These are the cookie crumbs for my depreciating mind.

Tag: relationshps

Please stop caring!

I meet so many people who are under the assumption that I want them to “impress me” when I meet them. That I want them to be the ultimate version of themselves that is unsustainable for any elongated period of time. To be this person who will make me love them.

Only one problem, if I do fall in love with that person, when you stop caring, who the hell am I left with?

See, this is a major issue for me. I have written how “Love is not enough”. And this feeds directly into that. I myself am the same with my family as I am with my bosses as I am with my friends as I am with a first date. I don’t know how to be different. I only know how to give my all of who I am today, tomorrow, etc. I feel like it would be exhausting to create an alter ego to please you. If you don’t like who I am here and now, that is OK. I am happy to feel it out and go our separate ways if it isn’t meant to be.

But that is not what I encounter 99% of the time. 99% of the time I finally get to know the real person after I have told them “this isn’t going to work” because all of a sudden, a veil of “expectations” has been lifted from their shoulders and they make inappropriate jokes, use my bathroom, and tell me things they would tell their best friends. Isn’t the whole point of finding a partner to find a best friend you can have sex with? Share with? Experience everyday with?

From experience you may assume that is not the case, and it is about tricking the other person to put a ring on it, then letting it all loose and what then… yelling SURPRISE!

When I ask you what you want for dinner this isn’t code for “Figure out what he likes and pick that”. When I ask you how you are today, this isn’t code for “Great!” just to make the facade of happiness. See the problem on my end, and I have explained a little bit of it via “Give my Brain a Breather”, is that once I feel as though I can see the expressions and feel the connection, I often don’t look for the “facade”. The veil of “I will totally clean his dishes cause I want him to like me more”. To me I am thinking, wow how nice she is, and what a kind gesture that I can expect in the future. Not “well that was nice since we just met, but god if she does that after we fall in love, this shit is over!”. So when I end things in a relationship because I feel as though something is wrong, or too perfect, it often is because it was. And then this new person I meet is one hundred times more interesting. But at this point it is way too late to forget all the past experiences and meet them with a clean slate.

So please, please, please, please, stop caring! Stop treating me like anyone other than a best friend. Let me into the parts of you that might scare you. Who cares if we don’t work out, at least we gave it an honest try, with an honest version of ourselves, and didn’t waste time trying to please one another off of assumptions and half baked ideals created in our own minds. Because my problem is, because I don’t do it, I often don’t look for it in you, thus missing it completely and being caught way off guard when I get to meet this “real” you. The you I thought I could fall in love with.

I’m not your bodyguard, I am your boyfriend….

I am tired of this paradigm of “I want to feel protected by my man”. Now don’t be fooled by this sentence, it doesn’t mean I do not believe you shouldn’t protect someone and your partner should not feel protected!

If the guy was raised with any morals or compass for good, of course he is going to fight for you and “protect you”. It is an instinct. It is the difference between standing on the road side of your girlfriend when holding hands while walking down the sidewalk versus not. It is something built into the core of our beings, we fight for the things we love. But being Chivalrous and Caring is just gestures it isn’t a partnership. It isn’t an equality.

Just because I make you feel safe, doesn’t mean you make me feel loved. If anything you wanting to just lay in my arms feeling safe has a strong ability to make me feel empty.

Why can’t more people want to share the passion of a relationship and grow with one another? Why can’t the entire relationship be dominant. Why do we have to fulfill roles? One is submissive one is the other. Fuck that shit, if I pull your hair, pull mine right back. Show some initiative in a relationship so I know I am not just dating my cat. I can get all this from a furry friend with way less effort.

The reason I want a human is to be inspired, to help inspire, to become partners in crime in this world that needs to be stolen day by day.  I genuinely need someone who has a high level of creativity and ingenuity. Having my back intellectually and enginerically(yes I have created this word, it means being able to assess a situation and solve it together, usually relating to building Ikea furniture). We should be able to survive the zombie apocalypse together. My partner has to be on my zombie apocalypse team because she belongs there not because of love! I may mention a bit of this in my Podcast Stronger Together, is not being weaker alone.

