Moving On

Source: http://www.yankodesign.com

It’s been almost five days since I broke up with my partner and I’m ready to move on. Not in terms of a new relationship, just in terms of trying to process this loss, to see it for what it is, and to learn what I can as I heal. So here is my list of things I’ve learned:

• Trust your instincts
  –When you feel like something is a red flag, don’t try to talk yourself out of it
• Respect your feelings
  –When something bothers you, don’t try to change how you feel, accept who you are and your emotions
• Know what you want going into a relationship
• Try to see and understand the person for who they are
  –Beware of trying to impose your expectations on someone, or seeing what you want to see, because it’s something you want so badly
• Don’t worry about your age
  –It doesn’t matter. The wrong relationship now will still be wrong ten years from now and getting older is not a reason to stay with someone.
• Look for kindness
  –You value kindness and strive to be kind to others always– look for this quality in a man you want to spend the rest of your life with
• Make sure you’re on the same page
  –This doesn’t mean you have to be the same person or want the same things, but there are some big-picture values/things you desire that you should be on the same page about. No one wants to be the person dragging someone else around, it sucks for both people.
• Don’t doubt yourself
  –If someone starts to make you feel very insecure or not worthwhile, question the relationship not yourself. Know yourself and don’t allow insecurities to creep in.
• Take time to check-in with yourself
  –Really think about the relationship and where it’s going and what you want. If something doesn’t feel right, talk about it. If you can’t communicate well, this is a red flag.

Relationships and Utter Confusion

Source: http://www.citelighter.com

 

Today I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Today I’m wondering if I will ever be happy in a relationship. It’s like I don’t know how to be in one. I see all these images of relationships, I have ideas of how they’re supposed to be, but they’re so simplistic. Watch any movie these days that has a married man in it, and I guarantee you at some point in the movie he will cheat on his wife. Why do movies repeat the same tired plot lines over and over again? Even more troubling to me is, this creates an image of married men in my mind, that I don’t think is accurate or realistic. Yes, some men cheat just as some women cheat–but not 100% of the time, as Hollywood would have you believe.

This is the problem–we live in an age where love is portrayed so idealistically. Watch any rom com and you’ll see the same plot lines unravelling: boy meets girl (yes, very heteronormative too), girl is sad/lonely/unhappy for whatever reason, boy rescues girl, they find happiness together and live happily ever after. Well, this can’t be further from the truth because it’s just not realistic. People are so complex, and complicated, and our lives are made up of millions of different ideas, thoughts, patterns, memories, that to nail this all down into a static personality or a rigid notion of what a relationship should be, is just detrimental to everyone. To compare your relationship to the media ideal would just leave you forever dissatisfied.

Moreover, while this idealistic portrayal of love exists, the opposite depiction of marriage exists. That is, movies always depict married couples as bored and unhappy with each other. Someone is always bound to stray, because we all get bored of our relationships at some point, right? Well, no,  not always.

What kills me is that I have rigid ideas of what a relationship should be like, and these ideas are so far from reality and so constraining that they only bring me down. I know this, yet somehow I can’t escape it and somehow my emotions are so firmly wrapped up and tied into these ideas.

Yesterday my partner ran into a female friend of his who is an osteopath. He has had neck and wrist problems for the past couple of weeks. He saw a chiropractor but it didn’t really help. Anyways, he told her about his pain and she offered to treat him. She went over to his place and treated him.

Herein lies my downfall.

If this were a movie, the ‘treatment’ would just be a pretext for hard core sex. But it’s not a movie, it’s real life. I know him, I respect him and I know he wouldn’t do that to me. That’s why he was angry when the situation made me feel uncomfortable. He said his friends, like him, are professionals.

So now, part of me is bothered because he doesn’t seem to care that I’m uncomfortable–he thinks I don’t have any reason to be, he didn’t do anything wrong, so he has nothing to apologize for, and he would repeat this action again.

Well, this is where our relationship begins to unravel, and the ideas and notions that I’ve formed of people, love, relationships all serve to shoot me in the foot. I can’t look past these stupid thoughts and preconceived notions that form in my mind and it kills me, it kills our relationship.

I wish there were no scripts, no rules, no ideals….I wish I somehow just knew how to exist with another person without feeling afraid, insecure, angry, panicked.

 

Bad Communication

Source: sunnylam.ca

 

I had a weekend of writing lots of poetry. Which means it was a bit of a roller coaster. I have a hard time dealing with my emotions sometimes. I hate conflict, I avoid it at all costs, which means suppression. I suppress the things that bother me, push them down, away, out of my mind. Then boom. Something tips me over the edge and I lose it. All the things I’ve been trying to suppress come spewing forth. I realized I’m a really bad communicator. I take my feelings and emotions and I write them out. I need to learn to communicate better verbally.

It’s funny because I truly believe that communication is so important in relationships, and yet I’m so bad at it. Probably part of the problem is that experience has taught me, there are some things discussions can’t change. You work a lot and it bothers me. These are facts. We’ve talked about this, around this, discussed, grappled, argued–and still our actions seem to follow the same path, lead down the same road.

So, what does talking change? It frustrates you and saddens me and hardens me a little. I don’t think it has to be that way though. I think maybe if we try, we can work it out together, by talking.

