Loving Without Restriction

I need to be happy.  No matter what happens with my life, no matter what I end up doing, I need to be happy. 

I need to be happy with myself and I need to be happy with the one I’m with.  My man needs to make me happy…at all times.  I want to be happy at all times.  I want him to be able to fix my bad days, lighten my heavy mood, ease my weary spirit, solve my toughest issues.  I want him to love all over me and kiss away my pain.  In times when I can’t make myself feel better, I want him to come to my rescue. 

I must admit, sometimes I need him.  I need him to be there for me and that’s hard for me to say.  It’s hard for me to admit that I need this man in my life, not out of dependence, but out of desire.  I need his spirit, I need his energy.  I need him.

Although I need him, I refuse to tell him that.  I refuse to let him know my full desire for him.  Why?  I'm not sure.  A pride thing, I guess.  I can’t let him know that my happiness is reliant upon his happiness. 

When I was totally reliant on him in the past, it burned me.  He ended up abusing my love and I just can’t go through that again.  I used to be smitten; now, I’m smarter.  I don’t want to love blindly…I don’t want to get hurt. 

I want to be happy. I want to love freely. I want him to know how much I love him—but at what cost?

The Shadow over My Happiness

Happiness is relative. Happiness can be determined by other people’s happiness. Happiness can be momentary. Happiness can be fleeting. Happiness can be…overpowered. Yes, it can be overpowered by loneliness, insecurity, mistrust, frustration, doubt—essentially any negativity. 

Recently, I’ve been letting those things affect my happiness. I’ve been letting these outside forces affect my mood, affect my view on life, affect how I operate.

I’m not happy right now and I need to be. I’m fairly happy with myself, but not happy with my boyfriend.   I love my boyfriend, but in this particular moment, I’m not happy with where we are. 

I feel like we are fluttering around trying to get to the next landing and can’t seem to make it. Where we are trying to go seems further and further away, which makes us lose hope. My hopelessness is causing me to put a little less effort it, try a little less hard, care a little less than I used to.

I want us to make it…I’m in love with this man. I just don’t know why it has to be so hard. Why do we have to work so hard to be happy? Or is this a test? Maybe we have to work so hard now to prove that we can make it in the future—“if you can handle this, you can handle anything” type thing…

Maybe I’m failing the test. Maybe my happiness is supposed to endure the low points.  Maybe my current mood is evidence that I give up too soon. 

I want to be in it for the long haul, but this current portion of the journey is taking a toll on me…

Our circumstances are tearing me down.  He still has faith in us; I just hope his faith is enough for the both of us.

What's the Limit Before Enough Is Enough?

How far are you supposed to go for your significant other?  How much are you supposed to do?  Do you keep giving and giving and giving until you have no more to give or do you cut off the “donations” before you’ve reached your breaking point?

Is there ever a time when you just stop giving to the relationship?  Are you allowed to give tough love to a relationship versus continuing to nurture it?

I’ve been giving a lot to my relationship…a lot of love, a lot of attention, a lot of time, a lot of money, and a lot of effort.  I’ve been giving all of me and all of my emotions to this relationship.  And, frankly, I’m tired.  I’m not tired in terms of wanting to escape, but tired in terms of wanting and needing things to change.  I just don’t know how long I can continue to give and not get much in return.  I want to keep giving—in fact, my love won’t let me stop giving.  But I’m not sure how long my mind and my energy can last.  The continuous donations are taking a toll on my health. 

It’s not that I haven’t gotten anything from the relationship, but recently I’ve been giving a lot more.  And I’m not sure if I’m “supposed” to keep giving or if I should enable him to take care of things himself.   As the man, isn’t he supposed to take care of things and handle his own issues?  I just don’t know how to balance “supporting your mate” with “letting a man be a man.” 

Every time I try to give tough love, the “soft love” in me wants to immediately console him or work to rectify a situation or problem he may be having. 

Is my giving a lot to this relationship my duty as a girlfriend or my way of enabling him?

Relationship Communication 101

Photo by Kriss Szkurlatowski

Does your man make a bad day better or worse?

I think that’s the litmus test for whether you are in a healthy relationship or not—whether he can turn around your bad day or make it even worse.

A man who can make you laugh or take your mind off things is a man who has cracked the code to a woman’s mind.  Because we get inside our own heads a lot and start overthinking things and over analyzing things, and sometimes we need someone to just grab us out of that mental meltdown and bring us back to reality.

But many times men can’t be that hero.  Many times men can’t make you smile in those situations.  In fact, it seems like men have this special power that makes them extra annoying when you’re going through something.  They seem to know just the thing to say that you didn’t want to hear. 

I see it with couples all the time.  The girl is having a bad day and she would rather talk to her mom and a girl friend instead of talking to her boyfriend.  Why? Because testosterone says and does stupid stuff.  And the girl doesn’t want to be bothered with that stupid stuff at that time.

