I find myself listening to people talk or reading text messages and I often laugh to myself or think…hmmm really? Sometimes I am talking to friends and they say off-handed things about always working to please others, or some day I will find “the one”. I find myself observing their life from the outside and thinking…no, you do not always work to please others and you have been married and had kids, so at some point in life I am pretty sure that woman you want to divorce was “the one”. When people say these things, I have to admit I want to roll my eyes so hard that I may never see straight again. Who do they think they are fooling? We all tell stories at different points in our lives. Stories we create because we are in denial about a relationship or stories about why we didn’t finish college or stay at a certain job. We make excuses because maybe the truth sounds bad or makes us feel bad when we say it out loud. We want to believe the excuses and stories we create and tell others sounds reasonable and we may tell them so many times that we actually start to believe them. Eventually the truth will slap us in the face.
If you do not take ownership of the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, then you will continue to live a lie and those lies will grow bigger and repeat themselves over and over in different aspects of our lives, especially our relationships. The lies we tell ourselves, even if we don’t say them out loud to others, will eat us alive. Red flags fly up everywhere when I think about my most recent relationship and conversations I have had about love and relationships with three other guy friends. I listen to how they talk about love & relationships and realize each one is clueless about what a truly loving and committed relationship should look like. My ex, and the 3 male friends I have are all right around 50-years-old, so the fact that they are all so clueless is sad to me.
It seems that men often devote a lot of their energy to becoming successful and very little time to emotional intelligence and communication skills to enhance relationships. I have read the book Men are From Mars and Women are from Venus, and many other journal articles and books. I understand how men and women communicate and think differently. However, at the end of the day it is not just men who are confused about love and relationships, many women believe in the idea of a soul mate and one true person to complete them as well. Many often finding flaws in one person after another thinking, that one perfect person who will look, say and be all the right things must still be out there! At one point I also entertained the thought of romantic destiny, but the truth is, this belief negatively affects our relationships. The belief of a soulmate often comes with the idea that a relationship should be effortless and the spark should always be there and that is just not realistic.
Society has painted a picture of how we should view and be in relationships with fairy tales and movies, but the reality is, no one is perfect. There are many individuals that you can be compatible with, but if you are holding out for perfection you will never find it. Even more important, we do not need another person to complete us, we should be a fully capable and happy individuals all on our own. We are whole and complete as we are. Another person is not meant to hold us up and complete us and they are not responsible for making us happy. A good partnership consists of two happy and capable individuals coming together in an agreement of commitment. A good partner is meant to compliment us in the life we want to lead because we want them there, not because we need them. Please enjoy this amazing TED talk that explains it a little further and let me know what you think.
With love, health, happiness, and hopes for more healthy relationships,
Stacy
Life Unlimited 