The important question is “Why?”
Why are you interested in getting into a relationship?
Why are you in a relationship now?
Why do you stay in this relationship?
Is it for her?
Or him?
Or you?
Is it because “that’s just what people do?”
Why do you do what you’re doing?
If you can’t honestly answer that most basic question, you probably shouldn’t be in the relationship.
Successful relationships, like most of life, require willful action.
Every now and then I get reminded what real Love is.
And every single time I’m surprised that it’s so easy to lose sight of it.
We spend so much of our lives chasing Love. We make fools of ourselves for it. We hurt ourselves and others in the name of it. We grow and celebrate and twist and turn and laugh and cry in pursuit of it.
But oh so rarely do we actually stop and think about what it is.
Too often it’s not until we’ve had it and “lost” it that we wake up and think “Oh! That’s what it’s supposed to be like!”
Even then we don’t quite get it–because we think we’ve lost it.
That right there is the biggest misconception ever.
Real Love isn’t something you can lose.
Real Love is something you give.
We can chase and reach all we want–that won’t get us Love.
But we forget that. We think it’s all about what we get from others. We think we have to receive for it to be good. We think what we should only give our Love when we’re going to get it back.
Most of these misconceptions come from how we’re told things “should” be. As anyone who has taken a minute to think about the matter, few things are ever how we think they “should” be. All of our “shoulds” don’t mean a bit in the face of what is.
When it comes to Love, what is is that we get it only if we give it. When given freely and without expectation, something always comes back our way. Or, even more frequently (and more frequently missed), something else wells up within us.
Without fail, we all forget that inner joy. Instead we quest for the flutter and flame of romance (so much easier to recognize, so much easier to explain to others). We look for that and we call it Love. If we’re lucky, in a moment of fun, we forget we want something in exchange for what we give and real Love slips in.
I know I’m as guilty as anyone of forgetting what real Love is like.
But, every now and then, when I’m out and about, I run into someone I do actually Love. It doesn’t matter if it’s someone I’ve Loved for weeks, months or years, the effect is always the same.
I see them happy and I smile. I smile because that’s all I ever want for someone I really Love–for them to be happy.
Sure, I wish it was me making them happy, but that’s secondary to what is real.
If you Love someone, their happiness is what fills you with joy.
That is where the connection is made.
The best case is that they feel the same way. Then the system feeds itself and you discover something better than Romance. You discover that feeling you’ve been looking for, loud and strong, resonating between you and another person.
More typically, they don’t feel the same way and you feel a bittersweet twinge. The bitter part comes from the unrequited hopes, not the unrequited Love. If you can move past that, you’ll see that the deeper feeling still rings true.
Of course, the only way to get to that point is to practice. I prefer to practice by crushing on people. Right off the top I’m not looking for actual returned feelings. As time passes and I get to know her as a person, though, it becomes easier and easier to separate my hopes from what is.
The actual Love becomes disentangled from the Romance and the weight of expectation and want.
I forget that, sometimes.
But all it ever takes to remind me, is seeing her smile.
Nearly 15 years ago, right at the end of my first year of college, I met this wonderful girl.
We met at a very outdoorsy community service project my service group was working on. She was a friend of a friend and had spent most of the day trudging through the underbrush on the other side of the project site. It as right at the end of the day that I actually met her. Immediately, I was smitten.
That summer, I spent a whole lot of time hoping that she’d still be around when school started back up.
Sure enough, she was. Even better, she was living right down the hall from me.
Relatively quickly, we got to be pretty good friends.
We’d spend hours just sitting in her room talking. Every night we’d be there until she was just ready to doze off. And every night, as I left we would hug and smile and wish each other well.
I, of course, became even more smitten.
Then one night, in a rare flash of want overcoming sensibility, I kissed her after that last hug of the evening.
Without a doubt, she was a bit surprised.
I went to bed thinking things were OK.
The next day, and for about a year afterward, I would know differently.
A lot changed after that opportunistic meeting of lips. At first, she just became a little distant, more guarded around me. Then, as she moved off floor (for other reasons), she became a lot distant. For months she would barely acknowledge my existence. Not responding to e-mails or attempts to chat in public places.
Losing her like that was compounded by the collapse of my academic career and being frozen out by another friend of mine (who I also had quite the crush on, of course).
That was kind of a bad bit of time for me. What weighed on my most, though, was not knowing the “why” of it all.
I only had half the story. In and of itself, that’s not a problem. The problem came up when I tried to figure out the other half with nothing except that kiss to go on.
My mind spiraled into myriad things–she hated me, I disgusted her, somehow that kiss had been a breach of an unspoken platonic guarantee, it had destroyed the friendship and hurt her more than I ever wanted to.
