Finding Yourself

 “We meet ourselves in a thousand disguises on the path of life.” Carl Jung

This is the end screen of a video that I tried valiantly to upload. It’s an introduction to my first date with my husband to give you a little backstory about how we met. If you’d like to listen, it will be uploaded on my Instagram and Facebook accounts. Both are named Elora Canne. 

I was 18 when I got a call from this husky voiced man who I was immediately drawn to. Mutual friends had introduced us as I was too shy to ask anyone to my Year 12 Formal.

I thought this 22 year old man epitomized the height of maturity for calling me ahead of the Year 12 Formal for a pre-date instead. This was to ensure we’d hit it off and not ruin the Formal. How considerate! How mature!

On our pre-date there were 6 of us out for dinner and we had a merry time with a few glasses of wine (it’s legal at 18 in South Africa). My date offered me another glass of wine and in my prim and proper 18 year old voice I replied with, “No thank you, I’ve had far too many wines of glass already.” Well apparently that was him smitten and we’d both decided from that first date that this was a relationship we wanted to pursue.

Fast forward through married life, parenthood and full time work, we had to reinvent ourselves time and again. We had to evolve with our changing circumstances if we were to stay together happily.

Now as empty-nesters we view each other and ourselves with new eyes all over again. It was necessary to rediscover shared interests while maintaining our individuality and our separate interests. That’s where our Date Year experiment came in and I cannot recommend it HIGHLY enough. If you need inspiration to get your own Date Year started, you can read about ours here.

We added so much value to our relationship through exploring our new role as middle-aged, happily married empty-nesters. I’d love to know if you’ve found ways of reconnecting with your partner too. Let me know in the comments so we can share and grow together.
Location: Sydney NSW, Australia
Elora is a relationship writer with tips that empower you to build greater relationship success.

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