In this article I want to talk about those romances, those past boyfriends, those past partners who you reminisce on every now and again, wondering what if something had happened differently? What if you were still together? What if things had been different?
I’ll also share a wonderful way to start getting super present with what's going on in your life right now and moving into a state of gratitude for everything that has been.
In my final year of university, I met a guy in a club and found myself quite attracted to him. We ended up hanging out for a little while, just as mates and after several months started dating. He'd made comments like ‘I'm not looking to be married until this age. This is the kind of person that I want to be married to. My dad has said that I should find a wife from India’ - the kinds of things that should have been early red flags not to date him – but I did anyway. As you do!
We dated for maybe seven months, and after a few things happened I realised this wasn’t something I wanted anymore.
He didn’t want the kind of relationship with me that I was wanting with him.
And that's okay. It wasn't at the time. I was really, really angry and gave him the silent treatment. The word for it now is ghosting. So I fully ghosted him - I just stopped taking his calls and stopped speaking with him. Which, you know, at the time was probably not the right way to go about it, but that's where I was at with who I was.
I've often wondered what if I'd called him back? What if I had taken his call and had a conversation and heard him out? And if I had, what else might have changed in my life?
For those of you who are old enough to remember or have watched the Gwyneth Paltrow movie Sliding Doors, this is the movie that always comes to mind when I'm having a think about what if a decision in my past had been different?
In the movie Sliding Doors, Gwyneth’s character is in London and on her way home or to an event. In one part of the movie, she actually makes the train just before the doors close on the Tube, and in the other half of the movie she misses the train, and the movie sets out the two paths that could have occurred in both of those circumstances, if she'd made the train and if she'd missed the train.
I find this a really, really interesting reflection on life itself, because what would happen if, using that analogy of sliding doors in my own life, I’d done things differently?
So with this guy that I dated, the ‘what if’ was would I have gone back to university? Would I have done all of the travelling that I did through my 20s? Would I have left the UK? Would I have left London and moved to Australia?
I find myself in a position through those ‘what ifs’, realising that potentially no, none of those things may have happened because my life could have been quite different. And realising how important and valuable all those things were to me. Going back to university to do my Master’s degree; going back and doing a heck of a lot of study after dating him; doing all of the travel that I did afterwards through my 20s with my girlfriends, with my sisters and cousins; and moving to Australia.
Moving to Australia was and still is one of the biggest gifts I've given to myself and I can't imagine a life back in London. That is also to say that if I hadn't left London, I possibly wouldn't be able to imagine a life in Australia. So it works both ways.
But what does that mean? Reminiscing and thinking about what if something different had happened?
I listened to an interview by Brené Brown. I believe she was being interviewed by Oprah and she talked about people that don't have any regrets in life and how that's completely untrue; and how if that’s the case, then you've not really lived. I take a very, very different view to this. If you have a life of regret, it means that you're in a space where you truly don't value where you are right now. You're really not grateful for who you are and what you are right now. To not be in gratitude for where you are right now, you are living in the past or living in fear or worry of what might happen in the future.
So a life that's full of regrets is a life that's not in full acceptance for what is. What it is now.
I've had conversations with girlfriends who are in relationships that are experiencing some challenge, that they wish would be more joyful, and they wished that they had done something different. These particular relationships also have fruited beautiful children and those children are not things that they have regrets over at all. But they wish for something different in the relationship.
That in itself is a bit of a conflict, an internal emotional conflict, because to have complete appreciation and love for your children and to not change anything that they are and who they have been and who they might become, one cannot be in regret of the relationship because your relationship has been a contribution to defining those children.
In the same way, the not having a relationship - so somebody that you may have loved in the past who got away or things didn’t work out with them - the absence of that relationship is a contribution to the creation of what your life is right now.
To be in acceptance of that means that there are no regrets of the past, of those lost loves, because that's what needed to happen to bring you here into this moment.
The longest relationship that I've had with anything other than myself has probably been with my bank, and actually people do say that your relationship with your bank is the longest relationship you'll have outside of your own self.
My dating has been from a single date to up to about a year. So absolutely, most of my life has been with me, and exploring the dating world. I've done a lot of dating and there have been traits and characteristics that I absolutely adore in some of the guys that I’ve dated, and there have been traits and characteristics that I truly know that is something that I don't want to have in a long-term relationship.
The other aspect of reflecting back on the ‘what ifs’ is perhaps identifying what it was that made you feel good, that made you feel yummy, that made you feel loved, that made you feel sexy, and acknowledging those as things that, if you're not in a relationship, you desire in a relationship; and if you are in a relationship, perhaps you desire more of that, or identifying how you're receiving those feelings and sensations now in the relationship that you're in to bring you back into a state of gratitude for where you are right now.
These ‘what ifs’ are usually going to occur when you're feeling some sense of instability, some sense of hardship or challenge in the situation that you're in right now. It could be with your current relationship; it could be with dating; it could be with how you're feeling about yourself. And the ‘what ifs’ become ponderings of: would my life be better if I'd done that other thing and stayed with that person? If that relationship had worked out, would I be happier?
When you start pondering, it becomes an opportunity to really reflect on what's keeping you in this stuck, challenging or hard place? What feeling and sensations are you experiencing within yourself that are preventing you from moving into more joy and more ease and more flow?
It's when we start looking at this within ourselves that we can really start to move into more wholeness and more love, more self-love.
When we move into a place of self-love and we can give ourselves this divine infinite self-love, when we can love ourselves in that way, everything else just feels amazing and those ‘what ifs’ will start to disappear because the way you're feeling right now could not be given away to or changed for anything. And the knowing that if something had been done differently in your past, you may not be here right now loving yourself in the way that you are currently loving yourself.
When you start to do that ‘what if’ – What if this? What if that? – it’s the active and conscious stopping of that and writing down what it is that you're grateful for about you.
How you feel about you, how you feel about your relationship or dating. So the gratitude that you have for what is happening in your life around the act of love, self-love or romantic love.
Because for romantic love, when it's unattached, it's coming from a place of expansion. We already feel wholeness. We already feel an abundance of self-love, and we want to feel with our partner even more of that and create even more of that (easier said than done, and a work in progress, I know).
So when you start to do that ‘what if’ thinking, you're going to consciously stop yourself and put pen to paper because it is so magical to do that. There's so much power in writing down - not typing in your phone, but writing down on a piece of paper - what it is that you are grateful for.
Sending you love, hugs and magic.
Bhavna xxx
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