Scabs and Scars

Once upon a time I overheard someone saying, "It's either flood or famine".  They were referring to dating and over the years I have come to agree with that statement.  I can go months without any prospect, without a single date, and then suddenly there will be several guys all at once who seem to have taken an interest.  Maybe it's the weather - some kind of biochemical thing that induces guys to suddenly want to seek companionship.

Recently I have been learning to be okay with just being alone.  At one point I thought I had to immediately get back into the swing of dating rather than to just focus on me and where I can learn and grow from  past experiences.  I have to be honest, I'm still struggling with that as I'm not really allowing myself to spend time alone, I've packed my schedule tightly so that there isn't much time to think about the fact that I'm alone.

But I have been thinking about it.  There are steps I've had to take to help me in the healing/moving on process. 

Here's the biggest thing I've learned recently - trying to remain friends when you break up with someone is like having a cut and picking at the scab every day.  That's no way to heal, rather it's a perfect way to slow the healing process down and leave a scar. 

I'm not saying that you can never be friends again, but this brings us to the second thing I've learned, relationships typically go full circle.  If you were friends before you dated, there's a higher possibility that you will be friends in the end.  If you jumped right into a relationship upon meeting then you will likely end up strangers or acquaintances in the end.  It makes sense really - if you knew how to be friends before then you know how to fall back in to that.  But if all you ever knew was a romantic relationship - how do you down grade?

There is a song by Goyte called "Someone That I Used to Know".  I like this song, not because it speaks to me as the victim, but as the person who has to be the jerk because it's for the common good.  "Dear Goyte, she had to cut you off, because if she didn't she would be stuck in cyclical self destruction." Sound dramatic? You don't know what I've been through as I've tried to hang on to something that has long been dead.  Some of us can't just turn off the romantic stirrings and go to buddyland instantly.
In companionship to that song, there's a song called "Ugly" by Garrison Starr.  It's almost a reply to "Someone That I Used to Know".  She says, "I'll be ugly so you don't have to."  I'll be the jerk so you don't have to be.

I'm also working on securing the feeling that while love keeps failing me, it will ultimately win out.  I'm not going to give up on love, just that particular instance of love. 

I've been reading this book and to be honest I didn't think I would learn about romantic relationships, but there is a chapter devoted to it.  It talks about how sometimes people expect love to just be perfect - they expect to click or mesh instantly and that if things are meant to be they wouldn't need so much work - this is called a "fixed mindset" (the book, by the way, is called Mindset).  The opposite is the "growth mindset" and people see their partners as people who are just like them, able to learn and grow continually.  See, with the fixed mindset, things are as they will always be.  It's very limiting.  I'm a person who believes in individual growth.  If I want to learn something, I know I can do it if I work hard at it.  It's the same with relationships (so the book says).  If you think that you aren't meshing maybe you just aren't communicating well.  Speak up about things that bother you instead of assuming that your partner can't change.  You do a disservice to both of you when you just stay quiet and assume they cannot learn and develop.

I need someone who is willing to work as much as I am, because I believe it can work only if both parties are willing to roll up their sleeves.  But I'll admit, I was a fixed mindset - I knew it would take work, but I still assumed people would remain the same.  This is contrary to how I feel in most aspects of my life, so it was eye opening to realize I do this in relationships.

There is no easy way to maintain the feelings of the heart, it's like everything else in life, we've got to work to achieve and keep working to maintain, but it's worth it.  We've got to learn to talk about things that bother us, because we owe it to them and to ourselves to give the other person the chance to try, especially if we thought at one point that we were a good fit for each other.

You're two people giving 100% to make a relationship reach it's full potential.  I believe in this kind of love, I want this kind of love, but in the meantime, I'm learning to be content to wait and not rush things.  I don't want to fall into a trap where I grow willing to settle for less and I now realize by "less" I mean someone who is fixed and doesn't think I (or themselves) could change certain things even if  I wanted to. 

All I really wanted to say today was that I'm in a drought, but that's okay, and probably for the best right now.  I guess I had more on my mind than I realized.

