Over the next three months life would be not quite what I thought it was going to be.

Yes, I made a choice to fight and to beat this heart-break of mine. To fix it all, save it all and make everyone happy… or so I thought. While my former partner at the time wanted to stay in our marriage he also wanted to open the door to letting other women in to his life and he continued to see this other woman as friends. I mean, who am I to tell him what he can or can not do. Who he can or can not have as friends and he assured me there was nothing going on, just a friendship.

So, what did I do? I entered in to a vicious cycle of crying a great flood of tears in front of my computer at work every day and when at home did everything I could to try and convince him that I was the one and only one he wanted to be with. I organized a weekend stay at a beachfront resort, thought up things that he would like to do, like go dancing on salsa night, started attending all his performances and shows (he was a hobby musician in a band) and tried to spice things up in the bedroom.

Even with all this going on he still continued and maintained and grow his friendship with her. He would think about her constantly. Chat with her and he wouldn’t with me. But, he kept saying he didn’t want to leave me. But, he wanted more. He wanted an open relationship  and all I wanted in return was for him to think of me, love me, commit to me and just be with me and our son.

Come Christmas and New Years I wasn’t in any better shape. As much as I tried to fight, control and fix everything it was all an illusion that was quickly crumbling. So I fought harder… Christmas came around and we went away on a family holiday. Surely here, where she wasn’t, we could really get things going. Surely now he would see what he was neglecting to see and love me and want to stay with me. But, nothing changed and the fear, stress, worry, guilt, shame, and fret just kept growing and growing and growing until I had a massive weight burdening down on my shoulders. I didn’t tell anyone… I was embarrassed and ashamed. I wasn’t enough… I wasn’t enough. And then, I didn’t want anyone to think poorly of my partner. He was lost, he didn’t know what he was doing. At least those were the excuses that I told myself.

Finally, I threw out a bargaining chip. I told him that if he really wanted an open relationship I would consider it and discuss it with him on one condition. That we fix our relationship first. We rebuild and strengthen our foundation so solidly and tightly and then we would go from there.  6 months… 6 months and our relationship would be so solid and grounded that he then wouldn’t want to consider an open marriage anymore…

And then came the Mother… my saving grace and the deepest, darkest space I couldn’t even ever fathomed to exist… the spaces within me that I discovered when I Journeyed to Amazonia… Enter Mother Ayahuasca