Stop hiding behind your “I don’t want to get my heart broken” and your “I open up when I know you better” ‘s let it hang out and fly free. The worst that happens is you realize sooner and faster if you are meant to be and you can dive into the meat of things. You can achieve love.

But if your idea of love is me being some sort of prince charming, you are cruelly mistaken. Prince charming is a rebound for a girl who just got gaslit by a wicked spell.  When the Prince “saves” the woman, the woman is swept off her feet, falling for him and only him. Sooner or later the Princess learns an important lesson, Prince Charming can’t actually save her from herself. Either she realizes she needs an understanding of herself first or she will end up falling into, once upon a time again, a deep sleep in which she must once again be awoken by “Prince Charming”. Not such a charming cycle is it?

I don’t want to be your rebound. I will happily carry you over puddles and open your door and kiss your forehead, but if I have no inspiration to continue doing it after you open up to me… perhaps this is the reason many women think men just put up a front when they first meet. Because at the end of the day it just isn’t inspiring anymore to do the chivalry if we are not getting an equal relationship.

Mind you, I am not oblivious to the fact that, most guys are dicks, societally influenced to be alpha. “I need that Masculine Energy” which has often been portrayed by men to men as a very toxic view and  is often a very polarizing view of a man coming from a woman. Forcing them into a position that limits their possibilities. However, in a conversation recently someone in the same sentence made an interesting observation, “I want someone I can lean on, someone I can confide in, to feel safe and comfortable. I like feeling the protection of a man, and I don’t mean guns and muscles or anything like that… but it’s just like… There is a masculine energy that a guy can give off that makes me, I don’t know, feel safe and maybe…” And this is where the revelation was from this particular person that I 100% agree with, “maybe that feeling just comes from feeling loved, heard, and seen. The things I have not had from a partner in a really long time.” And here is lies the crux. So many men are treating other women like crap. Half of the online dating discussions I have are on “bad dates” and “red flag lists”. So, I agree, there is such a thing as masculine energy, but I think over many failed relationships and strange judgement projected by other men, it get’s put in a strange pandora’s box of sorts, that cannot be opened without causing harm to true masculinity: The feeling of love, partnership, and feeling safe to be yourself, together. Nothing is more masculine than a man who can be OK with ugly crying “I love you” to their partner because they just can’t hold it in anymore and need to share.

So here I am, 5 sisters, separated parents, abusive mother, absent father, it has caused me to have a dire need to want someone to tackle the world with, together. I need a partnership and that feeling of safety just as much as my partner, who is likely not going to be masculine! I want to be better than what I grew up with, I want to create new and healthy traditions, together. I want to create our own memories and for us to be stronger together than we would alone. Never wondering if  “Am I sacrificing my career choices and ambitions for this relationship”, “am I sacrificing my self”, because the work done together in the relationship is what is actually driving us both to become better at it all. Plus, I really want you on my zombie apocalypse team!

Are we all that important to one another?

Have you ever waited for the phone to ring? Have you ever just waited in general, even if you didn’t know the person more than a conversation or a glance, for the next time you could be in the same place at the same time. Where your brains both focused on each other and the words flowed from inspiration instilled by the other person.

I and any of my ex girlfriends will tell you I will not jump into “girlfriend boyfriend” status fast and I expect to know a whole lot about a person before I can see taking that step. It isn’t that I am afraid of a relationship it is that I am one of those rare few who actually thinks the title of girlfriend or boyfriend is important. And if I am going to take that step of commitment to the other person I want to make sure I am invested.

That is where I think I either hit or miss. I treat the dating in the beginning as a different animal. I look to find out as much as possible when I am talking to someone. I want to know that the person on the other end of the phone or in front of my face is able to give me who they are, unabated without the need for a title to open up. This usually ends up poorly for me, because I find that not many people are willing to build their walls from the ground up. They go in with a castle fully defended ready for battle. So by the time my words and personality shine through their wall breaking into who they are, my walls have built up around me to shelter me from the empty feeling I got back. And then it is nearly impossible for me to be myself anymore because I expect my first impressions to continue.

