Freedom in Commitment

A personal story on love and the courage it took me to choose.

Part 1

I've never lived a particularly risk-averse life. I have often felt safe enough in myself and in the world to undertake adventures off the beaten path: immersing for a year in the urban jungle of São Paulo without speaking the language, hitchhiking solo for a month with truck drivers without money or phone into the Atacama desert, travelling solo by motorbike through remote areas of Laos relying on my basic lao to negotiate my stay in a hammock with the village heads, and a decade later leaving a rising career in international development behind, together with most of my possessions but two pieces of luggage, to jump into the unknown.

Yet all of this was nothing compared to the tremor I felt when I met my fear of commitment in its purest form. When after almost two years of resisting, I decided to fully choose the relationship Lila and I had started building.

We met during a partner exercise in a multiple-month contemporary dance intensive in India. A creative partnership emerged from our first dance together, and less than three weeks later we performed a duet together. In the process, a deep friendship started taking shape. We would spend hours walking on the beach late at night, speaking about the mysteries of life and its thousands of layers. It felt like our souls were dancing with joy as we felt met and seen, and there seemed to be no limit to the territory we could explore with our minds and hearts together.

Over the months as we started traveling together, the intimacy of this friendship became undeniable. We started getting to know each other in more depth, fascinated by our respective journeys and how we would find parallels. The elephant in the room started growing: this was evolving into something more than friendship. At some point, it became hard to pretend it wasn’t there. I was convinced it was not the right time for me to enter a relationship, and I felt threatened. Yet I was feeling too deep of a connection to walk away. And so I stayed, but started closing up.

I found many reasons to justify it. “I’m not in a phase in which I want a relationship. Certainly not a long-term one. I want to be free. There is so much to explore. I just want to be friends. She’s not good enough. I don’t want to get ‘caught’ by a woman.” And I was convinced these thoughts were the truth. I had no idea that what I was meeting was my own closed heart. Seeing my reflection in Lila, a woman I loved but believed I did not want to relate with, was my invitation to look inside, to face that which I had never looked at.

Lila was able to see through the stories I was telling, and instead of taking any of it personally, continued pouring love onto me. Day by day, with extraordinary patience, Lila met me with compassion and care. Through my resistance, through my shadows, through the projections of my pain onto her.

Many times I was unable to feel anything, blind to the gift I was receiving. But the moments in which I was able to trust and receive her love gave me a reason to enter the wound beneath my resistance: my broken heart, and the unworthiness that kept me searching for a woman who could validate my ego instead of opening to love.

As the months and years went by, we crossed many fires together. Again and again, one of us would meet a limit in the heart, project that pain onto the other, and resist. By breathing through these moments, and holding on to the beauty of the dance between our souls, we would cross them, one by one, often through tears. Every time we succeeded, we would land in an ever-more familiar space of togetherness, intimacy, and warmth. “It was just another fire”, we could then say, exhaling into each other’s arms. With time, we learnt to recognise these moments, and to cross them together instead of against each other.

They felt like dark clouds covering my perception, in which shadow voices took over and felt completely true. Sometimes it felt endless.  Over time I learnt not to believe the stories my mind would start telling me in those moments about myself, about our relationship, about Lila. The less I engaged with them, the more easily I could move through the storm without pushing Lila away. Soon enough, the light would return. And even though we kept meeting  the same patterns again and again, it felt like travelling through a spiral rather than turning in circles, every turn brought us a little closer to the center. And the more territory we crossed together, the stronger the pull of that center, and the less the stories of the mind that attempted to pull us away had power on us.

Through this process, I worked on my beliefs and unconscious patterns that were keeping me away from fully choosing love, life, this relationship. In my moments of lucidity, I could see this relationship as an invitation into infinity. And when I would meet my shadows again, I would become convinced this was a terrible mistake, and I had to run. With time, I started projecting less and taking more responsibility, which accelerated the process of becoming the man who would be able to embrace this love. I started becoming more aware of where I outsourced my need for validation, for instance to attention from women, and of how strongly   I protected my “need for freedom”, unaware that I was giving my power away to a part of me that still depended on them. Little by little, I realised that every place where I sought validation, protected my "freedom", or resisted love, was also a place where my life energy was being distracted from the life I wanted to create for myself. I began the meticulous work of reclaiming that life energy. Lila’s eagle eye in reflecting the tiniest misalignments back to me was an incredible accelerator for this process, regardless of how unbearably annoying it felt at the time of receiving these reflections. What really fuelled this process was my connection to purpose. It gave me a reason to keep walking through the densest layers of resistance, reluctantly “cleaning up”, instead of turning back. I realised that every place where I reclaimed that energy made more of it available for what I am here to create.

