When Hook-Ups Hurt

No strings attached, right? So why is there a rope dragging around your peace of mind? If you let yourself get lost in a moment only to awaken with an emotional hangover, it might be time to stop hooking up and start looking up your love forecast. Your energy may be telling you it’s time to find someone you can hook into on an emotional and spiritual level before you hook up.

The first step
Get past the hook-up day-after syndrome. Go easy on yourself. You felt something and you went for it. That is the heart of every journey – and every love story! If you feel unclear about your feelings, take pen to paper. Write down your side of the story to get clarity. Was there a moment when you ignored your intuition? Was there disappointment you are not acknowledging? And, perhaps, most common of all, did you want something more but settled for a hook-up?

Be honest with yourself
At the end of the day, it’s the love story with yourself that is the greatest love of all. Emotionally unattached sex probably has its time in nearly everyone’s development. Most of us move through it to the next level of wanting a deeper, sustaining connection with another person. Are you ready for a change?

Slow down and change direction
When a boat is moving in one direction and the captain sets a new course, it takes a great amount of energy for that vessel to slow down and change direction. It takes far more energy than if the boat had just kept going in its original direction. You are that vessel and by acknowledging your hurt feelings around a hook-up you are asking for a new course in your life.

Ask for guidance
You have an unbounded capacity to love. Ask for guidance so that you put your love toward someone who will return it to you tenfold. By getting a love compatibility reading you are asking the universe to guide you to your soulmate.

Your next close encounter
Without fail, you will then walk through a door and find yourself in a situation where you are faced with a choice – to hook up or not! It will have all the emotional energy of so many hook-ups of the past. But guess what? You will make a new choice! Perhaps it will be to exchange numbers so that you can get to know this person slowly and make a decision with your body, mind and spirit about whether or not to share yourself sexually. Perhaps you will just walk away and know that you are meant for something better.

By breaking your pattern for the first time, you are suddenly open and alive. Soon you will find yourself deciding between many worthy dinner dates instead of deciding “your place or mine.” At the heart of all this, you have to learn what feels right for you. Peace of mind, body and spirit comes from charting your course toward a love that is as open and exciting as you are. Find out what the universe has in store and then set your sails. It’s an open sea and you are the captain of the ship.