This article is brilliant.
http://www.elephantjournal.com/2016/10/the-2-most-common-reasons-why-people-get-divorced/
The essence of it is that most relationships end:
Because one person gets empowered and outgrows their often stuck partner.
or
Because one person was unable or unwilling to work through the baggage that their partner is triggering in them.
I’ve experienced both of these. How about you?
When I was dating the woman who would become my first wife. Initially, I wanted to spend every moment with her that was possible. However, early on (like the first week of us dating) she established Friday nights as the night we would spend with friends. That was a big deal because at the time it established one of the three nights we had available to us for her own interests. After spending the first few nights at home alone hoping she would somehow change her mind, I got my ass out of the house and started making plans with my friends. I realized that Friday night was for my interests as well. That independence was one of the best gifts she could have given me. It allowed me to avoid being one of those people who shed all of their friends as soon as they had a significant other and it caused me to define myself outside of another person.
This led me to develop cycling as a hobby. I established new friends statewide, started racing with some success, co-founded and ran my own race team and helped build and maintain the first mountain bike trail system in a neighboring county. I was one of the people who actually contributed to the growth of the sport. These were good times.
Flash forward a bit (18 years) and I was going through a divorce from my first wife and had started dating my second wife. I was in the best shape of my life and had just completed my first race of the year. It was my best finish ever which was an excellent way to start the year. It was also my last race for almost three years which not coincidentally was nearly the length of my second relationship.
You see my new love expected more of my time than I was used to. While I didn’t mind the idea of spending more time with her I didn’t like that it had to be at the expense of my other interests and even who I was. She leveraged her idea by saying, “This is what couples do. You didn’t spend time together in your last relationship because you two had problems.”
It sounded legit and as it pertains to the tail end of my first marriage it was correct. However, for the first 13 years or so having our own time and space worked remarkably well. Time apart wasn’t what ended my first marriage, but I didn’t really connect those dots at the time. I desperately wanted to please this new person. There was also a practical aspect to the situation. I was using every dime to pay off my debts from my first marriage and racing is an expensive proposition. The money I saved could be put to good use paying bills.
So, I stopped racing, only did trail building a couple of times, gave the remaining interest in my race team to my friends and pretty much just checked out. By this time I was living in a new city which further isolated me from my main source of pleasure and friendship.
Then I moved again, this time 1000 miles away. I played hermit my first year and didn’t make a single friend. When I tried to carve out time for cycling or photography I was made to feel guilty about using some of my time off to do this if she also had the day free. I became completely beholden to her schedule and could only feel good about going out if she was also out. I don’t think either of us were really conscious of this dynamic as it was occurring. She was just speaking to her needs and I was trying to meet those. In reality, I’m sure both of us were acting on our insecurities.
However, I eventually realized that this wasn’t working for me. I started to change the dynamic by saying I wanted more personal time to explore my interests. It took a number of conversations, but eventually we agreed and I did go out. I started working on my photography and throwing a leg over the top tube of my bike again and it was wonderful. It was just like old times and I was having a blast. I felt like I had a small part of the real me back again.
About six months later my second marriage was over. I don’t really think that my newly established independence was the cause of it. If anything, my willingness to give up my time and her desire to garner the majority of my attention was likely the symptom of a deeper flaw. We were just trying to bandage it with being together, both being afraid of what would happen when we weren’t.
Now that I have some distance from that scenario though I can see the mistakes I made. I used to be self-made and independent. I was ashamed of that needy insecure person I was at 17. All it took to reverse my fortune was a new relationship. It renewed my insecurities about a partner’s fidelity which most likely hinges on my perception of self-worth. Even though I didn’t want to relinquish my personal space I let my fears dictate my actions. I gave up the balance that made me who I was. The conversation, and subsequent compromise, should have happened much earlier in the relationship. Maybe I couldn’t afford to race, but just going out to ride or do trail work takes little money.
There’s a practical aspect to this as well. When you give the itinerary of your life over to another person and that relationship ends then you are essentially left with nothing; a place where your life should have been, but isn’t. You are more than just your partner and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s wonderfully healthy.
I read stories about parents who balance work and home life so that they can each go out and go for a run, bike ride or to hang with their friends and I appreciate that. It’s something I need to learn more about and definitely something I have trouble with in a new relationship. When everything is fresh in a relationship and comfort and trust have yet to be established my insecurities can kick in when I’m apart from someone. It’s one of my weaknesses to overcome.
I know that I’m happier with time set aside for myself. I just need to make myself strike that balance until I’m finally comfortable with it. That’s going to take time and tackling a few of my demons (again). To that end, someone bring me a tall glass of beer and a cute priest.
Since I dissed on Grindr yesterday I’ll leave you with a helpful article to navigate it safely should you decide to stay with the app.
I find it’s actually really easy to weed out the robots on here. Some clues are the height listed as the article mentions, an amazingly chiseled photo of some dude, poor English, or the fact that the conversation immediately jumps from hello to sharing pictures.
Always make your first question something that another person (or robot) can’t answer with yes, or cool, or just hanging out. So if they say “what’s up?” Reply with “Well, I just finished listening to my favorite band. What type of music do you listen to?” When the reply is “Good, I’ve just been working out and I’m horny” then you know you’re talking to a computer program or a total fucking moron. Either way you can ghost them and move on.
When I was dating I had this problem with most guys which is that they pretty much treated me as a holder for my cock or a resting place for theirs. I didn’t take kindly to this ever. Just because they would have sex with anything that moves doesn’t mean I would. “Yes, I know we’re both on Grindr but that’s not the bar you need to clear in order to meet me in person schmuck.” So when I got tired of ignoring mouth breathers I would occasionally engage them like this. I wish I had kept more of these.
