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We first met in New York.

I was assisting my teacher, the late Maty Ezraty, in a yoga teacher training.

In one of the first lunchbreaks, he started a conversation and asked if I was an Israeli. He told me he had visited Israel before and even knew some Hebrew. 

He was awfully adorable, and I found my body temperature uncomfortably rising every time we interacted inside or outside class. But I was the assistant, he was a student, and I was not letting anything happen between us. 

On the last day of the training, he walked me to the bus station and waved at me as the bus left. It felt romantic, like a black and white movie. I thought I would never see him again.

This is why three months later, I almost fell off my feet when he came to hug me at the Yogaworks studio in San Francisco.

This time, I was taking my teacher’s workshop as a student and was free to hang out with him. At the end of the first day, he asked for my number. On that evening, I was waiting for him to text me, but the text did not come. The next day during lunchbreak, I asked him, “Why did you ask for my number if you don’t use it?”

I was shocked by my blunt honesty, but I loved it. It came with no apologies, no pretense, just truth told from one human being to another. And it worked. That day he texted, and we made plans to spend the next lunchbreak together. 

During the days that followed, we walked the streets of SF with short breath of excitement, sharing stories about our childhood, present life, our beliefs, and yoga path. The sky shone in the brightest blue, the high hills were shimmering with freshness, and the colorful houses gave a surreal feeling of wonderland. Sometimes we would stop at a restaurant or a coffee place, immersed in each other’s company, not paying attention to what we were eating. 

When the workshop ended, we spent the whole weekend together—hypnotized by and glued to one another by the force of attraction. At a certain point, I felt my broad smile starting to hurt my jaws and yet, I could not stop smiling. 

At the end of the weekend, it was time to say goodbye. He was returning to New York, where he lived, and I was moving on to a meditation retreat at Spirit Rock, and after to Los Angeles, to assist Maty in another teacher training. 

“I am not good in long distance relationships,” he told me as we were sitting, cuddled, on an outdoor bench at our favorite coffee bakery.

“Well, if you want to be in relationship with me, you’ll have to learn,” I told him as my eyes pierced his, “I will need to know that you miss me, that you care for me, that you want this. If I don’t hear from you, I will lose interest.”

And there it was, again, my blunt truth. Instead of sounding needy or codependent, it sounded powerful and strong. I communicated what I needed from him. I wasted enough time waiting for messages that did not come. I was not willing to be in this place again. 

Maybe I felt comfortable to be direct and honest with him because I sensed that I could trust him. I cannot say for sure. What I do know is that if I would not have said those things, there is a good chance that I would have gotten frustrated with his miscommunication and maybe, we would not be married today. 

When I stated what I needed from him, I brought clarity to our relationship. I could see that it was in alignment with what he wanted. I also made it easier for him to accommodate my needs. The subtext was, “Don’t play games with me. Don’t try to be hard to get. I won’t like it. Show me that you love me, and I will be yours.” 

One thing is certain, honesty became the foundation of our relationship. Wanting each other was the foundation of the relationship. There was no holding back. We felt free to express our love and there was nothing more blissful than that. 

So next time, when someone does not text you, when you are not sure if they miss you, if they care for you, if they want to be in a relationship with you, just communicate what you need from them. Don’t just sit there and play it cool while you go nuts from not knowing. No matter what their answer is, it will be good for you to hear it. 

Maybe they really don’t miss you at all. If so, you can let go and move on. And maybe, they are just afraid to show you how much they care for you, or they don’t know what you expect of them. In this case, you will bring clarity to your relationship and help them express what they truly feel.

~

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