Every year many of us sit down and set our intentions for the coming year.

Like many women, I ask to find a man to share love with, but this year I’m thinking about things differently, I’m asking myself why and how will it expand my spiritual growth and indeed, if it is essential for my growth at all.

So often we go through life and never question why we have this goal/dream, when at the end of the day we are souls experiencing human incarnation. The question we need to really ask is: what do I need to propel my spiritual growth at this time? What better time than at the start of a new year to set some specific, soul intentions.

The question we need to really ask is: what do I need to propel my spiritual growth at this time? What better time than at the start of a new year to set some specific, soul intentions.

What better time than at the start of a new year to set some specific, soul intentions.

I have been focusing on what is a need and what is a want and how far that I’ve come in my journey and I’ve realised that while asking for a man to come into my life is a great intention, I don’t actually need one.

I can do everything I need for myself.

I can earn my own money.

I can buy what I need.

I can satisfy my sexual needs (on my own).

I can change a tyre.

I can drive myself around the country.

I can walk around a foreign city and feel completely safe.

I can protect myself through my strength as a woman, through my power, my sovereignty.

I don’t need a man.

I have travelled this journey alone for 41 years and I am certain of who I am and who I am not. I love myself so completely; I am incredible, amazing, wondrous, this is not about finding someone to complete me or self-love, this is about a deep desire to experience human love, human intimacy, human connection, messy love, imperfect love, real love. I want to experience the next stage of my spiritual growth through human love, sex, intimacy, human energetic connection.

I want to be pulled into to his strong embrace in the middle of the night.

I want to feel his silky, soft skin under my fingertips.

I want to feel the energy that we share together that transcends all time and space.

I want to feel the wondrous sensory experiences that a human existence can offer with another human being.

I cannot do those things on my own.

To experience human love, I need a friend, a lover, a warrior; a man who is willing to let me hold him and let me be his world, his muse, his best friend; to lie in bed and read together, lie under the stars and contemplate the meaning of it all and to look into another human being’s eyes and see love reflected back.

So, at the end of this journey of self-reflection and asking what my soul needs, the answer is this: I need to feel vulnerable in the face of human, intimate love.

For that, I cannot do it on my own.

Perhaps I do need a man.

Until he arrives, I will continue to make myself into the most magnificent version of myself that I can be.

May your intentions for 2016 be driven by your soul needs and wants.

Author: Alyssa Curtayne

Editor: Emily Bartran

Photo: Author’s Own