There's good news and bad news. The good is life teaches you things as you go. Much like in a game, you get hints and "help" buttons. You may even get the occasional friendly wizard in your path, but that's not a given, so I wouldn't rely on it.
The bad news is, unlike in a game, there's no clear outline to draw your attention to these hints and nuggets of wisdom. You either recognize and seize them on your own or you don't, which might end up feeling a lot like you're running in circles.
Love. I think love is the biggest area of life where most of us are desperate to get some helpful hints. Ironically, it's also the area we're least willing to take advice on (either from others or our own experience). As such, I'm sure there's more I've missed than I have learned in matters of the heart, but here's a few I didn't sleep through.
1. People tell you exactly who they are.
I'm sure this has happened to you. You meet someone and you think they're great and on that basis, you choose to overlook when they say things like "I'm not ready for a relationship". Or worse, "I love someone else", or "I'll break your heart". There's a romantic scene in Peaky Blinders where Grace tells Tommy that, and he says it's already broken and falls in love with her anyway. There's something appealing to us about that heedlessness, that falling head-first.
But in real life, it's seldom as appealing as it is on screen.
So one of my favorite lessons has been pay attention to what people tell you and how they behave. Behavior's a big one, in that someone maybe won't treat you like a priority or treat you poorly in some way or lie to you, and we often blind ourselves to that. We say oh it's just circumstance, or I can fix them, or they didn't mean them, or they're playing cute saying all that bad stuff about themselves.
They're not. They're signaling to you who they are and what you're getting into. Now, whether or not you choose to listen, that's a different matter.
2. You don't get to "fix" people.
It's not what you're here for. It doesn't solve your own issues, and it doesn't work. It's a very common idea in love, we think oh they'll change for me. No they won't. People don't change, and certainly not for someone else.
We seem to equate it in simplicity with the thought process of "I like Mary, so I'm gonna buy Mary flowers."
Simple. I like Mary, so I'll change. Change only comes about after a severe personal turning point, if at all. People don't change because it would make your life easier, not even when they do love you, which is something a lot of us seem to get caught up on.
3. You tell people what you're worth constantly.
I'm not a fan of self-victimization. I'm not keen on people who go around blaming all on someone else. All my exes were assholes who treated me poorly - really? And what do they have in common?
We go about life expecting that people will observe common sense (by our definition, of course, not theirs) and treat us how we'd like to be treated. Except, at eight billion people, most of us don't have the internal encyclopedia instructing us how each individual deserves to be treated.
We rely on their word and example, so if someone sees you treating yourself poorly, settling for bad, sub-par, low-effort, even hurtful interactions, they'll assume that's what you deserve. Not consciously, of course. You're just serving them information. Constantly. So you better make sure you transmit the information you'd want them to know.
I feel if I'd known these three, particularly the first and last, I would've avoided a lot of hurt. One of the things I like doing, in looking back on past relationships is figuring out how I was the bad guy, which is something not a lot of us ask.
It's always how was Joe a dick.
And it doesn't mean you were a dick also to Joe. Maybe you were the bad guy in relationship to yourself. In accepting treatment that was harmful or degrading. There's great evil in not doing yourself justice. And what pisses me off a bit is that we seem to go through life doing that and still expecting that to be overlooked in the grand scale of who was right and who wrong.
No. If you treat yourself poorly or let someone else do it, you're participating in your own hurt, and you need to acknowledge that and change it before you can stop hurting.
Memoir Monday prompt for this week really appealed to me. It's one of the coolest initiatives going around right now, and you should check it out if you haven't already.I'm changing it. Trying to, at least. Which is why @ericvancewalton's
Yes to all of these! #1 is especially important for me, personally. People can be VERY adept at hiding who they are with words but, given enough time, they never fail to reveal their true selves through their actions.
Also, complaining about past partners is a huge red flag for me...especially if a person has a long string of similar experiences/stories. In retrospect if I were to have recognized this red flag when I was younger I would have been spared so many hard lessons. Usually the more a person does this the less self-aware they are and it's an accurate indicator of how problematic your relationship with them is going to be (get ready to be blamed for absolutely everything). Lol.
Great contribution to Memoir Monday my friend! Thanks!
Makes sense to be a red flag. Shows they aren't looking inwards as well and would rather blame someone else. Definitely going to be problematic. Yeesh! And people do reveal themselves eventually. The good ones, too - they turn out even better than they'd claim.
Exactly! The mask comes off eventually, even if it's just through their actions.
Huge red flag and a sneaky one, too. I think we write it off wanting to see the best in people and never consider they might be the same way to us.
Thanks for the great topic!
It's so sneaky that it took me like three decades to figure out. : ) You're welcome, thanks for joining in!
