Unconscious and In Love
Author: Teri Harris Saa

Do you remember being fifteen? I sure do. It was the worst year of my life. When I turned fifteen, I felt like an outcast—unpopular. All of the popular girls were dating. They all had boyfriends. As individuals they weren’t particularly outstanding, but still they were admired. They were in love. At fifteen being in love was all it took to be popular.

Being fifteen was hard. Even though I was well known and liked, a good student, a cheerleader, and the editor of the school paper I wasn’t a member of the in-crowd. Why? Because, I didn’t have a boyfriend. At lunch, I would sit with all of my boy-friendless peers and share our thoughts on the joys of being in love. The group of single girls—and a large group it was at fifteen—would congregate together and endlessly talk about love, relationships and marriage. While we jealously watched the in-crowd walking hand-in-hand, we would imagine how wonderful our lives would be in the arms of our always, adoring husbands. We would discuss how many children to have and expound on how we would live our perfect white-picket-fenced adult lives. We practiced writing Mrs. in front of the names of every boy to whom we felt the least bit of attraction. We obsessed about love. We shared with each other the terrible ache of our bodies as we yearned to be touched and kissed. We fantasized about rock stars, movie stars, teachers, any man and every man. Once in awhile we might briefly think about our studies, our families, our friends, and maybe, even, our future careers—but boys! Oh, dear God, at just the mention of a certain boys’ name our minds would be racing, our hearts palpitating, and we would be speeding down another illusionary romantic road until we crashed over our misconceptions and smashed head first into the wall of our momentary reality. We were boy-friendless!

Being fifteen and without a boyfriend was miserable. I don’t know how I managed to keep going every day. I felt worthless. And like my large group of unpopular friends I was desperately lonely. Then one glorious day I met Gary. Suddenly, my life had meaning. I could now walk around the school looking the in-crowd in the eyes. I could write Mrs. in front of his name and feel proud. I could hold my head up, stand tall and say, “Look at me, I’m wonderful, I’m in love.”

Gary and I dated for three years over which time we discovered how much we had in common; each other, kissing and sex. We got along well. We were comfortable together. So, the logical thing to do was to get married and at the wise old age of eighteen, just three weeks after we graduated from high school, that’s exactly what we did.

The first year or two was fun. I enjoyed trying to be the perfect wife and Gary did his best to be a husband. But our “wedded bliss” wasn’t meant to last. Not long after the wedding our different beliefs about life and our future began to cause problems. We were too young, inexperienced, and unconscious to realize that what we each wanted out of life might be different, and of course we never dreamed that these differences might be a cause of conflict.

Gary and I grew apart. With different ideals, different life goals and different ways of living, we were no longer comfortable being together. We were no longer in love. So after four years of marriage I found myself divorced and right back in the unwanted state I was in at fifteen, boy-friendless.

Are you still choosing your lover the way you did at fifteen?

It’s unfortunate, but everyday I talk to people who are totally asleep when it comes to relationships and who continue to unconsciously fall in love. Even though they are twenty, thirty or forty years old, they react to being without a lover like a fifteen-year-old girl does to being without a boyfriend. They panic when they’re not in love. They feel that their life depends on being in love. But is it really their life or their perceived emptiness that depends on it?

I don’t mind confessing that for many years I, like so many others, had a false emptiness that I tried to fill by falling in love. It took me a couple of husbands and lots of inner searching to understand this. Every relationship I entered into unconsciously, like I did at fifteen, ended miserably.

Falling in love is easy; staying in love is hard, because to stay in love means loving from our fullness not our emptiness. It’s our ego, or as Freud more aptly puts it our Id, that feels empty, afraid, alone, unpopular. The ego falls in love unconsciously. It seeks to fill its perceived emptiness by falling in love, but this type of love never lasts. Happily, however, there is a type of love that does last. It’s the love we share out of the fullness of our soul.

When we connect to the fullness of our soul, we find that our life overflows with love. Unlike the ego, the soul doesn’t need to fill up on love; it only needs to share the love it has within itself. The person who loves from their soul fills their emptiness with this love—true love—before they seek to fall in love. It’s only after learning to love from your soul that you can truly love someone else. The ego needs to fill up on love; the soul needs to share the love that fills it.

Thankfully I no longer have a need to be popular. I’m no longer seeking to be in love; instead I’m filled with true love, the love that comes from my soul. And because of this I’ve attracted a wonderful man. One who, like me, shares the love in his soul. And believe me when I tell you that the satisfaction I get from sharing my fullness far, far surpasses any perceived satisfaction I got from trying to fill up my emptiness.







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Teri Harris Saa is a Conscious Creation Mentor and author. She works with individuals and groups teaching The Art of Conscious Creation, a psycho-spiritual self-creation process. Look for her book The Wisdom Chronicles: An Everywoman's Awakening to Her Purpose (Moment Point Press) in stores and on line. For information on classes or individual sessions, contact Teri through her web site: www.ArtofConsciousCreation.

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