I think feeling like we are constantly at fault is more of a shared human experience than we realize. Maybe feeling at fault is not all it is. Feeling not desirable, not good enough, not... Fill in the blank as you need to. I wish I could tell you I was here to offer a magic bullet or tool to help deal with this. But I, too, am a mere mortal that still has his struggles. What I can share with you is an amazing experience I had this weekend that turned this concept on its head.
Not too long ago, I blogged about a situationship that ended and put me on a crash course into a self-healing journey with a year plus detour in "Why the fuck did I put up with this city." After the detour, I was on a self-guided rapid result crash course in healing some shit and learning self-love.
The situationship ended when she decided to go back to her ex fiancé. This left me with some turmoil. The common themes were as follows. I was not good enough, I was not desirable, maybe if I was in better shape it would have worked, She just loves him more, I must have done something wrong, I was probably too me... I am positive most of you have experienced this delightful mental self dress down. Not only that, but I want to note that she never said these things to me, I was telling them to myself.
She and I are still friends. She has a relationship, I have a relationship and things are back to friendly between us, nothing more nothing less. However, she has been filling me in on the end of that last relationship. The conversation we had this weekend was a mental game changer.
She went back to him because she didn't feel like she deserved a life with me. Not in the life with me would suck kind of way. But in the she knew going back to her ex was not going to be easy or the same kind of relationship we had. So that long laundry list of shit that I had composed and self-declared as some of the many reasons things did not work out was in fact rubbish. My was my personal list of insecurities and self diagnosed flaws.
How many of you have had a relationship, situationship or friendship end out of the blue but put yourself through the mental wrecking yard of insecurities over it? I would guess most of us. Now, it is not usual to get this kind of closure. Even though I had moved past that heartache, I consider myself blessed to have that conversation. It really fucked with the it is always my fault subroutine. Really, it crashed that little fucker harder than a virus downloaded off LimeWire on the family computer.
My internal jackass dismissed such thoughts and countered with, you deserve this, you won't do better and a list of why splitting up is hard. Ironically, this list mirrors what I went through prior to my divorce. But we all have our fuck it point and she found mine.
The glow up from that moment in time was profound. I set a personal limit of no relationships for a year. It was a limit that I stuck to. During that year I went on some dates and a few people wanted more from me. But those people felt familiar in the bad way.
Often we seek familiarity when we date someone. We can take joy in it and it feels comfortable. Sometimes what feels familiar is the fights, the intensity and the toxicity. It is a task to identify it as toxic and the bad kind of familiar, but holy fuck doing so has more value than you can imagine. It allows us to avoid repeating past mistakes and actually turn those experiences into lessons and not shelved trauma waiting to find a new demon to play well with.
The past is the past, and we are doomed to repeat it until we become willing to learn from it. My ex always told me I did reading wrong. I read self-help books or books to gain new skills from that helped me at work. According to her, it was for relaxing. But that viewpoint fits with how she lived life.
In that year of no relationships, I read so many books that helped me become the human I am now. That was not the only thing that helped, but it was a big part of it. It is always a good idea to hit pause on dating after a split. But at a certain point, going on some dates is a good idea. Reading is great but putting into practice what we have learned is also where change is made. Classroom knowledge gained is still knowledge, but without practical applications we lack trial and error.
As I stated earlier, this conversation I had was a gift. It is a rare gift that one can not usually expect to get. If you find yourself praying for closure, I want to remind you of this concept. If the person you seek closure from was a liar, abusive or generally shady, the closure conversation from them is as reliable as the source. It will often trigger a cascade of what if questions and doubts about the honesty of the conversation. The source in this case has never been dishonest or given me a reason to doubt them. True closure really comes from within. I had closed the book on this chapter, but this was a bonus chapter worth reading.
Bishop :(:
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