I am dating again.

My first experience, going on a date, since becoming a Mother.

I did something I normally wouldn’t do last night.

I went on a date, at the local pub.

It was a little messy, revealing and also, extremely therapeutic.

The opposite experience of anything I would ever CHOOSE for myself (don’t drink, don’t like loud music, don’t really even do dating).

I will absolutely be doing it again.

---

Look, I have dabbled in Hinge here and there a little in the past 6 months.

But I have never followed through with meeting up with anyone in person.

The closest I came to a date, was when I was in Boulder, Colorado recently.

My Hinge profile says that my highest vision is to “Create a Real Life Hogwarts”.

I was met with the response from a gorgeous, tall, blonde man with “I have always wanted to invest in a Magic School”.

We were set to meet up on a date… however, I jumped the gun. Instead of just letting it all happen, I did a love binding ritual with a friend in her Mountain home- and he banished. Yep, quite literally straight after the ritual, I opened my phone and he was gone.

The lesson? Well, it could have been a coincidence, but my deeper knowing was that I was playing with fire. He felt it, he ran.

And sure, you could say that yay! that is great because perhaps, he wasn’t right for me in the first place…

But, my deeper knowing is that I wasn’t in trust - I was being tested and the ritual and attachment to the outcome of the date, is what destroyed it. Yep, up in flames. Literally - it was a fire ritual.

And yes, it is the last time I am doing a ritual around love.

---

This date, was a little different.

I had been talking with this man for some months- we had been attempting to catch up, with no grace. He lives 2 hours from me in Brisbane, but spends weekends down on the Gold Coast .

I have to pre plan EVERYTHING as a solo mother - including nannying hours, so to line something up between us, took some willpower.

We had planned to go to dinner at a Japanese restaurant, close to me.

He called me, as he was arriving, asking if we could go for one drink at the pub instead. And to be honest, that felt really good - it was a gorgeous afternoon and I felt like sitting in the sun and having a drink.

My life has been particularly challenging as of late, so I felt like I needed to really let my hair down and surrender up the “hard work” for an hour or two.

When we spoke on the phone, it just felt like a kindred connection.

We got along instantly.

I normally HATE speaking on the phone to anyone, but this felt easy.

I arrived at the pub, dressed head to toe in black, looking like a Witch.

I rang him to ask him where he was sitting - I didn’t want to do what felt like the walk of shame into a busy pub.

I walked in, made a V line towards him and we had a really long hug and I melted. It felt really good. Natural. My heart felt open to this man.

10 minutes into the conversation, however, and I was digging.
I noticed myself doing what I do best - a habit I am trying to relax a little - and that is, psychoanalysing….everything. Probing. Enquiring. Asking all of the questions to open all of the boxes of Pandora.

But… interestingly, my date was into it. He liked it. He was incredibly honest. He exposed parts of himself that felt incredibly vulnerable.

And whilst I KNOW that it is my protection mechanism to go in - hard and fast, to get all of the juicy details (a test, you could say); it was also kind of fun to feel like it was received well.

I have felt an incredible amount of shame and push back, my whole life, for being so penetrative with my gaze. I see things that sometimes, I wish I didn’t.

I am inquisitive. I like details. I like diving into the deep and sometimes dark crevices of the psyche. I find it enthralling - not confronting.

It is why I worked underground, in Melbourne as a Tantric bodyworker for 5 years, listening to mens stories and allowing their deepest vulnerabilities to have a place of reprieve.

But, this was different. Before our date had even started, he messaged me to preface that he was having a really hard day - that he had just had a major breakdown and tension in his coparenting relationship. I asked him if he would like to share more intimately with me - he told me that he didn’t and that he didn’t want his connection with me to be a space of processing.

I asked him where he developed his emotional intelligence from. He had a lot of language and also skills in communication, that often takes a LOT of therapy/upskilling to acquire. He proceeded to tell me about the ***many*** dark and deep initiations and life experiences he has had in his life.

I resonated. I too have had an incredibly challenging and sometimes extremely dark, life, full of turbulence and initiatory experience. I often attract men who have had VERY interesting pasts - it gives them character and depth, which is something that I ABSOLUTELY need, in order to feel met, in my intensity and desire to traverse the subconscious realms of the taboo.

As the night went on, things certainly got interesting.

Let’s just say, it was revealing. I learnt a lot about myself. And I will be seeing this man again...