbeing and health but also to our own healing. One thing that I have learned to accept and integrate this year, is that yes, we do heal on our own, but we also get to heal a lot in the relationships that we have with the people in our lives, be it a friendship, family relationships, various encounters, or a conscious partnership. There is always a place and a time for each, be it individual healing or healing through a conscious connection with another human and that is simply divine. And when we circle back to this posts topic, is this still representing me? No kids, no marriage? Or is there anything else that I would like to explore here? To get to know and understand about myself? To be honest, at the moment I really don’t know, but, I do like to keep an open mind and an open heart about this matter, and perhaps who knows, maybe within the right context and with the right person also take into consideration that some things might shift. And that is also ok.