Once upon a time I overheard someone saying, "It's either flood or famine". They were referring to dating and over the years I have come to agree with that statement. I can go months without any prospect, without a single date, and then suddenly there will be several guys all at once who seem to have taken an interest. Maybe it's the weather - some kind of biochemical thing that induces guys to suddenly want to seek companionship.
Recently I have been learning to be okay with just being alone. At one point I thought I had to immediately get back into the swing of dating rather than to just focus on me and where I can learn and grow from past experiences. I have to be honest, I'm still struggling with that as I'm not really allowing myself to spend time alone, I've packed my schedule tightly so that there isn't much time to think about the fact that I'm alone.
But I have been thinking about it. There are steps I've had to take to help me in the healing/moving on process.
Here's the biggest thing I've learned recently - trying to remain friends when you break up with someone is like having a cut and picking at the scab every day. That's no way to heal, rather it's a perfect way to slow the healing process down and leave a scar.
I'm not saying that you can never be friends again, but this brings us to the second thing I've learned, relationships typically go full circle. If you were friends before you dated, there's a higher possibility that you will be friends in the end. If you jumped right into a relationship upon meeting then you will likely end up strangers or acquaintances in the end. It makes sense really - if you knew how to be friends before then you know how to fall back in to that. But if all you ever knew was a romantic relationship - how do you down grade?
There is a song by Goyte called "Someone That I Used to Know". I like this song, not because it speaks to me as the victim, but as the person who has to be the jerk because it's for the common good. "Dear Goyte, she had to cut you off, because if she didn't she would be stuck in cyclical self destruction." Sound dramatic? You don't know what I've been through as I've tried to hang on to something that has long been dead. Some of us can't just turn off the romantic stirrings and go to buddyland instantly.
In companionship to that song, there's a song called "Ugly" by Garrison Starr. It's almost a reply to "Someone That I Used to Know". She says, "I'll be ugly so you don't have to." I'll be the jerk so you don't have to be.
I'm also working on securing the feeling that while love keeps failing me, it will ultimately win out. I'm not going to give up on love, just that particular instance of love.
I've been reading this book and to be honest I didn't think I would learn about romantic relationships, but there is a chapter devoted to it. It talks about how sometimes people expect love to just be perfect - they expect to click or mesh instantly and that if things are meant to be they wouldn't need so much work - this is called a "fixed mindset" (the book, by the way, is called Mindset). The opposite is the "growth mindset" and people see their partners as people who are just like them, able to learn and grow continually. See, with the fixed mindset, things are as they will always be. It's very limiting. I'm a person who believes in individual growth. If I want to learn something, I know I can do it if I work hard at it. It's the same with relationships (so the book says). If you think that you aren't meshing maybe you just aren't communicating well. Speak up about things that bother you instead of assuming that your partner can't change. You do a disservice to both of you when you just stay quiet and assume they cannot learn and develop.
I need someone who is willing to work as much as I am, because I believe it can work only if both parties are willing to roll up their sleeves. But I'll admit, I was a fixed mindset - I knew it would take work, but I still assumed people would remain the same. This is contrary to how I feel in most aspects of my life, so it was eye opening to realize I do this in relationships.
There is no easy way to maintain the feelings of the heart, it's like everything else in life, we've got to work to achieve and keep working to maintain, but it's worth it. We've got to learn to talk about things that bother us, because we owe it to them and to ourselves to give the other person the chance to try, especially if we thought at one point that we were a good fit for each other.
You're two people giving 100% to make a relationship reach it's full potential. I believe in this kind of love, I want this kind of love, but in the meantime, I'm learning to be content to wait and not rush things. I don't want to fall into a trap where I grow willing to settle for less and I now realize by "less" I mean someone who is fixed and doesn't think I (or themselves) could change certain things even if I wanted to.
All I really wanted to say today was that I'm in a drought, but that's okay, and probably for the best right now. I guess I had more on my mind than I realized.
