Staying til the end

So I've finished "When Food is Love", and Geneen Roth ends it with the most wonderful thing. She ends it with commitment. Committing to the process, committing to life, committing to love. She writes, " When Love is love, there is nothing standing between you and your breaking heart." She gives a list of things you have to learn about intimacy and I would sum it up with live in the moment. Ok, I'm about to leap and commit to the process. See, I went on a short day trip with a male friend. In the shower that morning I decided to be in the moment as much as possible. To feel, to do and to think in that moment. To not analyze everything. To not think how the moment could be better. To not be thinking of what that moment might mean to the rest of my life. To not try and affect how he feels about me. To accept myself with all the imperfections and trust the process. Well I have to admit that it was really difficult to give up that much control, and lots of times I fell off the wagon. However, I managed to stay on the ride enough to get to the end. I was able to honestly say that I enjoyed the day. I had no expectations and no agenda. I am trying to do that with the entire relationship. I struggle with needing to define what we are, how its suppose to go, what its suppose to look like, how he's suppose to act and how I'm suppose to respond. I really want to put things on a schedule. I try to decipher his feelings, if he has feelings for me and if they are increasing or decreasing. One thing off the authors list is "Be willing to be vulnerable.
When you have had the rug pulled out from under you so many times as a kid and you've seen first hand what a thoughtless man can do to a woman, being vulnerable is the last thing you want to do. However, one more thing she says is "Don't let fear stop you from leaping into the unknown..." Boy is he ever the unknown. He's enjoying his freedom, enjoying a new found sense of confidence, and he's not about to be fenced in. I on the other hand, would like to settle into a relationship. I've assessed or commonalities, and our differences and determined that its workable. (that's the control talking). In the meantime, when I'm in the moment with him, he's funny, open, sensitive, kind and amazingly thoughtful. In the moment I see that just like me, he is human and fallible. I know that I'm not the only one and its scary to think he is still channel surfing till he finds a "program" he really wants to watch and stick with. Yet I still look forward to the next opportunity to be with him and he pompously ask, "Haven't you had enough of me". My pride and control issues won't allow me to say no, so I give him some smart answer or none at all. I then wonder am I completely giving up "my power" and "my control". Since "my power and control" are illusions I fortify myself with, who can say? I don't know, I can only hope that for both of us this is not a game, but a dance. Not necessarily the most gracefully choreographed dance, but nevertheless a dance. I will trust the process, acknowledging the risk to be hurt, and yet dancing anyway. When it has concluded, the music changes and if I am the one leaving the dance floor, I will leave the dance floor knowing that I put my all into the dance. I will know that I was honest with him and more importantly honest with myself, and that I stayed until the song ended.