As we moved closer to the center, the joy of relating started to outweigh the voices of the mind that still pulled me away. Suddenly, without having seen it coming, I found myself standing at the edge of a cliff.

Down there, the boundless, fulfilling experience of union. Limitless growth. Partnership. Possibilities. Sharing life with someone so aligned that every moment becomes a mystery to explore, every step an invitation into shared awe. But that cliff felt high. So high it made my head spin. Am I really standing here? Am I really standing on this edge? I was looking at the possibility of truly committing.

Part 2

Marriage was never really part of how I saw myself growing older. I didn't see the point: we cannot know the future anyway. It felt unnecessarily conventional, and I preferred alternative forms of relating that, to me at the time, better reflected my idea of freedom. Choosing my partner every day rather than making a promise about a future no one can predict felt mature and wise.

It wasn't that I avoided long-term relationships. My last one lasted for a decade. It just wasn’t committed. I actually believed that not needing to make an explicit commitment reflected the natural stability of the relationship itself. What I couldn't yet see was that this also offered a very convenient middle ground: feeding my shadows while enjoying the benefits of a long-term relationship.

What I did not realise though, was that this lack of commitment was keeping me from experiencing the real heights and the essence of union. What I also could not yet see was that it is the unshakable commitment, the choice to spiral upwards together no matter how hard it gets, that creates the conditions for sacred union in a relationship where both people keep choosing growth.

And there I was, standing at the edge of this cliff. Feeling the tremor that came with choosing. Jumping meant there was no way back. At least for me. When I commit, I mean it. This wasn’t “I’ll see where it goes and I’ll turn around if it doesn’t feel right” anymore. This leap was the real deal. I could sense the power that was waiting for me down there, and yet I could sense my legs shaking. “Never coming back? What if I need to explore this upper part of the cliff a little longer? There are many viewpoints, landscapes, adventures I haven’t explored yet over here. Maybe I can wait a little longer before I jump? Or maybe this is a terrible mistake and I might land in a place that feels narrow and faded, out of which I will only be able to get myself out by causing a lot of pain to someone who has loved me with too much purity to be able to afford it.” But my indecision itself was causing pain. In myself and in her. At some point it became clear to me that the doubts would most likely never disappear completely. For someone who likes to have it all, there would always be an argument to stay up here, and never jump. I started feeling that one day, I would like to jump. And that that one day, I would like to jump with Lila. It became increasingly clear that it was her I wanted to build a life with, and that waiting would only prolong the time spent torn, standing on that edge.

The moment I saw this, the pendulum shifted. Every day spent standing on that edge was another day using my life energy to resist what was unfolding anyway. As long as I remained there, I was still vulnerable to doubt and temptation. Again and again, fear would pull me back before I found my way to my soul again and returned to the edge.

And as the pendulum shifted, I acted fast. I didn't think much more. I had already thought enough over the past two years, oscillating between the two sides of what I experienced as a dilemma. I made the decision during a dance with Lila on the rooftop of a friend's house. I felt extremely light in the days that followed. It was only the decision to jump, not the jump itself. Yet the decision itself immediately brought an unexpected sense of freedom inside me, as the pull away from the center of the spiral lost its strength. During the days after the decision was taken, I felt an urge to tell Lila. I felt the asymmetry between my knowing where we were going and her still living in uncertainty. It wasn’t easy to wait to close that gap, and I realised it might be time to seriously start looking into proposing.

I had one week while Lila went to visit her family in the middle east to make it happen. Having never imagined myself proposing, I knew nothing about the process. I found myself spending an afternoon researching engagement rings. I first walked into the classic jewellery shops, and didn’t resonate with their suggestion to just go for a classic solitaire ring. Yet I discovered then that a custom-made ring would normally take at least five or six weeks to create. I had five days. It seemed impossible. I was alone in it and that in itself felt significant. I felt the man in me simply deciding: I’m going to make this happen.

