The Miracle I Almost Missed: Navigating the Relationship Maze into Romantic Fulfillment

By Pam Boyd

Many of us have spent years living our romantic lives as if we are victims of our circumstances. We may have invested so much time and energy into complaining, fretting, and despairing over our circumstances that we now defi ne ourselves by our perceived obstacles, bad luck, or mistreatment by others. Seeing hope through these fi lters is almost impossible.

The Miracle I Almost Missed offers timely, practical advice for navigating through this maze of relationship disappointment to a place of hope and empowerment. It provides information that points the way to a more positive and hopeful approach to finding and keeping romantic relationships. Each chapter features a reality check that includes Finding Cluesquestions that are designed to help you see your romantic life from a new perspectiveand a Challenge, which offers alternative next steps.

For anyone who has been burned by love, feels unattractive, is stuck in a dead-end relationship, or faces uncomfortable dating challenges, The Miracle I Almost Missed can be the first step to new hope!

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jun 14, 2012
• ISBN: 9781475926279

Pam Boyd

Pam Boyd is an international speaker and consultant, as well as the author of The Two-Minute Tune-Up and The Essential Handbook for First-Time Managers and Supervisors. She has written three screenplays, self-produced one of them, and spends her spare time plotting ways to help people create better lives for themselves. She lives in Addison, Texas. (Follow her blog at pamgboyd.wordpress.com)

Book preview

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Bibliography

For Bernie,

the miracle I almost missed

(also Hudson, Sydney, Pammy, Justin, Susannah,

and faithful friends and exes

who helped me learn the things I now know)

Introduction

Through the Maze in Search of Romance

image1maze1011.tif

How Did I Get Caught in This?

A sense of participation in determining the content of life—comes as close to what is usually meant by happiness as anything else we can conceivably imagine.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

(Author of Flow)

Many of us have spent years living our romantic lives as if we are victims of our circumstances. I did it too, although I have now come to my senses.

We are not doomed to wander through life as baffled experimental animals.

Obviously we can’t always control what people do to us, but as Viktor Frankl’s concentration camp experience taught us in Man’s Search for Meaning, we can always control our attitudes toward what happens to us and, as a result, take charge of our lives. It took me way too long to learn this, but I am now finished with the victim lifestyle and all the drama that accompanies it.

The other night I awoke in a terrible panic. I had dreamed I was madly in love with this really gorgeous, famous man who had fallen out of love with me. The harder I tried to get him to love me again, the more he pulled away. The more he pulled away, the more rejection I felt from him, his family and our friends. The more rejected I felt, the crazier I became. The crazier I became, the more everyone avoided me.

Primal scream!

I was never so relieved to awaken, discover it was a dream, and remember that I was way more in control of my life and not dependent on another human being to validate my worth!

It is a terrible nightmare when we find ourselves helpless, entangled in this or some other relationship maze, running into walls, beating our head against concrete, unable to find a way around innumerable, unyielding obstacles. But as daunting as our particular mazes may seem, there is a way out. Better results are often much closer than we think.

The big challenge is that many of us have invested so much time and energy complaining, fretting, and despairing over our circumstances that we now define ourselves by our perceived obstacles, bad luck, or mistreatment by others. Seeing hope through these filters is almost impossible.

But overcomers and creators of better lives know that obstacles to finding miracles are not the circumstances themselves but, rather, how we think about our circumstances.

In the past, this sentiment would have made me fighting mad! I thought people who said things like this were sheltered, were insensitive, and didn’t have a clue about the hands other people were dealt.

An epiphany that helped me get unstuck and consequently reject this victim mentality in my romantic life came partly from the following ancient story:

There was a man who had been severely disabled for thirty-eight years. He had no hope, no life, and no future. He had heard a legend of an angel who periodically stirred the water in a pool in Jerusalem. The first person to get in after the stirring would be healed. So year after year, he lay by the pool along with countless others, waiting. But, because he couldn’t walk, he could only drag himself; of course, someone always got in the water before he did. (Talk about a frustrating existence!)

One day Jesus came by and asked him, Do you want to get well?

Someone always gets in the water before me, the man answered.¹

I would have probably answered just as he did, and then added more excuses and whining (e.g., It’s not fair, etc.). But here is something important to notice: Jesus did not ask the man, Why aren’t you well yet? He asked, Do you want to get well?

This was the critical distinction that finally got my attention. And making that distinction was my first step out of my maze of relationship frustration and despair.

Help was right in front of me, just as healing was right in front of the man in the story. But, as in this example, I had become stuck in a thought pattern, worried about the logistics of getting into the water when, in reality, I didn’t even need the water or the angel!

The expectation of disappointment, our cynicism, or our fear of failure will often cause us to argue and make excuses about the how instead of simply being open to miracles. But if we want change in our relationships, surrendering our excuses is the first step.

In any area of life, it’s always the first step. Surrender the excuses. Otherwise, solutions are not accessible, and our own noise drowns out the voice of hope, no matter how loudly it yells at us.

