Love Prizes

Since my very recent break up, I have received some unsolicited, well meaning, but misguided relationship advice regarding “winning back” an ex. Again, I understand that this advice is coming from a place or caring and not wanting to see me hurting, and for that I am appreciative. It is an idea oft touted in magazines marketed to women and it is absolutely rubbish.

My first objection is to the notion of “winning back” someone, which suggests that rather than thinking, feeling human being, my previous relationship was with a prize. We met, we became friends, we fell in love, love ended; I did not enter a contest and correctly answer a skill testing question.

If you have read any of these articles or been the recipient of this type of advice, you will notice there are always steps to follow. Essentially, it is a how to guide for becoming a manipulative, disingenuous person, with helpful tips about how not to be yourself. I am all for personal growth and firmly believe constantly striving to become the best version of one’s self is every person’s duty as a member of civilization. Pretending to be some outdated and skewed view of the “ideal” mate is not the same as growing. It presupposes that all men want the same thing in a female which implies both you and your former mate are one dimensional characters. It does not even take into account the actual problems your individual relationship had.

Problems, of course the relationship had problems or it would not have ended. That is not to say that we didn’t try to work through problems, but change is very hard, human emotions are complicated and no matter how much you love someone, you cannot erase their past experiences or the beliefs that developed before you met. You cannot change another person; you can only work on yourself and your ability to accept someone as they are. Believe me; I have learned this through some very bad choices. Experience may be a harsh teacher, but an effective one. If you require someone to change fundamentally who they are in order to be with you, the relationship is doomed.

What about love? No matter how much you still feel for a past lover, once they have stopped loving you, the end has come. You cannot make someone love you, but you can definitely make someone hate you, pity you (not a positive thing at all) or have contempt for you, which is what might happen if you try to employ tactics to “win back” your ex.

Re-Blog Plus

A friend of mine just alerted me to this excellent blog post: http://www.danoah.com/2012/10/16-ways-i-blew-my-marriage.html

I have to say that reading it was both heart warming, in that I saw my current relationship in a lot of the positive advice, and chilling in that I see my former self in a lot of the don't columns. I have been ok at admitting my wrongs in the choosing of the wrong partner and staying long after I was continually made unhappy segments, but it takes two to make or break a relationship and I've had some very bad habits I have to own in order to break.

One of my worst habits was the unsolicited advice giving. Naturally I worry about the people I care about, that is a natural and good thing. Thinking that I know better what they should be doing, is not. Telling them what they ought to do instead is not and I was terrible for doing so. Sometimes unrelentingly. When I think back to the fevered email writing, sending 6-7 lengthy messages, one right after the other, I cringe. Sometimes I would feel guilty and then send another 3-4 positive messages, then go right back to the "you ought to know" writing. To the unfortunate recipients, I must have looked like a bi-polar nut job and in some respects, I was. 

Projection. I have been credited with being a very intuitive person. Sometimes I think I am and sometimes I think that when you surround yourself with people who are like you, it is easy to project your own issues onto them and be roughly "correct". A lot of the time and energy I spent trying to "fix" my partner was really an attempt to fix my own problems. By making my problems someone else's, it seemed easier to objectively view the issue from the outside. This is a double lie because, there was zero objectivity behind what I was doing and, what I was doing was not fixing anything. I was merely cataloging a long list of faults, making both me and my partners feel worse about ourselves. It is almost impossible to make changes for the better when you are feeling at your worst.

Having come from a family that turned verbal abuse into an art form, I deluded myself into believing that when I was upset, it was better not to say anything rather than risk repeating the patterns of verbal abuse I was raised in. What I was really doing was using silence as a weapon. It's a tricky situation. Sometimes I was so tired of constantly "talking about the relationship" or telling my partners that I was hurt that I just started to shut down. I withdrew into myself and threw up walls so that I couldn't be hurt further. Sometimes silence was a refuge. Other times, though it was a spiteful attempt to make others feel bad. 

When all is said and done, I have done my share of sabotaging my relationships. I regret the pain my actions caused to those I cared about. However, that is not the same as saying I wish I could go back and do things differently. Each of those relationships were absolutely wrong for me, though I admit my share in their destruction. Hopefully, both sides have learned and grown from the experience.

I have read and heard much lately about not looking to the past as you can not change the things that have already happened. Though I agree that thinking too much about the past, living with constant regret, is detrimental, I also know that failure to deal with past issues always makes them come back larger. With this post I put my past relationships in their final resting place. I have learned what was useful and now it is time to let go of everything else. 

To all the boys I've loved before, I genuinely wish you well, but I shall think on you no more. Adieu

To My Guy, without you I could not have come to this place of acceptance and forgiveness of both myself and the people of my past. You have taught me the true meaning of Love!