The “Him-Shaped Void”
A few months ago, I read a book called Dear Lover by David Deida. In it he talks about a concept he called the him-shaped void. In my mind, I changed it to the man-shaped void, so that’s what I prefer to call it now. I’m quirky like that.
Regardless of what it is called, I was experiencing it. My “friend with benefits” from last year left a man-shaped void in my heart and body that just wasn’t going away. David Deida describes it in a way that makes it sound like an actual physical/energetic thing, not just a construct of the mind. And based on my personal experience, it is.
I’d done all of the emotional and energetic work related to my friend with benefits, and I was ready to be done with the man-shaped void. It was getting old. Just when I thought it was gone, (phew! ) it would pop up again in another form.
So I made a decision to take on another lover. And I intuitively knew, the man-shaped void would vanish like magic. It did- like magic! But the part I conveniently forgot about, (that I remembered when I reread the book) is that if the new lover opened me more deeply than the old lover did, then there would just be another man-shaped void as soon as that new lover was no longer present.
And so it goes, each new lover opening us more deeply than the last. Each new lover leaving a man-shaped void in his wake. Which leads me to the belief that it’s what we all came here for. To be with others. And while this is true, it doesn’t end there.
As David puts it: “Eventually as your devotional capacity to offer yourself grows, you will attract a man who opens you to God’s shape through his loving. Then, your heart will retain a God-shaped void in moments when you have separated yourself from divine love. Your yearning will be to feel infinity’s claim of your heart, opening you without bounds, filling you with an abundance of presence and pleasure beyond your capacity to bear, forcing you open as full as all.”
Now, I ask you, how good does THAT sound? And guys, you get the same benefit on the other end!
I haven’t created that in this lifetime- yet- and it is my full intention to do so. For the time being, I’ll simply be in my process, taking my learning and my growth as it comes. And I will feel both the pain and the ecstasy of the man-shaped void I now have.