Today, we can begin to create the relationships we’ve dreamed of. We can extract ourselves from the mazes of frustration, disappointment, and confusion we have fallen into. We can stop moaning about our plight or complaining about the people who have disappointed us. We can find the key, learn our way through the maze, and come out on the other side, into the freedom, hope, and joy we deserve. Whether you are male or female, young or old, gay or straight, The Miracle I Almost Missed can help illuminate the paths you have been looking for.²

If you are skeptical, that’s okay. For many years I, too, felt excluded from a better life by circumstances beyond my control. Feeling forever sentenced to romantic dissatisfaction, I complained and whined about the trap in which I was caught.

My Maze

I think I was born insecure. My very first memories of childhood are riddled with self-hatred. Feeling everyone was better than me, the world seemed a pretty scary place. While my sister, Angela, was confidently telling dirty jokes to strangers at the age of four, I was hiding behind my mother’s skirt at the slightest notion of danger and was on the path to becoming a prolific liar by the age of five. My glass was always half empty.³

I was also raised in a somewhat insecure environment. Although my mother, Dorothy Thorn, loved her five children and did the best she could, she was married at least nine times. My maternal grandparents had multiple marriages as did my father, Louis Gatewood. He was a former boxer and a sometimes-violent alcoholic who ended up homeless and had both legs amputated due to his alcoholism. My mother divorced him when I was in kindergarten and we fled in the middle of the night with a police escort. Before and after their divorce, we moved many times either because of instability brought on by my father’s drinking or to get away from other ex-husbands. I attended eleven different schools before graduating from high school.

In elementary school, life was confusing, so I lied about everything to keep from looking foolish. In the seventh grade, I prayed for Martians to come take me away, and in high school, mainly because of boy problems, I became suicidal.

My dating experiences were generally dismal and followed a predictable progression from bad to worse. Desperately desiring acceptance, I started out as one of those girls who talks about their other boyfriends during the entire date. Then, I improved and talked about myself for hours. Scared and self-absorbed, I don’t recall ever contemplating anyone else on the date except me, myself, and I.

Guys went out with me because of my bleached blonde hair and my really short skirts, but I was hardly ever invited for a second date. The rejection tormented me. Along with confusion about sex and an obsession for Ronnie Reeser, a cute guy who was two years older and who barely looked my way, the loneliness led me down the I just want to end it all path. I may have taken my life if I hadn’t been such a big chicken about pain.

Fortunately, a spiritual awakening saved my life. At the very least, it set me on a different path. Some people wouldn’t say that it was a better path, especially those to whom I preached fire and brimstone, but ultimately, it was better than suicide or following the path my mother had chosen: a path that left her a broken woman with a trail of broken men in her wake.

I really didn’t want to end up like that but had become introspective enough at that point to admit I shared the chronically discontent gene with my mother and was like her in other ways as well. So I made a radical decision in college: after attending a Bill Gothard Institute of Basic Youth Conflicts workshop, I completely quit dating for good, believing that would save me from choosing the wrong partner.

I met my husband in a radical group of hippie-Christians, and one year later, we made the decision to marry solely on spiritual criteria. He loved God. I loved God. He passed out religious literature on campus. I passed out religious literature on campus. He was good, caring, and humble. I pretended to be good, caring, and humble. What could possibly go wrong?

We tried hard to make it work. For twenty-seven years we tried! Neither of us believed in divorce. We had three children and a lot at stake. We respected each other, but at the end of the day, the relationship did not meet either of our needs. My husband was clinically depressed for ten years (who could blame him?) before we finally decided to move on.

All this added to my insecurity and the feeling that I was never going to have the type of relationships that other people had. Then, after the shock of my divorce subsided, out on my own, struggling to start a new business, I finally met someone I was excited about dating. Several lonely months had passed before this happened. But while attending a film festival Halloween party (dressed as a grotesque headless man holding my head in my hands), I met Dracula.

Ironically, Dracula was very kind, exceptionally intelligent, interesting, and spiritual. Plus, he was willing to go out with me not knowing what I looked like under the hideous makeup. That had to indicate he had some character—or at least a good sense of humor.

As our relationship developed, I became hopeful and even euphoric, totally convinced that life was finally turning out right. Unfortunately, before the year was over, the relationship ended. We both had our issues, and no matter how hard we tried or how much I fooled myself that it was working, we just weren’t right for each other.

It was my lowest point.

Along with this new heartache, I had invested all of my savings on a failed business venture, amassed $120,000 in credit-card debt, and taken on the responsibility for my dying sister’s two children (one with special needs) as well as a dependent mother with Alzheimer’s. Plus, I still had two kids in school who were not only emotionally wounded from the divorce but now also wounded from the time I had devoted to my new romantic interest.

Now for the Happy Ending Part

Unbelievably, in spite of all these obstacles (and because of these obstacles), I found my way through the maze and, in the process, found access to ongoing relationship miracles.

My breakthroughs came when I let go of my self-image and belief system long enough to admit there might be gaps in my knowledge. I began to read everything I could find on relationships from any and every philosophical camp. I began listening to self-help audios and attending conferences. I was on a quest for more options. And they were out there.

In my quest I discovered that, previously, my options had been