No Longer at Arm's Length

I have never shared quite the detail that I am going to share today, so be prepared! I recently split from the man with whom I spent the last ten years. Each day that passes since our separation, another realization hits me as to the life I had become accustomed to in our relationship. I will say that we parted on good terms, and whatever I share is not meant to attack his character. We simply chose to approach life in different ways, and ultimately I had to leave in order to fully express myself.

One realization came today, as I reached for my yoga teacher's hand in a gesture of gratitude. I had just shared with her my decision to start a new life as a single woman. She accepted this information with grace and reassurance, and congratulated me on my decision. As I left class, it occurred to me that reaching out for her hand would have been very uncharacteristic just 3 months ago, before my separation. Prior to this, I was with a man who did not believe in hand holding. He declared this preference early on in our life together. Obviously hand holding is a simple act of connection, and initially, I did not see the implications of never including it in our interaction. But as the years wore on, and my partner's dedication to his decision never to hold my hand solidified, the lack of hand holding became a central issue. The reason being, my natural instinct many times was to reach out and feel for him at my side. His natural reaction was to draw away from my touch.

As one would expect, I eventually stopped reaching out for him at all. I resisted my natural impulse to do so in order to avoid feeling rejected. The real tragedy in this is that holding back with him spilled over into other relationships. I have always been a big hugger, but other touch did not come quite so easily. Risking awkwardness or rejection when reaching out to my friends hindered an expression of my love for them. I had lost a degree of my self confidence, that inner wisdom that knows when it is essential to reach for others.

As a result, I had to find other ways to relay this, and as a result I focused on verbal communication and outright dedication to them in other ways, and luckily they responded. Even though I had found a viable substitute, so many circumstances presented important opportunities for reaching out - a friend in need of comfort, a mother in need of reassurance, a child in need of support. Holding someone's hand is such an act of intimacy, and even though I longed for it, I had stopped placing myself in that position of vulnerability.

Leaving my ten year relationship has led to an interesting phenomenon - an involuntary blossoming of many aspects of my personality not previously expressed. Removing the man who refused my affectionate advances from the center of my life has allowed a vacuum to open up, and what has rushed in to fill it are amazing friends that I am unabashedly reaching for. Parts of myself that were damned up for so long continue to come rushing forth, into the loving arms of friends and family. It is such a pleasure to feel myself reaching for people again, no longer keeping anyone at arm's distance away.