My brother’s words seemed idealistic but I think he has a point (and surprisingly, good relationship advice). He said we need to talk to each other about these things, and try to find a way to meet each other’s needs. We can’t just say, okay, six months from now when this is off the ground work won’t be so busy, and we’ll be fine then. Just accept this for now and the future will be different.

 

Can’t say it. Doesn’t work for me, or for you, because it keeps coming up every now and again. It’s what my brother said–life is right now. You can’t always be living for some idealistic future that you’re hoping for. You need to tell me what you need, and I need to tell you what I need, so we can get through this time together. Not grin and bear it and hope that it will pass and we will come out the other end unscathed.

The irony is, I’m sitting here writing about this.

Past its Prime

Source: affordable-health-cures.com

She walks a few paces ahead
He lags behind
Still holding hands
Shrouded in silence.

A relationship
Past its prime,
Novelty and lust
Worn down
Transformed into
Familiarity
Resentment
Disappointment.

Still though they carry on,
Tied together by the
Moments that they’ve spent
Memories they’ve shared
Feelings they have nourished
Seeds they’ve sown.

Seems too late to
Back down now.
Seems no choice
But to keep moving,
Forward?
Maybe–
Not alone.

Can’t Make you Love Me

Source: http://www.bewallpaper.com

You can’t make someone love you

The way you want to be loved

The way you hope to be loved

To be cared for

To be cherished.

 

I try not to take it personally,

But a fire rages within me,

Fueling Anger,

Fueling Hatred,

Drowning love.

 

You’re busy, I get it.

There’s Work and there’s Art–

Almighty gods we all have to bow down to.

 

Actually, no, not me.

I choose my own path and right now

This one

Is killing me.

 

I hate feeling this way,

Like I’m twiddling my thumbs,

Waiting anxiously,

Hopefully,

For you to spare a scrap

Or two of your precious

Precious time.

 

I hate this person I become,

So bitter,

So full of anger and hatred,

So sad and down.

 

This is not how I want to be,

For me or you,

Or any future we might see.

 

I see no answers,

No solutions to this problem,

Except one.

 

Harmony

Source: http://www.mgcpuzzles.com

Like Yin and Yang,

Two holding hands,

We fit together,

So well.

 

A puzzle piece,

A shoe,

A glove,

A bird flying into space,

Without a nest.

 

We all need fishing rods

And boomerangs

And magnets with the strength

To pull us back.

Together

Source: cliffmass.blogspot.com

We’re together,

Me and you

But still I know

I’m responsible

For me

And my own happiness

Or else

I’ll be a noose around your neck

I’ll pull you down

We’ll struggle

Battle

Fight

Until the end–

But it will come.

Endings

Source: editor02.deviantart.com

I feel the anxiety building within me already.

I hear these words about to be uttered, feel the pain about to be handed to me.

I hate endings. I’ve had enough of them already. Thirty years worth.

One day I want to find someone I can hold on to, for real.

Accessories

I fear I’m traveling down the same worn path yet again. On my way to becoming an accessory. This is what usually happens. You meet someone. You date. You fall in love with them. All the while an internal conflict rages and you wonder whether or not you can let yourself go, let yourself fully give in to these feelings. Love–always a double-edged sword. Always the good is tinged with the bad. The depth of your love is met with the depth of your fear, and sometimes, your pain.

It’s nice in the beginning. You have a good time together, you absorb the care and affection and attention like a sponge–soak up the love, and return it. The problem is, always, at some point you get bored. Someone gets bored. It’s never a level playing field. It’s a seesaw and inevitably someone has to be stuck on the bottom, their feet firmly planted in the sand.

I suppose usually that’s me. I love deeply and wholly. I love so much and so strongly I’m just happy to be with my lover. But at some point the novelty wears off and they get bored. There are exciting things out there to be done, accomplishments to be had, achievements to be conquered. And so I lie in wait until I become interesting again. Until Lover decides it’s time to feel loved and wanted again.

This time it needs to be different. I won’t go down that path, won’t get sucked into being an accessory again. I have my own mountains to climb, my own demons to battle, my own path to carve. I will not be distracted, or diverged. Not this time. I’ve gone that way before and it was awful.

I don’t know if I’m able to fully love. To honestly, openly, fully give myself to another person. The fear is much too strong, it’s always there. The consequences of such vulnerability are far too damaging.

So I’m always stuck, seated on this fence. Desiring things I cannot have, things I want but am too afraid to really go after. I don’t know how people do it sometimes. Maybe they’ve had great role models of wonderful relationships, maybe they  haven’t been burned, maybe in their youth they had the confidence to kick someone to the curb if they were mistreated. Maybe, but who knows.

It’s too deterministic to reach into your past and try to understand the present. The line from cause to effect is never so clear, if it exists at all. I just wonder how people find that balance in their relationships. Do they? Or does someone always have to stifle their feelings? Does one person always have to be the cheerleader, the biggest fan? Can you both win somehow?

The couples I know who have been married for some time don’t seem so happy. It’s as if something has worn down what they once had. The passion, the love, the excitement–it seems dead. But where did things go wrong? Or did they? Is that just the natural course of love? The novelty wears off, Familiarity and Comfort have their day, and you’re left with obligation? With a  sense of dutiful attachment? A family? I’m just not sure. Does it have to be this way? Do relationships always run this course, or is there a couple out there, deeply, truly, madly in love, many years later, children later, ups and downs later?