My hubs did talk about an ex that hit him over the head with a frying pan .. sometimes I can see why.
Lol, a frying pan would definitely get your attention.
Crazy how we see but choose not to see. When hindsight is truly 20/20, you realise you had the truth all along but were in fact in denial.
The first and the last are so similar. To me, it's "don't be stoopid, read the damn signs, and freaking respect and treat yourself proper." And also, people do change, but HELL NO not for you. They do it for themselves, and you can only try to encourage that.
Exactly!💯
I think a lot of people don't wanna see that 'cause they feel it makes them guilty in some way. It's the double-sided coin - you're responsible and that can be a condemnation but also really empowering.
Word. :) It's really that easy. At least in theory. In practice, we seem to have a hard time.
You can encourage people to change, but some people seem to think they can genuinely do that by treating themselves poorly in the process. Like what kind of example are you setting there, you know?
Agree with everything except the "people don't change" point.
People are constantly changing, but they do for so little and so slowly that we don't see it immediately. It's a long term thing that works in many little ways. For some things we change for the better. For others we change for the worse.
But it's always little by little everyday and depends on the world that surrounds you and how you interact with it.
What it's wrong is expecting you or your partner to change in one day (or month, or even a year).
No. You missed the point. Read the post again.
There's a reason we have this adage, "A leopard never change its skin"
Ehn...hunter Iska! 🙌🏽
Lol...
💯
The properly bad people don't change. And the good people who are doing bad things need a hell of a lot to change. Sticking by them in the hope that someday things will get good ain't it.
Even if people change I feel like it is up to themselves and not you. You can't change anyone.
It's not that people don't change as a default. Of course change is a constant. And as a point, it's important to keep in mind since ideally, you'll be changing alongside another human, so you need to know that and not come crying about "you're not the same man I married" or whatever.
But they never change for you. And people seem to think that's how it works. At the end of the day, you gotta be able to say "if you change for you, fine, I'm happy for you. But if you go on like this, I got the strength to walk myself out of this mess". Not everyone does.
Those are some wise words. And very true. I know all about it. There's a reason why I've been single for a loooong time now. The one thing that's important is know your worth. And the cliche expression love yourself first. It's absolutely true. If you don't, then you give off that energy to others, and others can and will take advantage, or just treat the other badly. Now that being said, those people will probably also treat themselves badly, because they don't have the capacity to love anyone. Not even themselves. Been there done that. So now I learned to just be content with who and how I am, being on my own (with the kids of course), and if someone comes on my path, that's great, and if not, it's fine too. But I will never again settle for less than I deserve. Much love to you 'Oh wise one!'. <3
That one's mind-boggling to me. We treat ourselves like shit, then walk into relationships and expect the knight in shining armor who sees we deserve so much more. It doesn't work like that (And isn't it way more empowering when you start giving yourself that "more"?).
Difficult to accept if you're even a moderately nice person. We're wired to be nice and help and all that nice human stuff. And when you think "oh but they're probably hurting more", it risks undermining all that hard-earned self-respect.
And you deserve so much. ❤️ Hope to see you soon!
Very true. There should be a course on how to treat ourselves better before getting into a relationship...
The issues is that people are usually nice on the surface, but we all know that we're not always the way we show ourselves... I don't know exactly why, but I think a lot of us know our own weaknesses, and don't like to show them to others, until we get into a long term relationship, and all of a sudden 'poof, there it is!'. I think I've gotten to the point that I know we all have faulty behavior and weaknesses. In meeting people (not for a love relationship, but in general, friendships etc.) I now tend not to expect anything. It absolutely helps. Don't expect anything (except maybe honesty) and you could just get lots you didn't expect.
Hope to see you soon too! Might have to crash on someone's floor or couch if I make it...
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Sometimes you fix each other. It Must be reciprocal. Jamie always says I saved him, but he saved me at the same time. Mutual fixing.
And sometimes you just aren't meant to be together, because if you were, you wouldn't be doing the hurting. Sometimes you both are assholes.
Interesting indeed. These are life's lessons I believe. Somewhere we all have experienced a few of what is mentioned. But as humans, most of still don't change. That's the sad fact. Nice read.
Yeah it's crazy when we don't listen to people, when they tell us exactly who they are, instead we only hear what we want to hear, because that little thing called love clouds our judgement.
I'm old enough now to know that it is never my place to change someone that is up to them and them alone and yet we still hope don't we?And setting the bar, for how we expect to be treated, that's a huge one. Something I a still working on, but we are always a work in progress. I¡m always very wary when people tell me that they have worked on and healed themselves, working on yourself yay, but to think you have it all figured out?
Great write up xxxxx