So how do we fix the stupidity?  How do we educate men on what to say and not say on bad days?  Here are a few suggestions of things not to say:

·        “That doesn’t make any sense—why do you feel that way?”

·        “I just don’t understand what’s the big deal.”

·        “You need to calm down.”

·        Any phrase that generalizes or stereotypes women: “you women…”

There are many, many more, but those are the big ones that men should avoid. 

I believe all women should start helping men instead of criticizing them so they can be the men we need them to be on a daily basis, and especially on those not-so-perfect days. 

The Soundtrack of My Life

“I miss you” is the soundtrack to my life right now.  When I wake up in the morning, “I miss you.”  When I come home from work, “I missed you so much today.”  When I go to bed at night, “I really do miss you.” 

This soundtrack had been playing on repeat and I’m getting tired of the tune.  I’m so tired of the “miss yous” and “miss you toos.”  I’m tired of you saying those words to me. 

I resent you for missing me.  Not because I don’t miss you too, but because it makes me feel bad.  Your missing me makes me feel like I should do something about it, like I should solve it, like I should alleviate the hurt that missing me causes you.

At the same time that you are missing me, I am missing you but I’m more concerned about your feelings.  I’m concerned about how you feel and about making sure you don’t feel that way for long.  But what I’m realizing is that my concern is overpowering your concern.  Meaning, you don’t seem to be too concerned about missing me because you aren’t doing anything about it.  You are doing a lot of talking and not a lot of action.

The direct solution to missing someone is to get near that person.  You tell me you miss me so much, but you have yet to do anything about it.

I think we are so used to missing each other that neither one of us knows how to change that.  We know what to do, but not how to do it. 

We need to get out of our comfort zone and start making moves.  We talk about it every day, but stop that conversation when it gets to the part about who is going to move and when they are going to move. 

So what now? 

We will see, but as long as we are just replaying the same song over and over, we will never move to the next playlist of our lives.  

One step forward, two steps back…

I know relationship weren’t meant to be perfect but it seems to me that during this time that my boyfriend and I are on this “journey to understanding our relationship,” we would make a conscious effort to do things better than we’ve done before.  The purpose of this journey is to understand the significance of our relationship and what sacrifices we should make in order to strengthen the relationship.  However, if we are angry or frustrated with each other during this journey then it clouds the clarity that we are trying to achieve. 

If we are upset with each other while we are going down this path, then those negative emotions could lead us down a path that we weren’t designed to go. 

But when my boyfriend does insensitive things (consciously or unconsciously), then I have no choice but to be upset and frustrated.   When my boyfriend schedules a time for us to talk over the phone and then misses that time by an hour because he was playing video games, how else am I supposed to feel besides annoyed and angry?

I’m trying to suppress those negative emotions but he’s making it so hard!  Normally, I would give him the benefit of the doubt, but it seems to me that he’s not trying at all.

Or I could be being dramatic and that was just one night, one missed phone call, and one part of the journey.   Maybe, by definition, the journey must have this forward and backward movement. I guess if everything was perfect during this journey, that could also lead us down a wrong path as well….

Maybe what this “journey” we are going down is teaching us about is the journey of life and marriage with each other.  Maybe there must be ups and downs in this journey, and times of angry and frustration in this journey, because that’s realistic to life.  Maybe I’m supposed to be learning how to learn from them and move on from them.

…one step forward, two steps back….ALL part of the journey!

Lost

We are lost in our relationship. We are swimming, swarming, swirling—trying to make sense of our relationship. Every time we feel as if we have a strong foothold, a balanced sense of gravity; something comes and knocks us off balance.

And that “something” (whatever it may be) always comes at inconvenient moments. That “something” comes when we least expect it, when things are going well, when we are on cloud nine. That “something” has a way of detecting joy and conveniently inserting itself in the weakest areas of our relationship.

That “something” for us is plane tickets and travel. It is essential to our long-distance relationship that we see each other at least once a month. If we go even a week beyond that, we start feeling it in our relationship. We start getting frustrated more easily and start getting snippier with each other. Well, this month when we went to buy our plane tickets, they were very expensive. And not regular-level expensive, but $600 expensive!

That expense was the “something” that broke the camels’ back. That “something” found its way into the weak parts of our relationship—money and distance.

From there, we were knocked to the ground, scrambling to get up. But we didn’t know which way was up.  We became frustrated with each other but we were really frustrated with the circumstances. We wanted to blame the world, but could only blame ourselves. 

So in an instance cloud nine became rock bottom. Walking on sunshine became living in the trenches. It wasn’t necessarily about the plane tickets, the tickets were just the catalyst. What we were really frustrated with was the fact that we are still living far apart from each other after, that neither one of us is willing to sacrifice our lives in our respective cities, and that neither one of us has the means to quit our jobs and move anywhere. 

So we are trying to find our footing again. Trying to make sense of our relationship, but it’s only a matter of time before “something” comes and knocks us back down…