One of the most difficult parts about my relationship being ended is grieving the love that WAS there. Yes, there were red flags but there were so many green flags too.
How to reconcile that “it wouldn’t have worked” when in so many ways it did, and totally could’ve worked feels impossible sometimes.
Contrary to popular #spiritual tropes #focusonthepositive - Focusing on the negative helps me let go.
Remembering what didn’t work and how hard it was sometimes to be around his energy.
So forgive me (and maybe be inspired by me;) to do the same as I share the message in the mess and actively practicing that negativity out loud here and with others v much on purpose because I have trained my mind to focus on the positive… and here we are again seeing how and when some practices, seemingly so useful, are in fact harmful.
Seeing how it could have worked when the other person didn’t fully want it to continues me arguing with his ghost in the kitchen most mornings. To make a long process short, eventually me and others validating that truth, that it could’ve worked, helped connect to the next mirror, question and bigger truth of “would you have wanted it to?”.
There’s still no clear or consistent answer to that question. Some days it’s a guttural “hell no”, other days it’s an “absolutely that’s WHY I was doing what I was doing”, and most days it’s a probably not or maybe but so so much would need to change first”.
All of you saw how amazing this relationship was. I posted about it often. I’m not discounting or taking that away. Most of you would agree he’s a “nice guy” and I need you to understand that me talking negatively about him is not taking away the nice parts, just completing the truth with the rest of the story. He’s a nice guy, and, sometimes he treated me poorly. And I used to think it was ok. I will say fucking up IS ok, IF, you own it, apologize, and agree to do it differently going forward.
That’s where he dropped the ball sometimes.
That’s where I let it slide by having poor boundaries and allowing it, until the final year when I got a new sponsor and therapist to help me with expressing that fuller truth.
My intention in sharing this is not to tear him down or make him look like the bad guy - in fact it also exposes my shadows and weaknesses and my hope in doing this is to inspire and normalize and empower you to not get stuck where I did. Also, yes, to unravel the pattern of “letting it slide without proper acknowledgement” because even though I am not in control of his actions - I can control my naming them - and most victims wont do this because it’s looked down on. The story that we should #keepthepeace and #justbenice to people who hurt us is so deeply embedded in our culture and I’m not perpetuating that #victimshaming it anymore.
#victim is such a dirty word in #spiritualcircles and we’ve got to look at that and stop sweeping hurt under the rug with pushing people into #forgiveness when there hasn’t been a full apology or amends.
Forgiveness in the idea that I let go of changing anything, yes,
Forgiveness in the way that I don’t think he’s a bad person or hate him, yes
But not in the way that I stuff the truth or #justgetoverit so everyone - mostly him - can be comfortable, no
If you think I’m shaming him, that’s your judgement of me and I’d invite you to get curious about where the language comes from.
Who told you you’re not allowed to tell the world how people hurt you? Who told you hurting people was shameful? It’s not the hurting that’s shameful, it’s the shaming people for hurting people that’s shameful. WE ALL HURT PEOPLE. Some of us mean to - those are the narcissists, sociopaths, and psychopaths. Others “don’t mean to” but don’t mean NOT to, those are the “BPD, NPD” highly selfish and unconscious class. Others really try not to and possibly do anyway, those are the codependents. Some of us realize that being ourselves is going to make waves and hopefully we can communicate about those waves clearly so that others don’t get knocked around or injured but we keep doing our best to be ourselves because if we dont, we can hurt ourselves and others too.
In other words, can we normalize hurting people and speaking up about it without shaming everyone for doing it?
I don’t mean “be mindless” and “you do you boo” I mean “you do you boo and if you accidentally hurt someone own it and apologize and adjust your mind to be more inclusive instead of shaming, blaming and running away next time”
Take no shit but cause no harm is the intention but the truth is it’s almost impossible.
The truth is I often wanted to share our struggles as a means of hope and normalcy for others.
He had a boundary around that, so I honored it when we were together. It made sense to me that that didn’t feel good or safe for him but part of my work is to bring the message in the mess because just highlighting the good stuff on SM seems dishonest. It IS dishonest. To just tell the good things.