Just Believe

A few weeks ago I had a friend ask me how she could focus on controllable things in her life while not ignoring or getting sad about the uncontrollable things in her life.

For example, you can control when you purchase a home, you save, clear up your credit, talk to a financial advisor and a realtor, get a loan, etc.  But you cannot control when you will find someone to share that home with. 

It's an interesting situation, basically the question is - how do you not lose hope for those desires which are good, but are kind of out of your immediate control?

I don't feel qualified to answer that question as in my experience I have constantly wavered.  Twice now I have thought I found what I was looking for only to realize that it wasn't.  I have had my bumps and bruises along the way and things have "blown up in my face".  Each time there is a disappointment or an upset, I falter.  I can tell you that not having hope is debilitating.  It makes you pull in to yourself, makes you unable to bear anything good and happy in the lives of others because you feel like you'll never have that for yourself.  It's undesirable, so I can see why my friend would like to avoid that.

I answered as best I could, not sure if it helped at all.  I later took the same question to a different friend of mine.  Basically he said, "just believe."  Which seems so easy to say but harder to do.  However, I've been thinking about it, I've thought of belief as something that someone just has, for me, believing is a struggle while others don't even bat an eyelash.  Believing, like happiness and so many other abstract things, comes down to a decision.  You choose whether to believe or not. 

As I have thought about it more, I realize that I apply different levels of faith to different things.  In a month, I will need a new roommate, there are no prospects for a roommate at this time, but I'm not worried, I know someone will come along.  Why can I believe so strongly that that situation will work out, but I falter when it comes to believing that I will find someone to be with?

I met up with my friend again last week and amended my answer to her.  I still stood by my original answer, but added to it that it takes faith, it takes choosing to believe because we want to believe.  I also told her that people are attracted to confidence and to people who make them feel good about themselves.  (I know that I can't be the only one who wants to hang out with someone who genuinely makes me feel good about myself).  It may take some time to feel reciprocation from people, but eventually, if you make it your goal to make others feel good, without expectations of return (because people can sometimes sense that), then you'll start to get it back.  Maybe not from everyone, but from those who matter most.

Always take "advice" I give with a grain of salt.  Remember that no two people are the same, there's no set "formula" for finding someone to date (or getting them to date you).  I'm still figuring things out just like the next person and to be honest, I don't know how I get from one boyfriend to the next.   But even if I'm wrong, and focusing on making other people feel good about themselves doesn't help you to find someone to date and possibly marry, how could you really go wrong? You'll still be a person people like to be around.

You are chocolate, lots of people LOVE chocolate - I don't

I had a revelation today, a "500 Days of Summer" type revelation. 



Found at http://www.btchflcks.com/2011/08/95-minutes-of-pure-torture-500-days-of.html





I've only seen the movie once and I'd hate to give spoilers for anyone who hasn't seen, but at the end of the movie, our leading male character has a revelation.  I think that sometimes when we break up with someone our mind plays a nasty trick on us and reminds us of only the good times.  We suffer for days, maybe even weeks (but I pray to God not months) where we remember our relationship at it's best.



Found At http://www.thecinemasource.com/blog/movies/500-days-of-summer/



Anyway, during the course of the movie (again - might be spoilers) Summer tries to tell Tom that things weren't always rainbows and sunshine.  There were things about their relationship that just didn't work.  Tom is resistant to see this, but in the end he does.  In a way, it's like the Sixth Sense of dating movies.  There are clues all along the way, a truth you've chosen not to see and then suddenly in a light bulb moment you uncover the truth you already knew.

I'm not saying that my little revelation made everything magically better or anything..  It was a brief moment, but an eye opening one.  While I am fully aware that all relationships have their issues that must be worked out (or the relationship abandoned) I realized today that maybe sometimes one person can see it's not working while the other one thinks everything is going well.

There can be differences between two people, such as communication styles, sense of humor, values, etc. that can't really be overlooked.  But "in the moment" it's easy to ignore them.  These things don't make one person right or one person wrong and they don't mean that both people can't stay relatively the same and make it work...with someone else.  The worst thing about these...they are things that can't really be changed just because you want to be with someone. 