By what felt like pure luck, I wandered into the workshop of an artisan in the streets of Cannes. We started talking, and something just clicked. I had some ideas, and we started sketching together, gathering stones, creating. An hour later we had both fallen in love with the ring that was taking shape. Only then did I tell him I needed it in five days. He looked at me in disbelief. Already in love with the ring, and touched by the story behind it, he decided to move all of his other projects aside to make it happen. I ordered the ring that afternoon. Making the investment made the decision feel even more real.

That same evening, the airspace over Israel closed because of the war. Overnight, the certainty I had just found was met by a new uncertainty: I no longer knew whether Lila would even make it to Greece where I planned to propose, or even when we would meet again. It was an intense week as I carried this tension alone, no one around me knowing of my proposal plans.

With skies remaining closed, the only realistic option was for Lila to spend thirty-five hours crossing the Mediterranean on a small sailing boat beneath a sky overshadowed by the war, completely unaware that I was waiting for her with a ring in my backpack.

Just before she departed, I picked up the little red box and set off for Greece myself.

Part 3

Romantic stories apart, I underestimated the actual jump. Once we reunited and celebrated our togetherness after this odyssey, I spent a few days feeling into the right moment to make this decision real. The closer that moment came, the more agitated I became. Up until then, everything had happened in one flow. I hadn't had time to think. Now, the space for thoughts opened up again.

One morning it was clear: today would be the day. I brought the ring with me, guided Lila to a quiet part of Colibri Beach, built up the moment, and jumped that cliff.

There I was. In the air. Heart rising into my throat. The wind blowing in my ears. Falling. Falling.

The intensity of the moment was dazzling as this immense commitment was met from her side. I thought this would be it: celebration, freedom, joy. And all of that was there. But the free fall lasted longer than I had expected.

I started swirling my arms in the air, gasping for breath. Suddenly, fear crept in. The loudest voices in my mind, the ones that had tried to keep me on that cliff for the past two years, appeared again. At first they whispered. Then they pulled. And then they screamed, full force.

Reality started getting blurry. It became harder and harder to ignore the voices until I started mistaking them for reality. All of this while trying to hold the beauty of the moment, not wanting these same fears to invade what had just become one of the most meaningful moments of our lives.

At some point it became unbearable. I could feel myself losing connection with my soul, believing the fear, freezing. For a few moments, the deepest fears I'd spent two years working through came back with astonishing force. They became so convincing that I found myself reaching for the cliff, as if trying to climb back up, even though I knew exactly what that would mean.

Somehow, I found my way back. The screaming softened. The fog began to lift. And slowly, I could see clearly again.

Only afterwards did I understand what had happened. Jumping had stretched every attachment that had been pulling me back from the edge. Like rubber bands, they resisted with everything they had. The moment before they snapped felt like hell. The moment they finally broke felt like heaven.

Suddenly, I was free.

Free from all those doubts.

Free from the fear of missing out.

Free from the dilemma.

Free from all the "what ifs".

Free from my own resistance.

I discovered the freedom of commitment.

Freedom was the very thing I had been fighting for. And now here it was. There was nothing left to fight. I was free.

Lila felt it too. Something had opened between us that neither of us had experienced before. A massive field of possibilities opened up. It felt as though our entire life was finally able to rearrange itself around its natural direction. All the energy I had spent resisting suddenly became available. To experience life at its fullest. For creation. For my purpose. For our joint purpose. For our community. For parenthood. Everything started opening up.

It was the scariest decision I have ever made. It asked from me to tap into some of the deepest layers of courage I could find for me to cross it. But it transformed my life.

It felt like entering the center of the spiral. The opposing pull had disappeared. For the first time, all of my life energy was moving in the same direction.

Thank you Lila, for staying. Through every fire. Through every layer of resistance. Thank you for believing in us, and for trusting your knowing even when the mist of my mind had become so thick that I could no longer see. Thank you for accompanying me into the deepest parts of my darkness, and for bringing light there. Thank you for everything you have held.

I am here now.