They say there is no fool like an old fool, but for women that is not quite true.

For women, there is no fool like a Young Man’s Fool.

Throughout the It What it Is series I am sharing a selection of experiences with you that through them I learned some of my biggest life lessons. Although they are not my only mistakes and lessons learned, I chose the ones I believed that you would resonate most with as a female breadwinner.

I have not had many relationships and those that I have had, have always lasted 6 years or more. You read how I was an Old Man’s Sweetheart, and Keeping up Appearances. Now came the time in my life when I began the process of wanting to work out what I did want, because I was always getting what I didn’t want.

Why am I sharing these stories with you?

Before we get into this part of the Love Realm I wanted to highlight one of the reasons why I am sharing my life experiences with you. You see even though I had made a decision to change my behaviours and break the cycle, I didn’t know how. I read a lot of personal development and self-help books from Guru’s who had done exactly that, but unless I was prepared to part with significant sums of money it was almost impossible to find out the how. I am giving you some of the exercises in these blogs, and my book The Queen Particle gives you all the tools you need to change your life. Yes I am a coach, mentor, facilitator and trainer, yes I have programmes that I hope one day you invest in, but I want you to have the tools at hand to be able to affect immediate changes in your current situations. If I had known how, in 2007, I would have saved myself a small fortune financially, not really heartache as I wasn’t fully invested in a romantic way, but I still experienced a certain amount of pain, there was a huge amount of personal and financial investment in the man in this article.

As my Keeping up Appearances relationship ended, I made a decision that I was not going to date anyone for a year. As I said, I really needed to get my head right around what I wanted. Even after ending this relationship it took me a few months to get him out of my house. At this time I was involved in a business project with a younger, charming, good looking man. He had dreams, aspirations and could really talk the talk. In the earlier article around the Law of Attraction I explained to you how you get what you focus on, whether it’s what you do or don’t want, and you get what you are!

I was ripe for the picking

At this time I was vulnerable, I had been in an affectionless relationship with a man that lived off my money, and he had done so for 7 years. I had become so accustomed to it, and with my money paradigm being that I am not deserving of money, I was quick to spend it on others. I was ripe to be a young man’s fool. There was a time when I would have been more at “effect” around this relationship, using the term “con man” more than being at “cause” and owning up to being a young mans fool.

There are always two sides to every story, but in all honestly you are treated how you allow others to treat you. This young man on many scales was grateful for my investment in him, and although he would often protest that “I shouldn’t have” or “You didn’t need too” but he had a definite pathology that should he not change as he goes about his journey in life, “con man” could in the future be the right descriptor.

I have seen many a documentary on how rich older women are taken to the cleaners by handsome young conmen and I can fully relate to how this can happen. I was destined to lose everything financially because of my paradigms about money and if I hadn’t made some far reaching decisions at this time it may very well have been through this relationship, as a young man’s fool.

I wasn’t comfortable in my own skin

Loneliness is crippling, it comes as a result of your not being able to be comfortable in your own skin, being at peace with yourself. My advertising business was glamorous in many ways, and all though we didn’t go to every party we went to a few, having been with a partner who wouldn’t attend anything, or who would pull out at the last minute was soul destroying as I would attend alone and always have to explain myself. In the beginning my friendship with this charming young man was one of mutualism, beneficial to both of us. This was the closest I have ever come to being motivated by ego. He would attend events with me, travel with me, and many times sit and talk, really talk and have a conversation with me. He was everything that my last relationship wasn’t.

This relationship grew in many ways on an emotional level, until I realised that it wasn’t healthy. I could see that the relationship with the younger man was beginning to crack, it was becoming more one sided in terms of who was benefitting more. Although we were involved in a business relationship, the business wasn’t doing well, overheads were rocketing and his spending was becoming extravagant. As I was trying to reign him in he was becoming more petulant and spoilt, and I realised that something had to change

I was beginning to find my way in what it was that I wanted in life on a romantic level, I had at that time more than a year after my split with my last partner, met my future husband Chris. We had a few early bumps which I share with you later, but my new relationship impacted on the friendship I had with this younger man.

This being said, at certain fraught times he was a very good friend to me and I am extremely grateful for the lessons I learned from this. As women we often enter into relationships believing that they may turn in to something else. We settle, we believe that we can get more and that things will change, what we don’t do up front is work out what everyone is hoping for.

Your relationship with a romantic partner is nothing to do with them, you are 100% responsible for everything about your relationship with them. In turn they are 100% responsible for their relationship with you and it has nothing to do with you. As a result by asking some questions of both them and yourself you will get an idea of the intention about your relationship. If you are seeing someone who has been married before who openly states they will never marry again, and you want to be married one day, don’t waste your time. That’s an extreme example, but honestly do the exercise after the lesson below, be brave, ask the questions.

Through A Young Mans Fool, the word which I want to float in to your consciousness, is “ego”. Why is the ego so hard to explain or describe? The ego is difficult to define because the ego isn’t one specific thing. It is actually made up of many different beliefs that a person acquires over their life. Those beliefs can be diverse and even contradictory. The ego is an identity of our own construction, an identity which is false. If we take all the beliefs of what we are – beliefs about our personality, talents, and abilities – we have the structure of our ego. These talents, abilities and aspects of our personality will be attributes of our skills, but the mental construct of our “self” is artificial. And while this description might make the ego seem like a static thing, it is not. Rather, it is an active and dynamic part of our personalities, playing an immense role in creating emotional drama in our lives. When we have thoughts about our self that we agree with we construct a self-image. The kinds of thoughts that contribute to the ego structure are: “I am clever” and “My nose makes me look ugly” and “I am better than you” and “That was stupid of me.” The ego you see, hides behind the “I” and “me” in declarative thoughts and statements about our identity.

Question:

What event or person in your life is currently feeding your ego, and, what drama is being created in your life as a result of allowing this to feed your ego?

Exercise:

1. To the unaware person, it is difficult for them to discern the difference between what is ego and what is the authentic self… When unpleasantness goes down, have you ever been left wondering “What on earth came over me that I reacted that way?”
2. That’s your ego that got in the way and as you now know, invariably you end paying a huge price for being right – technically you may be right, but the other person will walk away probably hating you for life – hence the emotional dramas referred to in the question above.
3. Who have you unnecessarily hurt with and through your ego?
4. When all was said and done, was it really worth all the drama and emotional turmoil?
5. To get rid of the emotional, ego-driven, drama in your life:

• Stop emotional reactions
• Change your core beliefs
• Quiet the criticizing voice running rampant in your head
• Restore sensitive communication with others
• Put respect back in to all your relationships
• Do what gives you happiness in your life as when you’re happy and content you’ve get nothing to prove (ego) to others because you’re comfortable in your own skin

My profound lesson:

The young man fed my ego and though I’d always said I didn’t have one, I most certainly did and thankfully he showed me just how large and active it was in my life – hence I was indeed a young mans fool. I learned through all this that my ego is my concocted self-image, not my true, authentic self. It is characterized by labels, masks, images, and judgements. My true self is the field of possibilities, creativity, intentions, and power. I am able to go beyond the ego through self-awareness – awareness of my thoughts, feelings, behaviours, and speech. This realisation means every day I am moving beyond my ego to my true self. You’d do well to read the poem by Rabindranath Tagore, entitled “Who is this?” which describes the ego as “my own small self.” Can you go beyond your own small self, your ego, to discover your true self? I hope you can as one the other side lies peace, beautiful peace and connectedness.

To your success, with love

Suzanne.