“Your life is your greatest teacher. Everything from your joys, sadness etc is bringing your life to exactly where you need to be.” _Oprah

 

This is the most single I have ever been. I don’t know where life is re-directing me. Not for nothing, I’m terrified of this new phase, but I’m also really excited to see if how bad it has been in the past couple years, will redeem itself in the next few years. I have nothing but time to sit and reflect on my past and I’ve come to some really interesting end points.

 

I dated for the potential, never reality. What I want more than anything was to be a wife and a mother, by any means necessary. Something about being loved and feeding love into someone always made me feel whole. Conditioned from birth to be a nurturer, I sought out individuals who feed my need to be able to nourish their bodies, minds, and their lives. I never bothered creating a sense of identity of self because I was so enveloped in the others. Why be a single when I could be a unit? There goes the first problem.

 

1. Need for individuality/separate lives.

 

I love being up under my partners, figuratively and literally. I enjoy the closeness and the sense of belonging to another. The feeling of being desired and I craved it more than I craved anything else so I wanted it non-stop, all the time, and it upset me that my partners didn’t want the same thing,100% of the time. I was also under the impression that it was supposed to be “us against the world,” not realizing that sometimes the world needs a piece of me or them. I was suffocating my partners and not respecting their need for space a lot of the times. I allowed them to dictate where we would go, what we would eat, when we would do things so long as I could be with them. As a result I ended up never being able to do the things I wanted, and getting walked all over. I ended up losing myself. I just wanted to love them so much, but not as much as I needed to feel their love. I equate quality time with love, not everyone shows their love that way, and I couldn’t grasp that concept. If this is how I need to be loved why can’t you just love me in that way? I wasn’t realizing I wasn’t loving them the way they needed love either. I wanted grace, but I aslo wasn’t extending grace. Double edged sword.

 

I’m not a monster. I realized I was just a broken woman who craved all the wrong things from the wrong people and places. I never sought love from myself, which is where I needed to start to truly love another. I allowed people to do or say things to me that I knew I shouldn’t for the sake of having love. I spent many nights in tears because I knew I wanted more, needed more, but I was willing to settle just to have something, anything. That brings me to point #2.

 

2. Set boundaries

 

People will do to you what you allow them to do. Every person has their own free will and will exercise their right to say and do as they generally please. It is up to you to decide what you are and are not willing to accept from another person. If your partner does something that you deem offensive, hurtful, etc you set the boundaries of what your expectations are and if they don’t fall in alignment with that then it is your decision to either accept the behavior or move along. Having standards of what people can and cant pull with you is attractive feature for anyone to carry. It sends the message “ I value myself. I am worthy, and if you can’t or wont treat me in accordance to that then we cannot be a part of each others lives.”

I never viewed myself as valuable, until recently. I sought happiness in others. I sought validation in my partners. In my mind their opinions mattered most, after all they were my potential life partner. I wanted them to think of me as smart, beautiful, classy but most of all as wifey.

 

Men represent so much to woman. They represent potential husbands, fathers to our children. It’s true that women decide when or if to have sex with men, but it is the man who decides when or if he is ready to marry a woman. Yea I know …..that SUCKS!! As women we showcase our best skills to show them why we can fit the role of wife, mother, partner, etc. We show them our best faces hoping to entice them enough to settle down with us. We go above and beyond to make him feel like a man, the best ways that we know how. Fact is we can’t even begin to understand the mental/inner workings of men. Now comes point 3.

 

3. Date the reality of the man. Not the potential.

 

When I say date the reality of who a man is, I mean to say, don’t fall in love with the representative. The representative is the version a person shows you that they are in the beginning phases of the relationship. Dating is sort of like the probationary period when you start a new job. The first few months you want to show your new bosses that you are a great worker, and give them a reason to want to keep onboard. You show up to work early to show your commitment to the job, you stay late if necessary to complete tasks to show initiative, you dress in your best attire, you mind your P’s and Q’s, to show that you are professional.

 

After a few months, and an official decision from the board to keep you with the company, we all fall into the comfort stage. You might showing up a little later, passing on working late, you find yourself waiting for clock out time to punch out and rush out of the office, you figured out what coworkers you cant stand and the few you can, your wardrobe takes a hit, etc. Much like a relationship. In the beginning you show your best attributes, dress to impress, say and do all of the right things. Once you solidify the relationship, a lot of times people get comfortable and stop doing all of the little things to keep their partners interest peaked. Many times you find out that your partner isn’t even who they actually portrayed themselves to be, yet we still stay because they were the person you wanted them to be in the beginning and so why couldn’t they be that person again. We hold onto hope that the person is still in there. But the reality is once they show you their ass believe it. The potential will always give you a great illusion of who they are, but its not in alignment with the actual individual. Date the man for who he is, and not who you expect him to be. You will be a lot less disappointed that way. Save yourself the heart ache.

 

Once you’ve gotten past the point of deciding whether or not they are who they present themselves to be and lets say you get serious etc and he just isn’t as into you as you are into him, remember….

 

4. If he doesn’t chose you , you’re not the problem. He is just not ready.

 

Sometimes you can be the best a man will ever get and if he isn’t ready, there isn’t anything you can do. There will be a woman who can do less than a third of what you’ve done, and if he is ready at that point in time of his life he will settle down with her. It is not a reflection of who you are and what you brought to the table, but more so about if his mind was ready to settle down. Don’t take it super personal. It’s hard, trust me I know.

 

5. It gets better!

 

Everything heals in time. It doesn’t feel like it today, won’t feel better tomorrow, but in time you will. Cry it out, smoke a few blunts, have a couple drinks, soak in the tub and sob uncontrollably and then get up, dust yourself off, and go figure out how to live. Try some new activities. Make a conscious decision to let the pain go. Accept the loss and the part you played in it . Acknowledge how it affected you and how it helped you. Focus on what’s happening now. That’s where you will find joy. AH joy! How sweet it is. When you find joy you will see exactly why it did not work. Joy is the most amazing feeling. It makes it easier to accept the apology you will never receive and forgive them and yourself. So let the hurt hurt you, to the depths of your soul and rise up higher than you’ve been. The older you get you’d think the easier it gets. On the contrary what you begin to understand that the difference between hurt in the different phases of your life is that the highs are higher, the lows are lower the only difference is now you have more knowledge on how to cope and you know you have the strength to pick up the pieces. You will be just fine.