Jul 11, 2025

Beauty in Impermanence: When Temporary Connection Teaches you Everything

The first few months after my breakup were rough.

The grief, the process of rebuilding and unlearning, were disorienting. While I’ve gained a lot of clarity throughout this journey, it has also felt quite lonely at times.

After spending much of the last fourteen years in relationships, learning how to be alone again has been one of the hardest parts. My nervous system is wired for connection, and shifting from “us” to “me” has felt like withdrawal. I listened to a podcast by Mel Robbins that described heartbreak in those exact terms, and it resonated deeply.

It truly felt like my body was detoxing from intimacy, safety, and the emotional regulation that closeness with a partner once brought.

One of the hardest losses to navigate was the absence of physical closeness. I didn’t just miss company, I missed being seen, understood, and held by another man. And while I formed deep emotional bonds with friends in Mazunte and Puerto Vallarta, something still felt missing.

“It wasn’t just connection I was seeking, but intimacy.”

And in the early months post-breakup, I tried. I connected with a few people intimately, but I wasn’t ready. I was still tethered to the past and my emotional landscape was heavy.

An unexpected encounter

Something shifted as I grounded into my new life in Puerto Vallarta. Slowly, I began to feel ready to reopen myself to deeper forms of connection.

And around that time, I met someone. Not a prospective partner, but someone who reminded me of the beauty of emotional and physical intimacy. A time-limited connection with someone temporarily passing through Vallarta that had a profound impact on my healing process. Lessons that I still carry with me.

It showed me that I could approach connection differently. That I could open up again without clinging to any idea of permanence or needing to put any labels on what we were building. It was just two people showing up with openness, honesty, and a shared willingness to grow and support one another.

It began as a casual coffee with no expectations, but quickly deepened into something more: emotional, physical, intellectual, and spiritual intimacy all wrapped into a conscious, time-limited container. I approached this connection very differently than I would have in the past, practicing something I’ve spent months trying to cultivate: earned secure attachment.

Practicing secure attachment in real time

For me, secure attachment has meant:

Allowing myself to be vulnerable without spiraling into fear or shame
Expressing my needs and boundaries without shame, and seeing them honoured
Speaking up when something didn’t feel right, without fearing abandonment
Responding to emotional triggers with curiosity rather than collapse
Staying present and embodied, even when old patterns surfaced
Not abandoning myself to maintain connection

I kept showing up in my own life, maintaining my routines, my friendships, and my work while sharing space with someone who, for a brief time, brought a great deal of light into my world.

And what we shared wasn’t perfect. We both brought our wounds from past relationships, unhealed trauma, and learned behaviours into our connection. Old dynamics surfaced, especially around communication and expectations. But rather than spiraling or retreating into silence, I leaned in, listened, and adapted. This was new for me, something I hadn’t consistently managed to do in past relationships.

It marked a big shift from my previous approach to short-term intimacy. After my divorce, I clung to fleeting connections, hoping they would fill the void that my long-term relationship left behind. I would attach quickly, romanticize the experience, and feel devastated when it ended even when I knew it was temporary. I was not secure enough in myself to appreciate the beauty of impermanent connection.

Now, things are different. I’ve done a lot of inner work. I’m not perfect and there’s still a lot I’m working through, but I no longer need someone else in order to feel worthy. So when this recent connection emerged, I approached it with intention and allowed it to unfold without any expectations.

Staying aligned in my values

Toward the end, things got more complicated. The erosion of emotional safety and trust through repeated boundary crossing meant that I ultimately had to walk away.

But even that, I now see as part of my growth: knowing when to step back if things no longer felt aligned. I grieved the loss while still honouring and holding gratitude for what we shared.

This connection reminded me that intimacy doesn’t have to last forever to mean something. That love and care can exist even in the briefest of chapters. And that sometimes walking away from something, even when it once felt beautiful, is an act of self-respect.

Reimagining connection and intimacy

This connection also helped me clarify what I want going forward. I’ve experienced both long-term monogamy and being in an open relationship with a primary partner. Both had their beauty, and both left me feeling confined in different ways.

What I’m beginning to explore now is something more aligned with how I want to live and love in this next chapter: solo polyamory with relational anarchy principles. A framework where I can hold multiple meaningful connections without hierarchy or labels, where freedom and depth can coexist, and where I place equal value on all my relationships, whether platonic or intimate.

But that’s a post for another day.

Seeing the beauty in impermanence

This connection is not a detour. It’s a bridge.

A bridge between the love I’ve known and the love I now believe I’m capable of receiving, between the self I abandoned in past relationships and the self I now refuse to betray.

For now, I’m honouring the beauty of what we shared: brief, imperfect, nourishing, and transformative. This connection is reminding me that: