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The Significance of Significant Others
Jan. 8th, 2014 12:21 amI have spent the majority of my adult life single by choice.
And I've heard the excuses, the mansplaining. No, you're lying, there must be something wrong with you, there must be some reason why guys don't want to date you.
No. Really, by choice.
When I was younger, I had a large hole left in my emotional needs that can be summed up as "daddy issues" (the story there is for another time). I attempted to have said needs met by having relationships with guys my age, and when that didn't work, the daddy issues manifested themselves further and I tried a relationship with someone older.
What doesn't kill you, right?
Well, it just about nearly did.
When I finally made it out of that relationship, I shut down quite a bit. I couldn't understand what had happened...and then it clicked. I realized that, subconsciously, I had put myself into that position, and I would fail to ever have a healthy relationship until I properly dealt with my issues.
Cue me finally dealing with them 5 years later.
Then, last year, I felt like I was in a good place to be in a relationship with someone who was interested in me, so I gave it a shot.
Coming from my background, I wouldn't let myself get too concerned about things that I felt were off. Don't overreact, just relax. Needless to say, things eventually imploded.
You see, the person I was trying to have a relationship had issues of his own, specifically abandonment issues, that he hadn't dealt with. He had issues that he was loathe to even recognize.
Throughout the relationship, he complained that his previous girlfriend was too clingy and didn't have her own interests, yet he proceeded to be put-out when I had made plans and didn't want to cancel them to lay around and do nothing with him. He refused to call me his girlfriend or acknowledge that we had a relationship (we were, in his words, "working towards being together") because I was unwilling to drop my entire life and move to be with him, no questions asked. Whenever I brought up a concern I had about a way he was speaking to or treating me, he would attempt to dismiss it as "Guys have done that to you in the past, but you can't live in the past and compare me to them," yet my behavior was openly compared to that of his prior girlfriends.
I hit a breaking point one weekend where I had asked for a few days of privacy due to my mental state (I have learned to ask for a Mental Health Day to take care of myself instead of burying the problem) and he refused to respect that. That disrespect made me angry. Why didn't I deserve such a small thing?
A couple months later, sure enough, I came across posts on a social networking site where he was saying, and I quote, "I need a girlfriend."
No.
No.
NO.
There's a rather famous quote by RuPaul that goes "If you can't love yourself, how the hell you gonna love somebody else?"
Now, you can argue with me, say "I love myself plenty! Who are you to say I can't love someone else?" Here's the thing: you cannot use someone else to fill a hole in your own life. Being in a relationship with someone else is supposed to compliment your life, make it even better, not fix the gaping chunk! You need to fix that chunk yourself before you get someone else involved, otherwise that chunk will never be fixed; you'll just be moving things around to try to hide it.
You cannot go looking for a relationship with this preconceived notion of how said relationship will complete you, and you cannot impose that fantasy on someone else (I'm looking at you, Taylor Swift). It's not fair to anyone involved.
And until you realize that, your relationships are all doomed to fail.
And I've heard the excuses, the mansplaining. No, you're lying, there must be something wrong with you, there must be some reason why guys don't want to date you.
No. Really, by choice.
When I was younger, I had a large hole left in my emotional needs that can be summed up as "daddy issues" (the story there is for another time). I attempted to have said needs met by having relationships with guys my age, and when that didn't work, the daddy issues manifested themselves further and I tried a relationship with someone older.
What doesn't kill you, right?
Well, it just about nearly did.
When I finally made it out of that relationship, I shut down quite a bit. I couldn't understand what had happened...and then it clicked. I realized that, subconsciously, I had put myself into that position, and I would fail to ever have a healthy relationship until I properly dealt with my issues.
Cue me finally dealing with them 5 years later.
Then, last year, I felt like I was in a good place to be in a relationship with someone who was interested in me, so I gave it a shot.
Coming from my background, I wouldn't let myself get too concerned about things that I felt were off. Don't overreact, just relax. Needless to say, things eventually imploded.
You see, the person I was trying to have a relationship had issues of his own, specifically abandonment issues, that he hadn't dealt with. He had issues that he was loathe to even recognize.
Throughout the relationship, he complained that his previous girlfriend was too clingy and didn't have her own interests, yet he proceeded to be put-out when I had made plans and didn't want to cancel them to lay around and do nothing with him. He refused to call me his girlfriend or acknowledge that we had a relationship (we were, in his words, "working towards being together") because I was unwilling to drop my entire life and move to be with him, no questions asked. Whenever I brought up a concern I had about a way he was speaking to or treating me, he would attempt to dismiss it as "Guys have done that to you in the past, but you can't live in the past and compare me to them," yet my behavior was openly compared to that of his prior girlfriends.
I hit a breaking point one weekend where I had asked for a few days of privacy due to my mental state (I have learned to ask for a Mental Health Day to take care of myself instead of burying the problem) and he refused to respect that. That disrespect made me angry. Why didn't I deserve such a small thing?
A couple months later, sure enough, I came across posts on a social networking site where he was saying, and I quote, "I need a girlfriend."
No.
No.
NO.
There's a rather famous quote by RuPaul that goes "If you can't love yourself, how the hell you gonna love somebody else?"
Now, you can argue with me, say "I love myself plenty! Who are you to say I can't love someone else?" Here's the thing: you cannot use someone else to fill a hole in your own life. Being in a relationship with someone else is supposed to compliment your life, make it even better, not fix the gaping chunk! You need to fix that chunk yourself before you get someone else involved, otherwise that chunk will never be fixed; you'll just be moving things around to try to hide it.
You cannot go looking for a relationship with this preconceived notion of how said relationship will complete you, and you cannot impose that fantasy on someone else (I'm looking at you, Taylor Swift). It's not fair to anyone involved.
And until you realize that, your relationships are all doomed to fail.