Which I have to say are usually not too off, not in a pretentious way, but in the idea that people usually show their true colors with those walls up, because when you break them down, it just means they are down for you, not the people around them, as well as they have broken down the “relationship walls” so who is to say if they are acting differently to you than a friend or family member. I mean why do we even build “walls” in the first place? What is so scary about being hurt by someone not working out on a relationship level? Shouldn’t we be running head long into these situations so we can have as many as possible to find what we want as quickly as possible. For a cultural need of love it is amazing how many boundaries we put up from letting us get there.

I think of love as a starting point, not the end. When you find love and maybe even marriage you are free of this stigma placed upon you at birth. You FOUND the holy grail, now you have a whole lot more to look forward to with this everlasting life without the need to squander the earth for love. So what will YOU do with eternity.

But I am off topic. What is it that causes that feeling in our stomach when we have an interaction with someone that feels right? What makes us pace back and forth, whether we admit it or not, or whether our life is busy enough to let it be more than a thought here or there? I think we all get it. I think we also have a tendency to try to make it go away so we don’t seem desperate or anxious. We all want to be “Cool”. But isn’t it cool to know that someone else is intriguing to you and you them. Shouldn’t we share those moments?

It reminds me of how I meet people I have dated or how I ask someone to the next step of a relationship. It has always been something very memorable. Not because I MUST have it as a special moment but because I am inspired to think about the time ahead of us as important and want to be able to perhaps one day look back on it and remember. A Polaroid in time. Something you flip through a scrap book when you are older and just you know the feeling it held for you. I don’t want to tell my kids, me and mommy met at a bar, and I was doing jello shots off her curves… I want it to be special to me and her. So I listen, I absorb, and trust me, we all have something that means something to us, as menial as it may be that makes for that perfect moment.

It is like the idea of digital cameras these days. They are so easily accessible that we often carry them and do not use them. Back in the days of my parents, to take a video it was a big ToDo, lights, microphones, heavy equipment and expensive film. So when Grandpa or dad busted out the camera as much as you may object you did it anyway because it was special.

And god those videos have emotion and raw truth to them. Because no one said, PUT THAT AWAY, or if they did it was shrugged off as funny.

I want to find someone in my life that agrees with the idea that a camera should be passed from hand to hand snapping times of life together. Not just a way to grab a point smile click shot, but a mini photo shoot in the middle of the street on the way to work. Where both people on each end of the camera can look back later and see who THEY were.

I want to be able to riffle through a box of old Polaroids with someone and show my kids how old I really am :)

And I am off topic again.

I enjoy those moments when I sit antsy waiting for the next encounter where I can talk to someone that made an impression. I don’t expect anything more than a conversation. I guess I want to say I break the mold of “OMG I need to be with you, that is why I have butterflies until our next talk”. I just want to be able to share with someone who seems to be able to understand my musings and theirs inspire mine to keep going.

It seems to me that showing interest in someone or admitting to the feeling of butterflies defies your true intentions. It is as if you just gave the person an arrow for the bow they had strung. And dagnammit(yes I said that) they are gonna fire quickly. Why would they fire? Because you have just given them the advantage. They now control the situation because either they can agree they enjoy the time with you and even the playing field or shoot it as fast as possible to quell all odds of the dice roll when meeting someone. Just because I am interested in someone doesn’t mean we are good for each other. I base that first feeling on just that a feeling, an impression, an aura of their person. That doesn’t mean I know ANYTHING about them. But it does mean I want to find out. I want to be able to have that open conversation over and over where each time when we stop talking I feel more nervous stomach feelings, because it is working out. To get to the point where I would pursue someone, I need to at least have them open up and spend time with me and I with them. All I can say in the beginning is, wow you make me feel good. And that is good enough for me. But why should I hide it in a cat and mouse game? I won’t and I will dig my grave with many people this way, but I will not give up on the idea that eventually someone will be interested in kissing at the beginning of a date just to see if that chemistry is there instead of spending too much time of a small life guessing. At the same time there needs to be a balance rope of those moments and where you wait for the phone to ring.