All of it, I surmised, was my own fault.
Perhaps just as bad would have been if I had managed to be detached and blind enough to be able to say that none of it was my fault.
Very rarely do any of us have the full story. Our minds fill in the blanks as best they can, drawing on our fears and hopes. Filling in the blanks, however, does not mean we’ve guessed right or that we’re even close to the reality. More often than not, in retrospect, those wild imaginings make no more sense than your average Mad Libs story.
That’s something we all forget easily in the joy or pain of the moment.
Reality goes on with or without us being aware of it. Better to try to hold on and follow it than be rudely awakened by it later on down the road.
Eventually, about a year after that kiss, after a lot of dust had settled and many other things had changed, I caught up with her and we actually talked a little about what had gone on. Her side of the story wasn’t at all what I had expected it to be. No, I hadn’t offended her or scared her off. My (not completely unwelcome) advance had come hot on the heels of her life getting more complicated as she began to fall for people and other people began to announce their desire for her. So she pulled back and made hard choices.
None of that was my fault. It was the reality of the situation. And, up until that moment, there would have been no way for me to know that.
Communication is the linchpin of any relationship–romantic or otherwise. It’s the only way all involved can get the whole picture, the only way they can know more than half (or less) of the story.
If we remember that, it can help us keep those wild imaginings in their place. If we remember that, it can help us not get lost in the clouds or the abyss, so we can see more clearly and choose more wisely.
A few more years down the line, in a random conversation with some other friends about “the good old days” of that second year at college, I discovered that there was even more to the story than even she had told me. Not anything vitally important, mind you, but extra bits of context that made it easier to understand her confusion and need to pull away.
Just an extra added reminder that even when you think you’ve got the whole story, you probably still don’t.
Reality just keeps moving on, with or without you…
May of this year marks fifteen years since my high school graduation.
As anyone who even casually reads here knows, high school played a large role in setting the groundwork for who I am now. That all became very clear to me when the ten year mark was rolling around and I got involved in the planning of that reunion.
Well, that plan didn’t quite execute and here we are five years later, trying again.
For me, high school sucked. A lot. I was obsessed with relationships I wouldn’t ever do anything about. I secured my space as a social outcast by refusing to play by the standard rules. And I had the youthful audacity to blame my unhappiness on the world at large instead of my own choices.
If it was such a horrible time, you may ask, then why do you want to relive it?
Why? Because I firmly believe that only by facing our own shortcomings of the past–only by learning from those mistakes and remembering the lessons learned way back when–can we fully be ourselves now.
Over the last year or so, as I went back through an old hand-written journal or two from those dark high school days of the early 90s, I was reminded of many things I had let slip through the cracks of depression. There were good times back then, I just chose to remember the bad ones. Without a doubt, that gave me fuel for change, but the change it created was flawed and had trouble sticking.
Most of those skewed memories involved relationships, be they pining, one-sided, romantic ones or vibrant platonic ones. In the past decade and a half I’ve come to terms with a lot of that and become a happier person because of it.
One of the greatest joys has been reconnecting with those old crushes and seeing how their lives have turned out. Talking with them about the “not-so-good old days” is empowering. I have a chance to finally tell them what I wanted to say all those years ago.
“You know, back in high school, I had a huge crush on you.” Or, “You were one of the few bright spots in those dark days, thank you.”
It’s empowering. Perhaps more importantly, it’s allowing me to clear up a lot of fog in my own head… allowing me to see just how far I’ve come.
And I’m not the only one who’s come a long way. Just about everyone I’ve spoken with from that long ago and far away land of High School has grown into themselves. Sure, some are happier than others, and some, unfortunately, have fallen on hard times they could never have imagined fifteen years ago, but on average things are good.
They’re all still pretty recognizable, though. If not in face and body, then in attitude and presentation. Some things don’t change much, it seems.
Our core self is prepped in those formative high school years. They are the last time we share a common setting with a large group of our peers. The last time we regularly interact with the people we grew up with.
Love it or hate it, there’s no denying it was an important time for each of us.
It’s where we learned the rules and consequences of social interaction. It’s where we first loved and lost.
Where we first began to be ourselves.
So, here I am, fifteen years out and still learning from the experiences of those four years.
I think we can all learn a lot by taking some time, every now and then, and looking back.
At the absolute least, it lets us know that, if we’ve made it this far, we can probably keep going a bit more.
Earlier today, a friend of mine and I were chatting about my How to Crush project and she started asking some pretty good questions. So good, in fact, it ended up reading like a real interview. Thankfully, I was smart enough to save a copy of that conversation. Here’s the first part of it. (Thanks, Steph!)