I am a storyteller - there is nothing wrong with this, many people enjoy this aspect of my personality.  But today I had the revelation that some people might not like stories.  I was thinking about it today, why a certain ex can have long conversations with someone else, but not seem to be able to have them with me.  And then I remembered a time when I was "telling a story" and he wasn't listening.  I kept thinking how I must have bored him with my communication style.  There was a Hollywood  barrage of memories of other times where I had barely noticed he wasn't very interested in my story, no matter how interesting I was making it.  But I don't know how else to communication with people.  It's one of those things that is just a part of you, something that can't change, but luckily doesn't need to be changed. 

It's a matter of mixing the right ingredients together.  I wouldn't want to be with someone who just endures the length of time from the beginning of the story until the end, because that means they are just enduring their time with me. 

I deserve better than that, they deserve better than that.  More importantly, I've had more than that...Now I just need to practice what I preach and have hope that I can have that again.



A Cynic’s Thoughts on Love

As Tina Turner once asked, “What’s love got to do with it?”

How does one know that they are in a good relationship? It’s not love, for you can love any one and you love many different people. Love is a chemical reaction. As defined, love is “an intense emotional attachment, as for a pet or treasured object.” Just because someone says that they love you, doesn’t mean that they will stay with you. Just because they say “I love you” doesn’t mean they won’t break your heart in five minutes.

I don’t know if there is anything worse than breaking-up with someone you love. When you love someone you start to imagine what a future might be like with them. You integrate them into all aspects of your life and you stop thinking about what else might be out there.

They tell you they love you and then almost in the same breath they tell you that they’d be happier with someone else and try to convince you that you would be happier too. And what of love? It’s insubstantial. Love fades or grows with the lovers, it is not a constant, but ever changing. Love can leave you feeling like you can do anything, or leave you at the bottom of the pit feeling like nothing. Love is what can make a break up so difficult. Love is what leaves you feeling like you can’t eat, or like you just want to sleep your life away. It is easier to sleep away the hours than to try to believe that you can’t be with someone you love.

Love is just one component of a relationship and one that is best left until the end. It gets in the way of seeing what is really there. It makes you hold on longer than you should, makes you accept things in the other person that you never thought you would accept. It can change who you are, for better or for worse.

But in all honesty - love is what I want right now and I don't understand why I can't be with the person I love.

Out on the Field

Dating is not a spectator sport. We do not cheer or boo from the sidelines and simply call out what we think others should do. We are on the field, with limited vision and instinct reactions. We have to make decisions based on what we know - not what we can't see happening on the other side of the field.

Making decisions is easy, verbalizing is where things get more difficult. I have had a pretty busy week where decision making is involved. I wish I could say that I have chosen to do the right thing every time - but mostly I know the right thing and push past that feeling. Doing the right thing always looks negative when it's right in front of me. If I do this, which I know to be right, then someone is going to be hurt. I can't stand hurting people.

I wish I knew how to say, "no" when an option is presented, or to be more articulate about why I am crying. For all my honesty with people you wouldn't think it would be so hard to explain these things. Except that there are times in my life when a million thoughts just burst into my mind and I can't hold on to one long enough to choose it as the culprit. My feelings are usually coupled with a myriad of thoughts - no single thought holding the complete answer as to why I feel the way I feel.

All this ambiguity to state that I think I need to get my hand out of the barrel for a while. I have seen a side of myself this past week which I never thought I would. One regret after another and I think I need to spend some time figuring out who I am exactly. I need to know me a little better so I stop surprising and disappointing myself. I need to figure out who I am without the influence of other people. I'm tired of subconsciously becoming who people would like me to become. I need to strengthen the integrity of my character - and I don't think I can do that while seeking the approval of others.

To any that I have hurt or may hurt because of this, to any that have gotten to witness this side of me that I don't like, I'm sorry. I wish I could take it back but I can't, so I will work on moving forward and being a better person.

The Long Fall

There is a fine line between doing what you want and doing what you need. It is on very rare occasions that those two merge into the same cohesive objective. And more rare than that is when they become a cohesive objective on my to do list.