That was a reflection of our relationship. He was ashamed of the bad parts, but I know bad parts are normal - it’s what i teach in my 1:1s, how to be WITH your shadows and instead of adding judgement of fear, we embrace them and find the truth of how we actually want to be. We become conscious of our unconscious parts. We start directing them instead of unintentionally letting them direct us.
"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate."
-Carl Jung
So we forgive ourselves and others when we fuck up. Forgiveness is possible and easy BECAUSE we agree to do it differently.
Very difficult when don't amend the behavior though.
Again, I was too good at normalizing the shadows. Crazy how our crazy never really goes away. It keeps us on our toes like any good joker or trickster or devil. And this creates the dance of life.
Now, maybe* he saw the truth better than I did of how awful his treatment of me really was when I - a person who comes from a lifetime of abuse - didn’t think it was that bad. Maybe it was less normal and more toxic that I thought. IDK because I’m really good at tolerating pain. And here we are again seeing how something that seems like a positive, something that most others need more of, was actually a negative for me.
We couldn’t share the bad parts without him saying “idk if this is working”. It felt so unfair because it created a space of feeling like I couldn’t express my feelings/disagree or he’d breakup with me.
I chose to disagree anyway. I needed to stop self abandoning my needs and feelings just to keep the peace. What’s peace with out joy?
Monotony.
People have mistakenly misspelled and misinterpreted this as "monogamy" but monogamy is not monotonous when you have ever evolving love.
After a rupture in early 2022 he expressed he felt we couldn’t grow from each other and we were just tearing each other down.
I saw it differently as maturely setting boundaries and not tolerating his emotional immaturity and inability to know/express his needs/boundaries kindly to me - I thought I was building him up - but yes, he was threatened by my expressions and probably hurt possibly torn down because i was asking him to change his behavior to accurately reflect his proclaimed love for me instead of the contempt I was getting.
Even if you call it “tearing down” I saw the tearing down the same as a muscle at the gym and offer “the rupture are WHERE we get stronger”.
I continued “can we make the agreement to stop wondering if this is working each time we have a disagreement and start seeing it as an opportunity to grow instead?”
He agreed… for a time… but in Nov 2022 he went back to the old line of thinking it wasn’t working and we weren’t making progress.
All I saw was progress.
We were having harder conversations and so more intense feelings were coming up.
But we were repairing better too.
THAT is literally the definition of progress to me.
Once again he saw it differently.
Once again I grieve his inability to see love where I did.
Once again I wonder if I was delusional.
Maybe I needed to see the negative more plainly.
I asked our therapist to check me.
She said I was not delusional. That relationships take this kind of work. All couples will go through this. Whether with each other or someone else.
She expressed that to him in our last session.
He didn’t care.
It was too late. He had made his decision. Even though she kept telling him not to make any decisions yet. He couldn’t change his mind. It kept bubbling up as contempt for me. That was the problem in a nutshell. Cognitive dissonance. Even though part of him wanted to, another part didn’t. The other part won.
The way was shut.
It was made by the dead.
And the dead keep it.
~Mikelle
Jeff Brown says:
"
The assumptive term "victim mentality" has to go. It's just another way that a repressive culture shames and shuns woundedness. When I grew up it was: "Don't be a cry-baby," and
"Leave the past behind you." Yes, it is true that we can become imprisoned inside of our woundedness. But the term "victim mentality" suggests otherwise. It suggests that a choice is being made to remain affixed to our wounds. And how can we know that from the outside? We can't. Someone can certainly make that statement about themselves. But we can't make it about them. Because we aren't walking in their shoes. We aren't inside of their traumatic memories. For all we know, they carry more trauma than we could ever imagine. Perhaps they are the bravest and most hopeful person we have ever encountered.
Just to get up every day and believe, is a remarkable victory for many. So be careful when you talk about someone's "victim mentality." You may be talking about someone who has achieved a greater victory than you."
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