You have been open about having not been in the dating game for a while now. so why should anyone take romantic advice from you?
It’s really not about romance. It’s about relationships. The most important one being the relationship with yourself. Romance–real and imagined–is just a tool to learn more about yourself… And by doing so, be better able to understand your interactions with others.
Are you okay with yourself?
I am very OK with myself. Which is why I can be happily single for nearly a decade.
Are you not okay with others? What i’m getting at is so what are you waiting for then?
I am very OK with others… which is why I have such a wonderful group of friends. What should I be waiting for? There’s nothing to be waiting for. I’m not really wanting anything, relationship-wise, right now.
Because…?
The only reasons I’d go out and get myself all tied up in a relationship now would be to:
1) Get more stories to tell or
2) Because I suddenly feel the need to.
So you’re not, like, anti-relationship or anything.
Oh, hell no! Relationships–romantic or otherwise–are fantastic things. They’re natural and human things. They help us define ourselves and help us grow.
But, just like many things that are natural and often helpful, they can be damaging, too. We’ve all seen people go through incredibly destructive relationships. We all know people who get into relatioships that everyone around them knows will be destructive… and yet, they are oblivious to that fact.
In this culture we are pushed to think that being in a relationship is the only way we can be happy– the only way we can be normal and sane. That’s just wrong. It’s not the only way to be happy. And it is just as normal to be happy being uninvolved.
Or, it would be if the external pressure would let it.
But that all goes back to the so what are you waiting for question again. You’re not anti-relationship. Without discounting that you can be happy single, don’t you ever want to be in a relationship or have sex again? After ten years, you know that you can be perfectly happy single, but how will you know if you can be happy in a relationship or not if you don’t try it again?
I’ve been in relationships and I’ve been happy in them. I’ve also seen a whole lot of people go from relationship to relationship and remain miserable. No matter how hard they try, they just can’t make it work. The most successful relationships I’ve ever seen are those between two individuals who feel complete in and of themselves. When people like that come together, they create a pair that can last.
So you’re waiting for that special complete someone who’s not a lunatic?
Well, I’m waiting for a distinct feeling of need to be in a relationship… but that gets into my personal metaphysical beliefs on how my life works. Everyone has a slightly different set of rules, wants and needs that they have to reconcile. I neither expect nor encourage people to go through everything I have in order to get to a good “happy place.” But I have found that some techniques seem to work for a lot of other people. The main one being: Pay Attention!
So besides the lack of good stories to tell, what would make you need a relationship? Do you just wake up one morning and you’re like “Damn, I need a woman”?
Not “a woman.” It would be “that woman”–someone specific. And it would probably happen in the course of meeting her. At least that’s how it’s worked for me in the past.
So you just haven’t crossed paths yet?
We may have… but people change. I’m not the same person I was a year ago.
For the me I am now, it may be a different woman than it would have been for the me a year ago. Maybe she wasn’t the person she needed to be to get involved with me yet..Maybe our paths haven’t crossed at all. Therein lies the adventure of it all!
Interesting.
And that is really where the basic rule of “Pay Attention!” comes in. You have to be aware of who you are and the difference between your own wants and needs–and the wants pushed upon you by society. You have to be able to confidently say “No, not just yet” when you know that a relationship isn’t right.
For me it’s not so much paying attention as listening to what I’m thinking
That’s paying attention! Paying attention to the internal monologue that directs us.
We usually know a whole lot more about ourselves than we’re willing to admit to anyone–even ourselves. It can be very scary to be really honest with yourself. Most of us are full of things we don’t like.
So what happens when you’re basically okay with yourself as a solo project but you don’t particularly want to be solo while at the same time you don’t want to settle for just anyone?
That becomes a question of balancing out the two potentially conflicting “wants” there.
You “want” to be with someone–but not just anyone. That in and of itself can cause some internal conflict.
But then the whole thing gets even more complex because then you have to take into account the wants of others.
Mis-matched wants and needs are one of the biggest causes of relationship problems I’ve ever seen. Or experienced.
This would be where I point out that I’m a big fan of recreational relations–be they simply dating or sexual in nature. They can be fun, wonderful and educational things. They’re just not my thing. The mindsets required for them don’t match with my own wants and needs.
I know, for example, that if I’m in a relationship, I need to be in that relationship for the long run. I’ve been pretty good at recognizing when a romantic relationship won’t be a long run kind of thing (which is most times).
That skill–a skill because it can be learned–has saved me from a whole lot of pain and suffering… and gained me a whole lot of good friends.