The first time I read The Secret, I read the chapter on relationships hoping to find a simple formula for magically bringing someone into my life. Instead, I read about the importance of “making room” for a relationship. The book used an example of a person who made room in her apartment for another person by organizing extra closet space and sleeping on one side of her bed. The book claimed that acting as if the other person was already there by making room was the sure fire way to manifest a relationship.
When I read The Secret, I lived in a tiny one bedroom apartment and barely had enough closet space for myself. I tried sleeping on one side of my bed but found myself annoyed with the lack of space due to the extra pillow and I often found myself waking up with all the sheets on my side of the bed because of all the uncomfortable tossing and turning I did throughout the night. I chucked my second pillow and resumed my middle-of-the-bed sleep patterns while accepting my fate as eternally single.
So, if you have a small apartment and like sleeping in the middle of your bed, you’re doomed to be single forever, right? Wrong. Once I figured out what making space really meant, I was able to attract love into my life.
When I moved to the East Coast from the Midwest for a job, I ended a relationship. We had been friends for several years and had been dating on and off for a couple years prior to my move. We agreed that the distance was too much and ended everything. But, after a few months of homesickness and singleness, we were speaking on a regular basis and I had this ridiculous idea that we could make it work somehow. We would go through cycles of speaking all the time, visiting each other, fighting because of the distance and then not speaking for months at a time. Then, we’d randomly text each other about something and the cycle would continue. The funny thing about these cycles would be that whenever he and I were speaking, I wouldn’t meet any guys at all. I would go out with friends and guys wouldn’t even notice me. But whenever he I would stop speaking, I would meet someone.
This cycle continued for over 2 years until I realized what was happening: every time I let this man go, I was making room for someone else to come into my life. But when I began speaking to him again, I was activating this energy of unavailability that no good man could get near. It became clear to me that as much as I cared about this man, he was living his own life in the Midwest and was not going to move. I had created my own life on the East Coast and was building a successful career and was not going to move back. Additionally, I think he and I both knew that we had become different people and were not a match to each other. He and I both maturely agreed that we had to stop seeing each other. We had a clean break: no phone calls, no texting, and no social media contact. It was not easy. Those first few weeks were ok, but after a month it really started to sink in and I spent a lot of nights crying and feeling sorry for myself. But I knew that in order for the Universe to send me someone, I needed to make room in my heart and eliminating someone who was unavailable and clearly not going to work was the only way to do that.
6 months later, my current boyfriend came into my life. Those 6 months were not easy. But they were necessary for me to fully get over the person I had let go. That may seem like a long time to a lot of people, especially if you feel like you have been waiting forever to find love. But it really wasn’t that long at all. Once it was clear to the Universe that I had made room for love in my heart, he showed up.
It is so easy to cling to what is familiar, to want to hold on to someone that you know is not a match to you because you’d rather be in a mediocre relationship than to be alone. I understand and hold no judgment if you are in that situation. But you cannot expect God, the Universe, Source or whatever you believe in to send you your soulmate if you have no room for that person in your life. You may say you want love but your actions may demonstrate otherwise. Just ask yourself whether you are willing to spend the next 30, 40, even 50 years in an unhappy situation or whether you are willing to let something go, be alone for a few months and make room for someone who will be happy with.
In conclusion, making room is less about making physical room than it is about making spiritual room. The woman in The Secret made room by physically moving things around in her apartment while I made room by letting go and making room in my heart. Each of you knows intuitively what you need to move around or let go in order to make the room for love.
