How My Relationship With Nature is Helping Me To Love

I met a young lady last year. She has a soul that matches the beauty of her body; something that is hard to find in this world. I had almost given up on finding the kind of love that I had always dreamed of after trying and failing twice, but something kept me hoping.

Winter was turning to spring last year and the catkins were dangling tentatively from the twisting ancient birch trees in Snowdonia, signalling the trees’ new growth. I (finally) met her beneath the trees in my favourite corner of the national park after crossing paths online four years earlier.

Love has been the greatest adventure of my life so far. Journeying into another persons’ soul, whilst exposing my own has been scary but so incredibly rewarding.

We are almost reaching the one year mark since that first date on which we sipped lemon and ginger tea out of a saucepan amongst trees. I knew it back then to be honest — this was the one that I would be spending my life with. It seemed like fate to have met her amongst the trees that I have gained so much wisdom from over the past half-decade.

If it wasn’t for my relationship with Mother Nature, there is no way that I would be here writing about my relationship with her. This love simply would not have lasted to see summer. I would have ran a mile the first time she came to me voicing one of her fears or insecurities — and there have been plenty of them, not just for her, but for both of us.

She has such a rich and beautifully complex inner world, but without the patience that I have learnt to embody from nature, I wouldn’t have been around long enough to allow her to introduce me to it.

The version of me that existed before I found nature and creativity didn’t understand the depths that have allowed this to develop into such a special connection.

So, in this blog post, as an adage to the wisdom of Mother Nature, and, perhaps, some lessons for other men in how to understand the feminine beings in their life, I want to introduce you to some of the lessons that I have learnt from nature about the greatest and most precious gift that we have in this life; and that gift is what we call love.

Let love flow like a river.

Love is like a river. Sometimes it flows, sometimes it’s fast, and sometimes it slows, sometimes it gushes, and sometimes the river may run close to dry. What I have learnt, however, is that the river never dries up completely.

I have noticed the same pattern in the love that this young lady offers to me. When she has little love to give because she is caught up in her own thoughts and only focused on herself, I allow her mood to pass, and I accept her completely whilst doing so.

I know that the time will come for her to open to me again, and, like a bursting dam, her emotions and love will pour out to me. When the time comes for that, I enjoy those special moments, for I know that those too, will soon pass.

I wrote earlier about the fears and insecurities that have arisen inside of both of us over the past year. If it wasn’t for my own understanding of the natural flow of the river of life, then some of my own fears may have grown roots inside of me.

I know that fears are naturally going to arise at points throughout anyone’s life – and this means that they are going to arise within a relationship. When a fear rears it’s ugly head, I’ll sit with it, I’ll try to understand it, maybe I’ll journal about it, and sometimes, if the fear doesn’t pass or gets too much, then I will talk to my loved one about it.

What I will not do, is push it down into my subconscious and allow it to fester beneath the surface. That’s a sure fire way to create an unhealthy and toxic relationship with yourself, and, therefore, with your partner as a result.

She wants to understand all of you; fears and all, so that she can love you in all of the ways that she knows how. Do not let your ego tell you otherwise.

Let her break — like the waves upon the headland.

Be like the rocky headland upon which the waves constantly break. It stands firm, and round it the seething waters are laid to rest.

- Marcus Aurelius

She is just like the ocean; soft and gentle, yet wild and fierce. She has brought her chaos to me many times already. I’m yet to break. Nature has taught me how to be present, above anything. It has taught me to stand strong and be resilient against the storms. Now she trains me to do the same. Without knowing it, she is preparing me for what I am bound to face whilst out in this world.

Women are highly emotional beings, and they are often confused by their own behaviour as much as we are. They don’t want us to fix them when they come to us with a problem — because that implies that we think that they are broken.

She is one of the most rational beings that I know. She relies heavily on her emotions, instincts and intuition for survival. In my experience, gut feelings are there for a reason. So women most certainly aren’t broken, but actually, they might be the ones who are fully functional.

Perhaps it is us men that need fixing. Maybe we need to learn to accept, rather than manipulate and control. We also need to decrease the distance that we maintain between ourselves and the trees, so that we, too, can ground ourselves in presence and allow the significant woman in our lives to make the most of their emotions, intuition, and rich inner worlds.

We should be the ones that they want to come to when they need to break. They aren’t going to come to us if we a) shame them for having such strong emotions, b) try to fix them, c) crumble like sandstone when they crash against us, or d) erupt back at them like an angry volcano.

Another version of myself would probably have picked option ‘c’, but, since I am in closer alignment with nature now, I’m able to stand strong, hold my presence and be there for her when she most needs me. That is a sure-fire way to build unbreakable trust and ensures that she comes to me for the support that she needs and not her female friends — or worse, another man.

