CONFIDENT DETACHMENT

THE ULTIMATE RELATIONSHIP SUPERPOWER

The following is an excerpt from my new book, You Grow Me: The Next Level Human Philosophy of Love, Sex and Romantic Connection.

There is a harsh truth about relationships most people want to reject immediately. You’ll reject it because it violates what Disney bullshit and Hollywood ridiculousness have convinced you is true. Even I struggle to remember what I am about to tell you, because

I, like you, have also been brainwashed. Deep in my psychological knots lies a story about love.

Here is the truth: You don’t fall in love with a person. You fall in love with a story you wrote long ago that you are trying to insert them into. You fall in love with the imagined better self you think they will make you. But that job is always yours and yours alone.

To illustrate further, I am going to give you my own version of a Disney fairy tale. This fairy tale is about a pompous, arrogant prince. Let’s call him Prince Pumpernickel.

Let’s say Prince Pumpernickel has been told his entire life that he is a beautiful, gifted, and adorable man. He is indeed attractive physically, but he is also overly attached to those looks and the material things he owns. He loves dipping his golden hairbrush into his silky silver hair gel, parting his hair just right, and putting on his Super Action Jackson pantsuit. He loves his six-pack, his four-wheel-drive monster luxury SUV, and the nine multimillion-dollar businesses he runs.

Pumpernickel has grown up being told by everyone around him that he must have someone to run his kingdom with. It can’t be just anyone. It needs to be someone of impeccable taste. She needs to be powerful. And by impeccable taste and powerful, I mean she must have giant lips, a perfect ass with no cellulite, and firm perky breasts that are not too small and not too large. She needs to look good when her ass is hanging out the passenger side of his truck so when they drive down the beach together all the knights and squires want to be him and all the ladies and madams want to be with him.

Prince Pumpernickel is definitely on the hunt too. He has dated Lippy Linda, Vain Valerie and Superficial Sara. He was with Conceited Carrie for a while too, but she did not look quite right to him when she woke up in the morning. Pumpernickel didn’t like that frequently he would find one of her eyelashes stuck to his pillow and a makeup mask perfectly formed on her pillow. One morning he rolled over and was scared out of his mind when he thought Carrie was cursed by a witch who gave her two heads. Then he realized the other face was just her makeup mask.

I think you are likely starting to understand Pumpernickel’s issue. A lot of us have some of this in us. I know I certainly did when I was young. We are so caught up in how we look, what we have, and what we are supposed to achieve in the eyes of society we never stop to ask ourselves what we really want.

You may see Pumpernickel as a superficial prince that’s full of himself. And he is. But let’s have some compassion here. The issue is that he is living from a story he did not even write and is not even aware of. His parents, his aunts, and uncles, his court, his sub- jects, the entire kingdom have told him that this is how he must think, behave, and live.

The sad thing for Pumpernickel is that deep down he craves what all of us do. He wants to be safe and secure. He wants to feel like he belongs and is accepted. All this pimping and posturing is him trying to meet these needs. These dysfunctional behaviors dominate so much of his psyche that the real needs he seeks are obscured. What are the real needs? He wants to be seen. He wants to be understood. He wants to be loved for who he is. He craves to be his authentic nerdy self who secretly loves coloring books and riding his horse and he desperately misses spending hours in the woods hanging out with the sprites and fairies. He loves the woods and used to dream of being a healer and sage when he was a kid. Those stories and dreams have long ago been obfuscated by his insatiable need for power and popularity. What he does not re- alize is that those goals are a poor substitute for what really mat- ters: purpose.

So, Pumpernickel dates and is constantly disappointed. He se- cretly longs for a woman who sees his other more genuine self. He laments, “There are no good women in this kingdom.” Every once in a while he will spot a peasant woman he is drawn to. Her name is Penelope. He often finds her walking along the trails of his kingdom. Sometimes he goes out looking for her in his big, fancy four-wheel. When he spots her, he cranks up the radio and puts on his bling. He is hoping to get her attention, so he stops and tries to connect. She bows and is respectful because that is who she is. And of course, he is the prince. But she also seems cold and distant toward him. Why does she not respond to fancy rims, sparkling watches, and witty jokes?

The reason? Pumpernickel thinks these things are a turn-on to her, but the exact opposite is true. When he drives away, Penelope is relieved. She finds his antics comical and immature. She is a Next-Level secure woman and so does not make fun of him or judge too harshly, but to her, he is a child stuck in a man’s body. For her, his good looks do not matter. Beauty is an energetic thing and so is ugly.

Penelope’s story is one of having deep conviction, of having purpose in alignment with her values, and of having no need to conform to cultural norms. She is the opposite of Conceited Carrie and Vain Valerie. She is a strong, independent, and confident real woman. She is natural in her look and authentic in her personality. She likes who she is and how she rolls.

Here is what Pumpernickel thinks. He thinks he can win her over with something he gives her, something he says, or some- thing he does. He can’t. He wants her to see inside him and this is where he is delusional. People can’t see into our spirits until we do. Penelope will never see Pumpernickel until he looks deeply into himself and sees the story he has bought into.

He does not know that by being superficial himself, he natu- rally attracts superficial people. He also does not understand that he has already written a story about his perfect match and that story is completely disconnected from who he is deep down.

If we were going to write a real ending—one that is not like the Hollywood bullshit we are normally exposed to—we would not have Penelope fall in love with him. She is not going to spot something in Pumpernickel that causes her to give him a shot. She won’t slowly fall in love with him. They won’t live happily ever after.

It does not work that way at all. He has to change himself first. Not for Penelope, mind you, but for himself. He needs to let his hair down, let his beard grow, start painting again, and stop dating superficial women. Spend time doing what he loves and getting in touch with who he really is. After that, maybe he will be surprised when, one day while he is out in the woods collecting dandelion, sage, and frog snot to make a potion to heal a sick elderly man in the kingdom, he runs into Penelope and she’s finally able to really see him.

And maybe, if they allow things to unfold naturally, they will find they can grow with each other as friends. Then maybe they will find they have an attraction, and maybe they will make real love, not the ridiculous bunny rabbit porn sex Pumpernickel thought was real sex, but the gentle, sensual, deeply connected mind-altering sex that can only occur when two people’s authentic selves meet fully. And then maybe they will continue to grow together and learn from each other in the same way they are given room to grow apart. And then maybe, if they are lucky, they will live happily for the time they have.

We humans write stories about who we are supposed to be. We write stories about who our partners are supposed to be. We write stories about how relationships are supposed to go. But we forget there is only one story that matters: the story of our authentic selves. The one that requires us to uncover and rewrite all our knotted stories in order to reveal our true nature. The only way to find a true connection with another is to truly know ourselves first.

There is a secret about this process no one has told you. Pumpernickel tried to get there through planning, pimping, and posturing. He had it all planned out but found everything he wanted eluded him until he decided to follow his nature first. He decided to set his task to uncover himself. And he also loosened his grip on what his life would look like. In time he became only concerned with living a life he could own and be proud of. In that process, the twists and turns did indeed eventually get him what he wanted.

He discovered that Penelope had made that journey long be- fore him. It was not about a plan; it was a creative process. First, he created his authentic self and then he acted as co-creator with life by using what fate presented him with. And that eventually got him to where he wanted to go in a way he never could have possi- bly predicted or planned. What Pumpernickel discovered was that the path to Penelope had to pass through himself first. He had to change his identity and it had to be something he did voluntarily for himself. He had to get out of his old box and create a new one.