A light bulb went off today.  Like, smack in the forehead kind of went off.  I love moments like these.  I have to take note so I don’t forget every piece because I’m so excited to share these kinds of things with you. Actually, I’m somewhat apprehensive about sharing them… but at the same time, the whole AHA! moment came at a time when I’ve insisted on being honest with myself… and since I’m my own worst critic, I figure that I have nothing to lose in sharing it with you– people who might just know what the hell I’m talking about. So, here it goes…“In order for a relationship between a couple to be successful, you have to be on the same page.  You have to be able to communicate about what you want from the relationship, and you have to both want the same things.”

I’m almost embarrassed to tell you that I hadn’t thought of this yet.  Almost… But it goes even beyond the part of having to be able to communicate with each other– my light bulb goes on to say that you must be on similar paths, you must have similar interests, motivations, dreams, goals, plans in life.  You must be similar in major defining characteristics.. have similar educational backgrounds, similar passions, and similar social behaviors.  You must be in similar spots in your life… Upon realizing this, I became distressed over all this time I’ve spent on my several Mr. Wrongs… I’ve realized that for years– all of my adult years– I have essentially allowed myself to stay in a series of relationships for all of the wrong reasons!  For fear of losing the man, I have cowed out of discussing the relationship… And as it turns out, all this time, I have been in pathological relationships where I love the man more than he loves me; I have more invested in the relationship than he does; I am the more significant contributing factor… all because I was unwilling to ask, “what do you want from this experience?”  Sad.  However, it has not all been lost or wasted time… In all of these relationships I have been exploring what *I* want from a relationship with a man.  I have been defining myself, getting to know myself– my likes and dislikes… my wants and needs from another person.   For instance, In one relationship, I discovered that I like a man who is passionate about his interests.  In another, I learned that I want someone who treats his mother a certain way.  I have learned about spiritual compatibility, sexual compatibility, intellectual compatibility, and motivational compatibility.  I have also learned what it looks like to be completely incompatible in any one of these areas.  And very recently, I have learned about deal breakers… I have learned that it’s okay for me to say, “what is this we’re doing here?” I have learned that it’s okay for me to say, “your desires and my desires just don’t match up, and this is a big deal to me.”  I know that ultimately my fears have dominated all decision makings in my past relationships.  I have been passive, I have allowed things that I feel strongly about to go by the wayside. I have allowed men to say and do things to me that are completely unacceptable.  I realize now that I was doing these things, and I was motivated by my fears of losing the pathological relationship– losing exactly that which I never really had.  I know now that I behaved this way, thinking it was natural, or even worse, appropriate… and there’s nothing wrong with learning that previous behaviors really weren’t the ideal. I understand why I behaved those ways.  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that when a child or young adult has no permanence in relationships why she would fear abandonment.  These things are crucial.  And to look at the progress I’ve made in one day– in a day like today… amazes me.  That light bulb really means so much to me now.  I’ve always had somewhat of a good sense of self… but I had never really understood the extent to which I was allowing myself to believe that I wasn’t good enough for permanence– or that permanence was a fairy tale.   Honestly, I still cannot look at a single relationship in my life and say, “this is forever.”  I have abandoned my blood– my family… and they allowed it.  My initial reaction to any disagreement or irreconcilable difference is to end the relationship permanently… be it friend, family member or boyfriend.   This is a learned behavior, and I see it now for what it is.  As soon as I realized what I’ve been doing all this time, my instinct is to re-think it all, to change my thought patterns and beliefs.  This is the part that isn’t going to happen overnight… but it definitely allows me to shift my focus from what I’ve done to what I want to do.  My initial thoughts are this: I have been selling myself short.  I know I’m exceptional, different, etc… but I’m not so unique that I won’t run into someone who is at the same place in their life.  It is not unlikely that I will be able to meet someone who has gone through similar experiences and landed right near where I’ve landed.  I am not so strange and irregular that there won’t be someone with similar beliefs and hopes and dreams and plans with their life… and it is not unrealistic to believe that there is someone equal to me in all of the things that are important to me…I have begun thinking about what it is that I really want from companionship… and I know now that simply being there is not enough.   It’s certainly a key component, but there is so much more that I want from a companion… life can be so much more rich when I open my eyes to the possibility that there is someone who could complement me so well, so completely that… hell, that he wants the same things from life that I do, in the same order– and I’m one of them. Amazing.   I’m a little embarrassed to say that I don’t think I’ve ever really thought something like this before.  I feel sheepish because this new ideal involves way more romance than I’m generally comfortable with– and frankly it echoes something I refuse to acknowledge (marriage).  I’m still not saying that’s what I want– because the legality of it is still absolutely appalling to me– but the idea that there could be loyal companionship that could actually involve him wanting the same things from life as *I* want is not so very far fetched.  It’s not like I haven’t been saying all this all along.  It’s that now I can recognize that just because I was saying it did not mean that’s what was really happening.   I guess now I have decided to stand corrected, acknowledging that it really wasn’t what I said it was in my past, but that it’s something I will be aiming for in my future. Live and learn, right?

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL

Leave a comment