What had happened...

I have heard it said that we do the best we can in life with what we have learned, seen, or been taught.

What do I mean? Well, when I got married a long time ago, I had all the skills to be a wife and mother. After all, I saw all those skills in my grandmother. She cooked, cleaned, cared for the home, and worked here and there. Kept herself looking up to par…She made sure the house was pleasant for my grandfather to come home to.

In essence, she made a house a home and she passed all those skills down to me. I mean to this day I am the only one in the family that can cook COOK. I had all the skills necessary, or so it seemed, to be the best wife and mother to a hardworking, kind, and loving husband who put his family first.

Now, that is all fine and good if you marry that kind of person. I thought I had but when I realized I hadn’t, I left, and my life looked and looked far different from what I imagined.

Yet, after years of contemplation and reflection on different stages in my life, I learned a valuable lesson. The lesson was that I married a person who didn’t know how to be a husband because he had never seen or experienced it. He was doing the best he could with the skills and knowledge he had at that moment in time. All he knew was that he loved me and wanted to be with me.  

He had no idea how to be a father, a husband, or much else. As much as I wanted to blame him, I also came to see that it wasn’t his fault. Again, he was doing the best he could with what he had or better yet, WANTED to have.  

As I have gone through life and experienced relationships both romantic and platonic, I have realized people are operating on the knowledge base and understanding that they have. What it looks like to me, doesn’t look the same to them.

They can only meet you from the position they are in. Does that make sense? They can only comprehend what they can comprehend. So that means their understanding of things may be vastly different than yours.

For example, what do you or I consider a “healthy relationship”? Well, according to Psychology Today, a healthy relationship has a few components; trust, communication, patience, empathy, appreciation, room for growth, respect, reciprocity, healthy conflict resolution, and openness and honesty.

That sounds like a lot. Especially in a social climate where we can’t even be kind or respectful of one another let alone have the capacity or ability to articulate our feelings. We live in a space where we think we have tons of options. When we think we have options, we lose respect, communication, honesty, and most importantly empathy and patience.

Not everyone has read books, taken the time to do their work, gone to therapy, or sat quietly and reflected on their lives, their actions, and the role they play in the creation of their own lives.

I see it at work, in the streets, and everywhere. We all have our own sense of what is reality and what is not.

Of course, I am of a BIG age and have had the time to reflect. I have lived through several iterations of generations, life, and good old technology.

But one thing that never ceases to amaze me is how we show up in our relationships with others.

Dating has been all over social media lately and how everything is trash. Let the media tell it and being “single” is all the craze and I don’t disagree. From what I see, people are showing up unhealed, unhealthy, and hurt expecting a positive or dream outcome.

Hmm…. when I think of it, I think of the definition of insanity. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

So, instead of healing, doing the work, and attempting to unlearn destructive and hurtful patterns, we show up with that same mess time after time but each time expecting perfection and healthy balanced lives and partnerships. Or…someone to “save” us or better yet, put up with what we are given and be okay with it.

We expect communication when we cannot articulate or identify the issue. We expect peace when we are not providing it. We expect affection and a listening ear when we won’t shut the hell up and listen to ourselves. We expect loyalty while being disloyal…and so on and so forth.

But it brings back to mind the idea that we operate in what we know or have experienced, right?

Healthy looks different to everyone. For some, verbal, emotional, and physical abuse may mean love. For others infidelity or psychological manipulation and being ride or die, no matter what, means love.

Many of us saw what we thought modeled solid relationships in our parents and grandparents only to find out later that Papa was cheating on grandma the whole time with the neighbor. Or beating her ass in the dark. Or that auntie was messing around with the mechanic up the block while married with kids. Don’t even get me started on the sister or brother that is your half-brother or sister by a woman who is NOT your mom. I mean…

But as the old saying went “as long as they take care of home’ or “as long as they don’t bring it home” it’s okay.

 But is it though?!

I am on fire right now…

The stuff of our childhood often turns out to be one big fat lie. We would never know because we were always taught as kids to mind our business and stay in a child’s place.

Not now. All this drama is spilling over into the kids and the trauma of the parents is showing up and showing out. It’s showing in how we date, and how we operate as employees, friends, and even family members.

Don’t get me wrong, part of being a fully formed and healthy adult is confronting some of our demons and disrupting some of our patterns but are we doing it healthily and solidly? (sounds weird) 

It is my thought that healthy relationships are full of fighting fair, open, and HONEST communication, emotional maturity, and intelligence, as well as compassion, empathy, and forgiveness. Now I’m not talking about constant forgiveness for poor choices. I am talking about forgiveness for fighting unfairly or misdirecting our anger. Not abuse…let’s be clear.  

Aside from everything I mentioned before about being in a relationship with others, we bypass the most important question of them all.

Do we even like the person we are trying to be in a relationship with? I mean on a very basic level.  We should FIRST and foremost like the person we love. No one ever talks about that. Liking the person is paramount to all the rest of this stuff.

We tend to do mean and nasty things to people we don’t like and frame it under the guise of repeated mistakes and mistreatment. Or that is just how I am. But I believe if you cared about or even liked a person, we’d behave better.

Think about it. We’d think twice about some of the shit we do or say. When we like and care for a person, we allow a certain amount of grace when being human.

As I define healthy relationships for myself, again I realize not everyone reflects, evolves, or does the work and that is why everything I am seeing is making me think more deeply on the matter.

I had to step back and ask myself some hard questions as I tried and determine what I wanted my life and relationships to look like.

I had to ask if I had ever been loved the way I wanted in a relationship? Was I expecting something from someone that they were not capable of giving or that didn’t know how to give it, still, at my BIG age?

Why am I still seeking from others what I know they are incapable of giving? I mean we all need to ask that question, especially if we keep ending up in places we don’t want to be or feeling things we don’t want to feel.

Or why are so many opting to be single? Are they the ones who have done the work, been through hell and back, and decided that people are doing the best they can with what they have, and we just need to let them be?

I mean because that is kind of where I am with it? #FACTS

It’s all a tricky situation and we have the power to be better and most importantly to choose how we proceed.

Will we proceed unhealed or decide we want better and DO better?

Trying to make sense of it all is quite honestly, exhausting.

At this point, I don’t see the relationship situations (romantic or platonic) getting any better because people have adopted the “that’s just the way I am“  mentality and we are just letting them be, as I said before.  

It seems safer to drink, our water, go to work, travel, hit the gym, and mind our business.

But wait, if only a few are doing the work, staying to themselves, not going “outside” …what happens next? Cuz there only seems to be a few prized catches in the sea, and far too many fishermen. Or have we stopped fishing? Good Lawd!

Hmm…I guess, we will do what we have been told to do, wait for the right one to come along.

No, not that one. I got it, we will adopt the mantra it’s never too late to find love (at 80 years old love finally showed up). Ha!

Or better yet, do like the masses and throw the whole baby out with the bath water and just reconcile to being that “auntie” or “uncle” that’s always gone some exotic place, enjoying some exotic tryst…

I think I will take the latter. I mean my grandma always said, live a life that makes a great story to tell your grandkids!

(and I got some stories)

XOXO