The Home of Steven Barnes
Author, Teacher, Screenwriter


Monday, April 04, 2005

Soul Mate Part 2

So. When last we met, I was an emotional wreck after the dissolution of my marriage. I
realized mty marriage was doomed. I'd decided to make a list of everything I wanted in a
woman, then to find the woman who came the closest to what I had on that list--whether she
was married or not, sit her down, and ask her what she wanted in a man.
Fortunately, I knew a woman who fit the bill. She was sexy, smart, spiritual, kind, sweet,
incredibly beautiful, financially successful, and...did I say sexy? Truth be told, she was
arguably the sexiest woman I had ever known. She lived in Arizona, and I was heading out
that way to do some research on my upcoming novel "Charisma." So, on New Years Day, 1996, I
sat her down in a restaurant and said: "I think you are spectacular, and I would really like
to know what kind of man you want in your life." As it happened, my timing was GREAT--she
was just coming to the end of a relationship. So over the next few months we saw each
other, and I was able to extract from her the list of what she was looking for. To my shock,
there wasn't a huge gap between what she was looking for, and what I was. Two things stuck
out:
1) She wanted a man with more of a spiritual base. I thought about that, and realized that I
had stopped meditating.
2) She wanted a man with a harder, more defined body. Believe me, her own body was and is spectacular. She had every right to demand quality. I realized that I had stopped running
since moving to the Northwest.
##
What this meant is that I had defined a direction for re-claiming myself. Remember:he point
of the exercise was NOT to get a woman. And certainly not to fall in love with miss X (
although I did love her, and had great fun while we were dating--but more on that later).
The point was to get clear on where I had failed myself, stepped off my path. The theory is
that if I got back on my path, everything else would clear up.
##
Well, weirdness ensued. I noticed that the more open and honest and caring and sharing with
her I was, the more distant she got. It was bizarre: I had never dealt with anything quite
like it before. Finally, during a trip to Los Angeles in March to celebrate my birthday,
she broke things off with me. I was devastated. Where had I gone wrong? I brooded about
that, and a few weeks later had another break-through...

More later.

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