What My Past Relationships Has Taught Me

by with 2 Comments lifestyle

there’s a fine line between love and hate

It can be really difficult to look back on a relationship with fondness when not enough time has passed for healing or worse, when so much trauma took place within the relationship that you just block the whole thing out all together. I guess we can’t completely compartmentalize our pasts, though it’s definitely a coping mechanism of mine.

I’d like to believe that if you’ve ever loved someone that you’ll always love them in some way… there’s a fine line between love and hate. There’s also a fine line between loving some one and actually being in-love with them. The danger lies with the in-love bit, that’s the doing that we have to work at daily. I’ve been lucky to be in-love enough times to know what love, lust, infatuation, in-love, and ‘out of love’ feels like. I mean, haven’t we all been through the five stages of grief after a break up? Each love of mine has been a part of their own lifetime I swear and I’ve lived many lives. I’m so dramatic.

I wish someone had told me when I was younger that I didn’t know anything about anything. I kind of just went into life thinking I knew everything about everything. Here I am 39, in what I feel in my soul to be the final love story of my life, and there’s a few things I would’ve told younger me.

+ you have to make yourself happy. It’s too much responsibility for one person to make both people in any relationship happy. And also exhausting

+ figure out what your passions are and pursue them at all costs. What keeps someone interested in you is that you have your own shit going on. They found you interesting for a reason, don’t let that person become your reason and then you have nothing left of yourself

+ no one wants to be with someone that tells them they’re incomplete without em. Sure, we all did that in our first relationship(s). When you’re young you get so drunk in love which is such a beautiful thing that I hope never changes, but when you’re not emotionally mature enough or your partner is actually emotionally unavailable, that drunk in-love can turn into ‘too drunk’ toxicity. Instead, complete yourself, save yo self, and compliment your relationship with your own sparkle bc baby you’re sparkly af

+ sometimes things have to fall apart so that everything else can fall together. And we don’t have to know why, we just have to trust that there’s a reason, a season, or a lifetime. Aka wtf is the lesson? Sometimes my lesson was, “great job babe but your choice was legit poor, better luck next time, now let’s get our shit together c’mon girl”

+ breakups suck. Divorce sucks even worse. Walking through Sucksville sucks! But you’ve gotta put one foot in front of the other, walk (or sprint) through it, feel it, heal it, and learn from it. **this took me a long time aka EVERY time to learn this repetitive lesson*

If you’re going through Sucksville, let it suck. Here’s some lyrics from a song I love, “Don’t Give Up on Love” by Kygo and Sam Tinnesz for my younger self and for you if you need it. I got you:

When your heart just shatters, too many pieces to pick it up
You keep finding a way, just to live alone
Nothing to say, staring at your phone
And your life is going numb
Don’t give up on love when it doesn’t work out the first time
Close your eyes and trust that you gotta get low to get high
The world’s full of second chances, you gotta keep on dancing
Don’t give up on love <3

So what are some things you would tell your younger self? Tell me some things you’ve learned from your past relationships 😉

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Divorce sucks.

by with 16 Comments personal

I want out

I believe it takes a lot of courage to say to your partner that things aren’t working out in a marriage and that they’re actually irreconcilable. It takes a lot of courage and sometimes a lot of therapy to say, “I want out”, and to actually follow through with it. No one will ever know just how badly divorce sucks unless they’ve been through it themselves.

Everyone loses in a divorce scenario because life isn’t always like it is in the movies with its happily ever afters. In this scenario everyone gets hurt. It’s one of the hardest, most saddest, and scariest decisions to make. You lose your partner, you lose their family (holy shit this hurt big), you lose friends, you lose a home… everyone loses. So why choose divorce then? I choose happiness that’s why. So who’s to blame then? We both are. Oh how complicated it all is, I know. Does everyone agree and support this decision? No. Should we have stayed together and fought harder? No, but damn, we tried. People will say we didn’t try hard enough and those people weren’t in our marriage.

This is my second divorce and I said to someone, “I just can’t get love right”. I mean, are my expectations too high? Are they too low? How could two people love each other so much that they choose to get married and vow to be together forever, no matter what. And then those same two people allow so much space to build between them and those words- that there’s a permanent breakdown of their marriage. I don’t have the answer to that. Love feels easy but just like the interworking of any relationship, it’s not. The only way I can explain it is that just how we fell in love is just how we fell out of it. Slowly and then all at once.

“Love is verb”- have you heard this before? We hear people say they’ve found their ‘person’, the one. How do you know when you’ve found them? I think that when you’re 98 and you look over at the person you’ve spent an entire lifetime with and you still choose each other every day, well you’ve found your person. Until then, it’s a daily decision you must make to fight to keep what you have. We can’t get stuck, we can’t get too comfortable, and routine is the enemy. Love takes work, that’s the verb part, it’s the doing. 

If you don’t like them than how can you love them?

Look, I don’t know a lot of things but what I’ve learned is that love requires communication and compromise. It’s being selfless and asking questions, it’s not taking the other for granted. It’s not letting hurt or resentment build up by speaking out before shit goes sideways. Love is so many things and I do believe there is a difference between loving someone and being in-love with them. If you don’t like them than how can you love them? Love is a constant and forever kind of thing, as in I will forever love all of my exes. There will be a tender spot that I will always hold for each of them. I think it’s the being in-love bit that we run the risk of falling in and out of. It’s the part that keeps us on our toes, it’s the big work part, it’s the doing. 

Integrity is everything and there’s nothing integral about lying to someone for the sake of keeping a promise.

It’s our responsibility to ourselves and to our partners to be honest about how we feel and where we are. So many questions run through your mind when you’re packing your things into boxes. Where did the love go and why can’t we get it back? Did we do everything possible to save what we had and will we have regrets? Integrity is everything and there’s nothing integral about lying to someone for the sake of keeping a promise. The truth is always better than a lie and should never be compromised because of fear. I will never stay in a relationship with someone out of convenience or comfort. I will never lie to someone I love and tell them I’m in love with them when I’m not, or that we’re only bent when we’re actually broken. Too often we’re so afraid of being uncomfortable that we stay in relationships and situations out of convenience. Too often we hurt the person we’re with because we’re too afraid to share with them our truths, so then we become a lie. Where’s the integrity in that?

Psst.. you… I really want to say this to you… if you’re questioning your relationship or if my story landed on you in such a way, if you’re hurting, or if you feel alone or lost or confused: Only YOU know your marriage. Only you know what happens when we close the doors and don’t allow the rest of the world in. You have all the answers you’re looking for and you don’t need me or anyone else to tell you how to feel or what to do. But if I may, I’ll say this- if there’s a fighting chance, take it. If you can save what you have or fall back in love, take it. If there is any hope left at all, if there is any fight left in either one of you… take it. There’s courage in that too. Go for it no matter what. Whatever your decision is, to walk away or to step it up, go for it.

I’m sharing this with you because no one gets to tell our story but us. I hope you hear me and I hope maybe some of it helps you. It’s actually no one’s business what happens in your life and we worry too much about what people think. Who gets to live your life but you? I know I’ve asked you a lot of questions in this post but it’s because they’re things we have to ask ourselves and sometimes they’re conversations we aren’t having.

I chose to finally talk about it because happiness and love… both of which everyone wants and we all deserve. Love is so many things. I refuse to believe that our marriage was a failure. We really went for it. Joe and I will forever have love and respect for one another and we continue to be kind to each other. That to me is a success.