Over many months, I’ve been exploring the new paradigm of decentering men in my life.

Even writing that sentence a part of me feels apologetic and an urge to write something reassuring to men that I love, and men in general.

That’s part of the problem.

I experience a pull to make sure men know I respect them. It’s an unspoken agreement to always think about how my words, actions, body language and facial expressions might impact the male ego. I feel trained to constantly consider and seek out male approval and validation. I am so often pulled away from my center to tend to what I perceive men might need or want.

I wish I could say that these impulses and instincts were more healed. In fact, they are not.

My awareness of these things, even as I perform and act them out, makes me angry and bitter. Angry because I’ve never experienced (or been aware of) ways that men do the same for me. Bitter because I’ve watched myself do things and be ways I don’t want to be under the influence of delusional hope of being deeply loved.

I take all the responsibility for the problem with myself and men because that’s all I can control. I look inward and see the impact of the training, brainwashing, and practice I’ve had over my 47 years to center men in my life, instead of centering myself.

I come to interactions with many men having already compromised or disregarded what I think or want in an attempt to find a place I think they will accept or agree with. I often experience men coming into the same interaction without having considered me at all.

I feel ashamed to admit that when I experience myself falling, or being, in love with a man, I have a near impossible time staying connected to myself, centering myself, anywhere he is concerned. The way I have tried to predict, meet, and tend to “his” needs generally exhausts and depletes me. “His” meaning any man I am trying to win the love and respect of. Even the idea that I’d need to work so hard to get love and respect from a man is in question. In this way, a love relationship with a man doesn’t feel sustainable to me.

My experience is that I am unable to care well for myself when I am in love and using all of my energy towards trying to ensure that the man I love will love me back and see me as a worthy, desirable potential partner. The reality is that I am very rarely seen that way to the men that I love and want to be in partnership with.

Whatever the reasons are, or have been, I am no longer trying to win anything from men in that way. I no longer desire to better at playing this, or any, game or acting the way I have for years, trying so hard and always falling short of feeling loved in return or gaining the kind of connection that I so deeply desired.

Anyone who knows me even a little bit, knows how hard, and earnestly I have worked towards finding the partnership I desired. I’m not even going to take the time to list all the ways. People love to talk about how a woman should be to “get a man”, about how she should act, behave, withhold, test, be tough, demanding, strong, etc. There’s so many words swirling around the universe that sound like instructions for me to follow to find the love I seek. I am no longer listening to all that. It has finally become deeply uninteresting to me.

I want back all of the time, effort, intention and love that I have put out there for men in the past. I will not get that back, but I can reserve all of my future energy for myself.

I can give the best of myself to myself because I know how much I love and appreciate my best. I love the feeling of reclaiming all of my energy and resources to put towards my life. I feel a deep relief that I no longer have to wonder how I would keep up all the energy it took to try to attract and keep a man happy.

Maybe after all my therapy, all of my research, after having travelled down all the roads of healing I sought out to try to heal myself enough to be able to find a healthy, fulfilling relationship that I feel held and supported by, I found that I can do this for myself and it feels really good to me. I love being honest with myself. I love getting all of my own attention and doing exactly what I want to do when I want to do it.

I know that I am still very susceptible to falling back into my patterns of centering men. There are certain men in my life who could just show me a little attention, make one phone call, send one text and the desire, insecurity, spiraling, and efforting to find just the right way to be for them comes flooding back. These are men I cannot be in contact with in a good way. I know that it’s better for me not to respond than to try to explain anything at all to them. A large part of me has stopped wondering how they feel about me, stopped caring if they reach out, given up any hope that there might be a time when they will realize how great I am and that they really want to be with me.

My body has mostly stopped craving their touch, the intimate contact, the desire for pleasure that was undermet and missed even while I always hoped it would change. I’ve stopped blaming myself for anything around why I’ve been single for so long. I’ve let go all the stories and narratives around what I need to change about myself to be more attractive to men.

I am in love with the feeling of being so relaxed and comfortable in my own skin. I’m more in love with my authentic self the more I move away from constantly imagining the male gaze and how I am being seen or perceived.

I can love men and not let them anywhere near the center of my life. The center is reserved for me.

My sacred body is reserved for those who know and understand how to meet me. Honoring my sacred body has become the most interesting thing to me.