Notice the over 6 hour silence between his question of “What’s your dick like” and his pondering my lack of reply. Duh! (nobody says duh anymore, it’s kind of a shame)
I actually met this guy a couple of months later because I didn’t realize it was him. He was just as big a knob as his message makes him seem.
Deleting Grindr from my phone was one of the most liberating feelings. If you’re tired of the crap I highly recommend it.
I love this and her entire article –
“…suggesting that, for men, any sexual overture is welcome. I asked how he’d feel if a fellow weighing three-forty cornered him somewhere isolated and manhandled him. Suddenly this struck him as way more sinister.”
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-crotchgrabber/amp
It’s been awhile since I’ve posted one of these State of the Relationship articles. This is mainly because things have been going good for me as of late and sometimes it’s harder to know what to write in exceptional times as opposed to those of turmoil.
For the last six months I’ve been dating one person and I’ve learned so much from the experience. I’d like to talk about a few of those things here because I think that people don’t do this enough and it may be as helpful to you as it was me.
1. Push Your Boundaries
It helps to keep an open mind when you are dating or in any relationship. If I had stuck to my old habits and deal breakers I would have never met the person I am with now and trust me when I say that I would be poorer for it.
Obviously, there are boundaries you don’t want to cross. Dating someone with a recent history (or maybe any history, though I think people can change – see note 3) of perpetrating abuse on another is one that immediately comes to mind. I’m not asking you to step over that boundary. That’s a healthy one to have.
Take a look though at which of your deal breakers and boundaries are built upon biases and assumptions. Challenge them head on. I went against what I thought was my better judgement at the time to date the person I’m with now. I’m so glad I did because not only did I stumble (I can be inept despite my best efforts) my way into a relationship with an amazing person, but in exploring her personality traits that I thought were deal breakers I discovered that things weren’t at all what I had imagined them to be. Learning about my partner helped me understand her better. It helped me discover things about myself even and created some wonderful bonding moments for us. I don’t think these things could have happened had we not both pushed our boundaries and taken the time to understand one another.
2. Being Open Doesn’t Mean Being Completely Open
So I’m pretty much an open book. I have no real secrets and in a normal day to day conversation (I’m not sure I really have these, I tend to gravitate to deeper topics) I might tell someone any number of things about me that some people are guarded about. I’ll talk about my sexual proclivities, the fact that I cross dress and how it makes me feel and pretty much anything and everything else.
This helps people see who I am and it generally allows them to feel as if they can open up to me. Most eventually do and I love sharing that experience with them.
However, I’ve learned that there is a limit to this. I’ve always said that being open and honest is not an excuse to be cruel. Now I have another caveat to add to this, which is that it also doesn’t mean that I can share the details of other people’s lives without consideration. I thought that being open and true to myself meant that I had to be completely open about everything. I’ve since realized, with some help, that this should only extend to myself.
At first, this felt like a betrayal of everything that it meant to be me. How could I be open if I had to keep some things in reserve? Then I came to realize that having people open up to me was a measure of trust and that with this came responsibility. Now I realize the importance of privacy and to be truthful, I like the balance so much more. Some people need greater levels of privacy than others and navigating the differences in respect to the needs of my friends seems much more responsible
3. People Can Really Change
We’ve all heard the mantras about how humans don’t change who they are. Whether it’s “once a cheater always a cheater” or whatever other label you want to put in that cliche. The truth is though, some people change certain behaviors and some don’t. There is no rule that spans across humanity in general. The key is finding those people who want to change while trusting and helping them to do so.
Reading through the second item on this list should have been a really good example of how someone can change. Being open is a defining characteristic of who I am and changing that in any way was painful to me. However, through some talk with others and introspection I came to see that there was a better way of doing things and that it didn’t mitigate my need for openness or change who I was in any negative way.
The human experience deals us a mixed bag. Most of us have those personality traits that we can recognize as beneficial and valued by others. All of us have insecurities (or anxiety, ADHD, depression, etc.) and sometimes those insecurities or states of being lead to behavior that isn’t generally approved of by others. Knowing this about yourself is a good thing because the extension of this is that it is also happening to everyone else around you.
If someone is trying to tackle their obstacles head on then that’s pretty fucking huge. Give them some slack. Better yet, talk with them if possible to understand their situation and see if there’s any way you can help. Don’t expect to be their savior, you can’t be, just be there for them and do your damndest to understand what it is they’re telling you. These are the people that are capable of change and they deserve a chance to show you how awesome they really are.
4. Understand Before You are Understood
I had forgotten this little gem of wisdom, passed down to me by my grandmother, but her words came back with importance as of late and I’m glad they did.
So often I’m so concerned with making sure that someone knows where I’m coming from that I forget to really listen to what they are saying. I just want to make sure they aren’t hurt by something I said, but my inattentiveness can hurt even more. However, when I calm my mind and listen to their feelings I get a better understanding of them. That’s pretty valuable for obvious reasons. I really do care about them and taking the time to listen and understand them first is a way to demonstrate that. When I do this, the usual outcome is that I end up addressing some need that I hadn’t thought about before. This is an emotion that would have gone completely unattended had I not taken the time to understand my partner. I also learn how to better express my feelings to ensure that we are both talking about the same thing. This is relationship gold folks and you have my grandmother to thank.
The End: Be Prepared to Stop
So there you have it. Some things I learned about myself that I hope you can apply to your life. What are some positive things you have learned in your relationships to others? Please share those or your thoughts about this article in the comments section below. I would love to hear from you either way.
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