I loved what my stepmother once said, where when I find the person I am meant to be with, it will be explosive, because after all this thought and all these ideas, if the other person has had half these thoughts too, the conversation should be freakin’ fireworks.

We do not need to assume everything about a person’s intentions if we are just living to share. There is no reason to be afraid of a conversation, because it may lead to happiness and if it doesn’t work out the way of “love” then we had a great conversation and that conversation helped to build us as people.

We are all so important to one another. The people we come across, the music we listen to, the moments we have, they are forever. As much as we may push forward to further careers, or to just enhance our daily lives with shit not boring, at the end of the day, the people around us are the real important part. They are what help us to be who we are, because we have something else to base our existence on. A movie I just watched said “The bravest people are those who are not afraid to stay still”.

This is a new idea to me. I am one of those people who wishes for the simpler life but knows I would need something to give me that monumental feeling of completeness in my mind to be able to stop pushing forward to enjoy that kind of life.

To go out into the woods and camp out on the hood of a car or sit in the sweltering heat with a person that makes me feel good that the sweat and the bugs are not a bother but a feeling. Side by side, staring blankly upward, but there together. No topic too small or big. I guess to find someone that understands when to be silent and when to chat nonstop would be nice. When to just BE in the moment and when to search for it.

I often reference Alabama type shit for those “moments” because I find they are the most relatable through pop culture or movies but I am a city boy at heart and I find the romance in a city to be truly amazing. The sidewalks, the graffiti, the random tree here or there, the parks, the busy streets filled with people, the food at 4 am. These all are places I picture adventures as well.

How I will find it, life still hasn’t told me. So it should be a fun ride.

Oh and the next person to say “FML”, I’m going to send you anthrax.

(FACEBOOK COMMENTS)

 

Jennifer Owings

Its nice to hear you voice the vulnerabilities that I often feel in a new relationship. I think I often try to convince myself that men are selfish creatures and have no empathy for the things that “women go through” at the start of something new. Thanks for reminding me that it can be just as difficult for the other person : ).
June 21, 2009 at 10:08pm ·

 

Jennifer Smith

The older you get, the harder it is to find someone who is willing to be uninhibited by their feelings… because with age comes more opportunities to be hurt, and thusly more fear of new relationships of “potential pain.”

[I had a long blurb here that I decided to delete on my thoughts. lol]

And, bro, you know I can hook you up with some spores! Benefit of living with someone in the microbial industry… haha

June 21, 2009 at 10:17pm ·

 

Tristan G Pope

I think additionally and I can’t find a place for it so I will write it here, it is like drinking on a holiday till your face falls off or HAVING to have the perfect birthday experience. We put so much pressure or high needs for these days that are marked as special. And if we don’t end up puking or upset the next day we feel like it has been … See MoreFOREVER since we felt this way. What is wrong with the idea of, hey I wanna plaster my brain against a wall and hold onto a toilet tonight and JUST DOING IT that night, no need for a “Holiday”. Or why instead of planning the world for a birthday, you plan to relax and have those around you that are important. And play it by ear. Somehow this applies, setting the bar yadda yadda to what i just wrote… but like I said… dunno where so here is the comment.
June 21, 2009 at 10:20pm ·

 

