A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION

Relationships suck. They just do. You put your heart on the line and take a chance that the person you give your heart to wants it and will treat it gently. It doesn’t always happen that way. Sometimes you choose correctly and the other person wants your heart, but doesn’t know what to do with it. Sometimes you choose poorly and the person doesn’t want your heart at all. So how do you know when you have chosen wisely? You don’t. You find out, but sometimes finding out is the hardest part of all.

Case in point: I ran headlong into a relationship right after my separation. The guy was a great guy. He had a good heart and he wanted to make me happy; but I wasn’t ready for a relationship and it wasn’t really fair to get involved with someone when my heart hadn’t healed yet. I ended up hurting him. That’s not to say that it was my entire fault. He had some serious misconceptions about kids, about me and about himself. He had some seriously distorted views of what a relationship was and in the end, I think that was what really did us in. He was more interested in what he thought a relationship SHOULD be and less interested in finding out how to integrate into each other’s lives. He didn’t spend the time getting to know who I was and what I wanted and he didn’t let me get close enough to who he really was and what he really wanted. I’d say that pretty much doomed us.

So I moved on…and right into another situation I wasn’t ready for. This time, the guy wasn’t ready either; but I couldn’t see that. It was my turn to be the one who was forging ahead into something that didn’t really exist. I looked at this man and saw a lot of the qualities I wanted in a partner and then what he didn’t actually have, I attributed to him anyway. I made him into my dream man instead of viewing him as whom he actually was. I did the same thing to him that had been done to me. All my life I have always let others define me and here I was defining someone else…and falsely at that. Yes, he was a lot of what I wanted, but he was also probably the worst communicator I have ever met and anyone who knows me knows how much I value communication. Every issue we had can be traced to my misconceptions and his lack of communication. I tried to tell myself that it would change, but I realize now that it is just who he is and that if I can’t accept that part of him, then I have no business trying to be with him. It caused us both a lot of consternation and turmoil. I would get upset, he wouldn’t communicate and I would create drama to try to get him to communicate. In the end, we just stopped talking; it was too difficult for me and I think it was just too much trouble for him. It just wasn’t worth it.

In both cases, I think my heart was given to someone who wanted it, but just didn’t know what to do with it. If the timing had been better with the second one and he had been in a different place in his life, maybe we could have worked out the communication issue; but he wasn’t in the right place in his life and I wasn’t in a place to give him the patience and the time and room he needed to get to the right place.

I have friends who keep telling me that I need to give myself some time and some room to heal from my divorce; that I never really mourned the end of my marriage. They are partly right. It’s not my marriage ending that is holding me back from having a decent relationship. It’s the fact that I have always dealt with the end of a relationship by throwing myself whole-heartedly into a new relationship. I never give myself time to be alone and I have never learned to be OK being alone. There is always someone new on the horizon for me to give my heart to…because I just don’t know what to do with it myself.

Nobody CHOOSES to be alone; it’s not fun. Wanting to be with someone you care about and who cares about you is human nature. We all want to be loved and to love in return. The problem is when you haven’t loved yourself – then how can you expect someone else to love you? If you don’t know yourself – who you are intrinsically, what you want, what you don’t want, where you are going in your life – then you can’t expect someone else to know you.

I’m taking some time to figure these things out now. I’m not going to rush into another relationship to spare myself the pain of the last…not this time. It’s not fair to the person I get involved with and it’s not fair to me. I can’t complain that someone didn’t take the time to get to know me when I have never taken the time to get to know myself. I am going to give myself the one thing that I always say I want out of a relationship. I’m going to give myself attention and I’m going to get to know who I am on the inside. Once I have that straightened out will I be ready for a relationship? I honestly don’t know. But I DO know that until I do this work – I won’t be ready for a relationship if one happens to come along.

Paul and Lara – this is your official “you were right, I was wrong” blog post. Wish me luck that I can stick to my guns and pass up any opportunities that come along while I am doing this. I’ll keep you posted on my progress through my blog – this is what this blog was supposed to be when I started it; I guess it’s time to utilize it correctly. There is a lot of work to be done after divorce in order to get back on the track I want to be on. I’m taking the first step in the right direction…finally.