Don't Fall in Love With a Dreamer

There are a lot of qualities about myself that I appreciate, but right up there at the top of the list is that my inner voice uses songs to communicate with me and tell me what I need to know.

Over the last few days, the inner jukebox has been relentless with this heartbreaking song from one of my childhood faves. I keep having the urge to hear this song and belt out the words, (which I did today while riding my bike to work -- the co-eds I rode past didn't know what hit them!) but I don't have a recording, so instead I've been using the youtube recording on my phone, even while driving in the car:

Just look at you sitting there
You never looked better than tonight
And it'd be so easy to tell ya I'd stay
Like I've done so many times

I think I get why it's here right now: I did fall in love with a dreamer. And to make matters worse, I was a dreamer falling in love with a dreamer, and the more I let my dreamer take over, the less grounded I became in the reality of the situation.

Which is unfortunate, because the reality of the situation is very clear. While I have glimpsed the fullness of who the man from New England is, and fell in love with him, he unfortunately (for me) hasn't been operating in that fullness for a long time. And further, as a friend reminded me yesterday, he's been operating in neediness and indecision, both of which have caused me pain, and would probably continue to cause me pain as long as I let them.

Last summer and fall, I spent nearly six months trying to get over him. I was doing pretty well, too. I'd made a lot of headway. And then he called me up at Christmastime, saying he wanted me back, saying he wanted a family, our family. Now I could have told him he was offering too little, too late. If I had been really grounded as I listened to him, I probably would have known better. Part of me did know better. But I didn't let her make the decision. I let my heart -- and the dreamer in me -- the one who wanted nothing more than for his words to really be true -- make the decision for the rest of me.

Just in case you don't know what happens when you fall in love with a dreamer, Kenny Rogers and Kim Carnes will be happy to tell you. This next verse really encapsulates the feeling I had -- just swap out the word "night" with the word "time" and they could very well be singing about my experience when he came back into my life over the holidays last year:

I was so sure this would be the night
You'd close the door and want to stay with me
And it'd be so easy to tell ya I'll stay
Like I've done so many times

Don't fall in love with a dreamer
'Cause he'll always take you in
Just when you think you've really changed him
He'll leave you again
Don't fall in love with a dreamer
'Cause he'll break you every time
Oh, put out the light
Just hold on
Before we say goodbye

Oh, I wanted to hold on. I really, really did. Right up through my last visit with him. I didn't want to say goodbye. My heart wasn't ready to say goodbye. But I am choosing to do things differently now. I am no longer trying to change him, and when I allow myself to stay in where he is, and not run off in my head to where I can help him get to, I feel solid about the fact that he is not the one to be my partner. My heart may not like this fact, but she can at least accept that it's the reality right now.

This is my work -- staying grounded in myself and what I know -- so that I don't let the dreamer (either his dreamer or my dreamer) take over my life. I love both of those dreamers dearly -- mine got me through a really tough childhood -- and his got me through a whole lot of healing from my childhood -- but those dreamers simply can't take me where I want to go today.

Because I want to go to a space where the partner I choose for myself knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that living his life with me is exactly what he wants to do. And the beauty of that, of the relationship that is coming for me, is I won't have to ask him to stay even once, let alone repeatedly, he just will:

Now it's mornin' and the phone rings
And you say you've gotta get your things together
You just gotta leave before ya change your mind
And if ya knew what I was thinkin', girl
I'd turn around if you'd just ask me one more time

Don't fall in love with a dreamer
'Cause he'll always take you in
Just when you think you've really changed him
He'll leave you again
Don't fall in love with a dreamer
'Cause he'll break you every time
Ooooooh, put out the light
Just hold ooon
Before we say goodbye
Before we say goodbye
Goodbye

I'm not sure how old I was when I first heard that you can't change people, but I can tell you I didn't believe it then. I believe it now, and I've officially stopped trying to change the man I fell in love with, which feels like progress and could very well be one of the things I needed to learn in that relationship...