Tristan G Pope

“The older you get, the harder it is to find someone who is willing to be uninhibited by their feelings… because with age comes more opportunities to be hurt, and thusly more fear of new relationships of “potential pain.” And with the best intentions of the word, FUCK THAT. I am not saying don’t go with feelings, it is the idea of HURT… I mean… See More come on… life is too short to be HURT because Jimmy on the playground didn’t like you. Joey right next to him thought you were hot too. He just saw Jimmy get to ya first and so are you gonna let Jimmy through his asshole-ness ruin your chances with Joey. Hell no! I mean if I said, you can have a million dollars but only if you run up that hill in 3 minutes. WOULD YOU NOT RUN YOUR ASS OFF?!? Why should this differ in relationships. You could SPRAIN your ankle or not make it in 3 minutes which is pain on all levels, but you would be damned if you didn’t try. So for something so “SOUGHT after” as “Love” why wouldn’t you give it the same effor
June 21, 2009 at 10:24pm ·

 

Jennifer Smith

Sometimes, people are just broken… I think it’s beneficial to meet someone as a new friend first, rather than as a potential partner. It removes the expectations of behaving in a “relationshippy” way– whether we like it or not, we are all programmed to behave in certain roles. Meeting someone with the intention to date automatically puts us … See Moreinto our “best face” zone.

If you want to find a “real” girl who is just herself all the time with you, meet someone to be your close comrade first… and then, once you know her inside and outside (figuratively, of course), it’s the right time to take it to a romantic level.

There is an ideal way of how things *should* be, and then human nature comes in and throws a curve ball… lol

June 21, 2009 at 10:29pm ·

 

Tristan G Pope

Whilst (yup said whilst, btw that’s my new thing poiting out weird words I say) I agree friendship is super important I think you just summed up part of what I am talking about with the idea that there is a “WAY” for these things to play out. I treat you the same way I treat my mother, the same way I treat my friends etc etc. Whilst (hehe) there … See Moreare things that differ a little there is a core there that never changes. If you got me at the right moment I would tell you just as much as I would tell me dad who I have known my whole life. We never know how it will happen for that “special moment” where it all just plays out. The healthy thing is to try to just go with gut feelings at first and then quickly after dig deeper me thinks. I could be wrong :)
June 21, 2009 at 10:39pm ·

 

Alexander Brazie

This was an awesome discussion. Could use a great deal more vodka, though. Who’s down!?
June 21, 2009 at 11:01pm ·

 

Gina Pope Moore

Oy vey, haven’t thought seriously about this topic in years. Only partially tongue in cheek I’ll say (with authority since I am 46) that the pool of compatible mates becomes smaller as you age, thus increasing the difficulty of finding one. And yes, sometimes people are just broken. Then there are so many others who, for lack of a better term, … See Moreexhibit a strong prey drive, people who truly relish the game of cat and mouse you mentioned. I’d guess by varying degrees this is the norm, since we are animals and that’s how your basic animal is wired. However, there’s still a healthy percentage of people out there who are capable of being vulnerable and real, people who aren’t like hermit crabs moving into bigger and bigger castles with walls around them. And trite but true, sooner or later, they usually find each other.
June 22, 2009 at 3:12am ·

 

Gina Pope Moore

Jeez, that paragraph doesn’t hardly touch what I’d intended to say. So here goes just a little more: those folks who are busy wall builders, I would say that some of them can adapt and learn to be less guarded. I’ve seen it happen with several friends, and to an extent, to myself.

Also seems that time/age condenses what’s important to a … See Moreperson, so as you age, the things that matter to you most will take center stage, such things as a relationship which involves integrity and trust, compatibility, no cat and mouse crap. That famous Velveteen Rabbit quote just came to mind.

Also, I’m going to hang on to that movie quote.

June 22, 2009 at 3:29am ·

 

Tristan G Pope

I think in many regards we get broken in different ways from past relationships gone wrong. We often are looking out for those things that pissed us off about other relations and when the new person does the opposite we notice it in more light than it should be. And those broken parts often make other features in people bigger and grander than they… See More should be. Making you miss the other parts that don’t work lending itself to you getting broken again.

So I suppose it takes the right tool to fix it all and be able to put all the nuts and bolts back in tightly so you can be yourself again. And that is the hard part.

June 22, 2009 at 10:31am ·

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