Love her unconditionally

Too much of modern day love is based upon conditions. I’ll love her but only if we are having sex regularly. I’ll love him fully when he shows me how big his bank balance is.

Mother Nature has taught me unconditional love. It doesn’t matter if I am angry, sad, joyful or miserable. She doesn’t judge me based upon the figure that sits in my bank account or the clothes that I wear. She gives her love to me whatever place I am in mentally, spiritually or financially.

The trees always treat me with patience. They always allow me to take a rest against their trunks, and they always provide space for me whenever I need to unload my emotional baggage.

The unconditional love that I have felt in my relationship with nature, I can now pass on to this special lady in my life. As far as my experience with her goes, all that a woman really wants is to be loved without conditions; to be loved for her, soul and all, and not just for her body; to be loved in moments of darkness, just as much as those times when she radiates with the warmest light.

Embrace the seasons to better understand her love

Similar to my first point, your woman is going to go through her own seasons depending on her menstrual cycle — these can be more turbulent and volatile than the wildest of midsummer thunderstorms.

Sometimes she will be full of life and vitality, other times she is going to want to hide away from the world (and that includes me and you), release her emotions, and not be seen for a while.

The old version of me that existed before the trees had a hold of me would have felt a deep sense of frustration that she is open and receptive to my love one minute, but closed off to me completely the next.

My rejection wounds would have been ripped open, and I too would have withdrawn into my own head. The self sabotaging would have begun and my own barriers would have been built high and wide, leading to further disconnection between the two of us.

My mood might have once depended somewhat on her mood – this is a trait of codependency and points to what was once a deep insecurity within myself.

Nature has helped me to build a stronger and deeper relationship with myself, and, as a result, my mood is rarely altered by the people that surround me.

I hear of so many men that complain about and ridicule their partners for their sometimes turbulent moods. This only causes emotional distance between couples.

She wants to know that you understand her – or are, at least, open to trying. She wants to know that you understand the law of polarity. The more intense her lows, the more beautiful are her ups. We need to be the men that offer support by maintaining our own sense of balance throughout – and there is nothing that better teaches balance than Mother Nature.

Listen without judgment – just like the trees

She opens up her heart and allows me to set up camp inside. She trusts me with everything. She does so because she knows that, when she talks, I listen. That is an unwritten rule in my relationship with her — and that goes both ways. I understand her and how she can drift in and out of presence more often, sometimes due to her seasonal cycle, other times due to bouts of dissociation that she experienced due to trauma throughout her early life. I know because she has told me, and I have listened intently to every word that she says.

I’m also able to listen because I talk to the trees, and they listen to me. Therefore, I don’t constantly crave to be heard by her and this frees me up to listen. Most women simply love to be listened to.

Most men, however, generally speaking, are distracted in this day and age and only listen so that they can respond and display their own intelligence. They can’t hold attention for more than a few minutes without thinking of sex, food, or their mobile phone. There is nothing more off-putting to me, even as a heterosexual man, than trying to talk to another man who cannot look me in the eyes and listen intently to what I am saying. The same man might then be complaining that his woman isn’t interested in talking to him, and wonders why there is no intimacy in his relationship.

For the physical intimacy that most men desire to be there in a relationship, there first must be emotional intimacy. I work hard to cultivate as much emotional intimacy as I can in my own relationship.

This is fairly easy to do because my relationship with nature, and the large amounts of time that I have spent outdoors immersed in it, has allowed me to develop the most beautiful and intimate relationship with myself. Our relationships on the outside are a direct reflection of that which goes on inside.

Curiosity is the key to a blossoming romance

There is nothing more awe-inspiring and wondrous to me than nature. My mum used to say when I was a child that it is a miracle. I’m not a believer in ‘God’ in a religious sense, but the word ‘miracle’ really is the only way to describe nature in all of its perfection.

Every rock holds an interesting story. Every tree does, too. By visiting nature in recent years, I have stoked my own fire of curiosity; asking questions of everything around me and within me. A raging inferno of questions and knowledge now exists inside of me.

I taught a group of six-year-old children about the woodland yesterday, and their faces lit up with joy and wonder as we walked around and engaged with the natural world.

A tree surgeon that we serendipitously met talked to us about Dutch elm disease, and we proceeded to try to find signs of it on some nearby felled trees. We found the tracks that the beetles has made beneath the bark, and that introduced us to a whole new world.

An even deeper and more interesting world exists inside of my girlfriend, and being invited to walk along the footpaths of that world starts with some very simple questions, asked with an innocent, childlike curiosity that immediately cause her guard to be lowered.

The more questions that I ask, and the less judgment that I offer towards her answers, the more she opens to me. From each question, an olive branch of further questions arises. I have realised that there is never going to be an end to getting to know her because she is always changing and always growing, as is nature, and as am I.