I have not been blessed with wants that align with needs. And while I typically find that I agree with what is right for me, I fight it tooth and nail for as long as possible. I become my own stumbling block. More often than not I convince myself that I need to “stick it out”. I like to tell myself that with just a little more time things will change, things will turn around. It’s like waiting for the same process to sporadically produce different results, nothing will change and you could waste a lot of time waiting for something that will never come.

Over the past few years I feel that I have grown a lot. There are a few things that I have learned about relationships. Despite what I have learned I don’t wish the past away. I had the opportunity to spend some time with Pen Pal last night and we talked about what happened to “us”, when each of us knew that it wasn’t going to work out. I knew early on but lived in denial; not only denial but I fought it. Instead of letting things fade I tried even harder to keep them going, tried to prove that I believed in “us” – but it was all a lie in the end no one paid more dearly for it than me.

Despite that, I am glad that I didn’t cut it off so long ago when I first realized and I can’t even be angry with him for not telling me when he realized. We learn from both the good and the bad – and while things with Pen Pal were a heartache waiting to explode, they were neutral for a long time and in that time I was able to grow more than I ever would have had I not had him influencing my life in some way. One thing I kept saying was, “while it hurt”, and I meant that – while it hurt it still provided me a fantastic learning ground.

But we aren’t always supposed to incur heartache from “sticking it out” in order to learn. Yes, we make our mistakes and we get ourselves in a rut where we have heartache and it’s good to take that and work with it…but you don’t have to learn that way. Sometimes the heartache comes in a different form. Sometimes you have to give something up to gain something better. A few years ago a friend said, “In order to get something you must give.” In order to get love you must give love; in order to get trust you must give it; etc. Sometimes though we have to add a little “up” to the end - in order to get something you must give up something else.

Sometimes I find that I am not strong enough to do this. It ties back to what I want verses what I need. I know what I need to do but I lack the faith to believe that something better is waiting for me. Not something better just around the corner, because I know that sometimes it will be further away, just out of reach and sight -forcing me to take a leap when I cannot see the distance I will have to fall.

It is the fall into the darkened abyss that makes finding the strength to do what is right so difficult. But it is whatever lies at the bottom, waiting to break my fall, that will be best for me in the long run and makes taking that leap so necessary.

I've been here before. I know this room, I've walked this floor.

Life is an intricate composition of choices that we make. And sometimes in our lives we may feel that we are repeating the same things. If life were an infinite existence of perfect days this wouldn't be so bad, but experiences are sundry. Maybe things repeat because we didn't get them right the first time. Whether there was a lesson to be learned or a decision to be made, at some point, we failed to act. Maybe there is no divine intervention with the repetition, maybe life just has so many possible experiences and we are prone to repeat certain ones.

I've been thinking a lot about this idea. Why is it that the same experiences keep coming in different packages? Could it be that life only hands me a certain number of experiences and I am doomed to repeat them for my entire existence? Or is the commonality in me? What is the one factor that stays the same? Me. So, who am I?

I don't like who I am. I mean, in general, I do. But there are certain aspects of me that I don't like. I would like to take a scalpel and physically cut away the rotting parts of my character but I can't. For a long time I would blame other people, but now I am trying to force myself to see that it is just as much me. It takes two to tango, as they say, so when my partner and I mess up the dance I can't really expect that it is all their fault. I also can't expect them to complete the dance well with me constantly tripping on my feet and stepping on their toes.

I cannot claim to be an expert in good relationships. I make a lot of mistakes. I hold on when I should let go and I let go when I should hold on and all the while I torture myself with wondering if this time I am doing the right thing. I want things to be cut and dry. I want a voice to boom down from heaven and just tell me what to do. But that's not going to happen. I have to learn to make a decision rather than waiting for someone else to make it for me. I also have to learn that sometimes doing what's right may not always feel like it is at the time, but sometimes this life is about removing the obstacles-or counterfeits- that get in the way of true happiness.

I apologize for the ambiguity of this post. This is as about as ready as I am to talk about it.