br: Throw the bum out, and his kids
Nikki tells her story on Baggage Reclaim.
Yesterday, I told my . . . boyfriend to leave. It felt so dam good and honestly I think I should have done it a long time ago. . . . I have three kids of my own and I even took care of his two kids … He’s all over me one day and the next day he isn’t. . .
Splitting the kids up makes this an even tougher situation – changes, even if the kids aren’t getting along, are tough on kids.
We tell kids that they can’t hate their brother or sister, that they have to love them because they are family. Then they wonder why their parents split when they don’t get along – it is a double standard. We tell the kids that love never ends, then split with the one we took to our bedroom all night.
We cannot tell our kids that we raised them with character, to respect themselves and other, to know honor and be honest. But we didn’t check that our mate-prospect and potential co-parent had any character, honor, honesty, good emotional bonds, etc. We looked for what Diane Ford called “lust in the loins.”
The fact is that love does die – we have the ability to kill anyone’s love for us, to taint their feelings for us with disrespect if we are not respectful, to receive dishonor when we act without honor, to earn a distrustful regard when we abuse someone’s trust. Break too many of the parts of love, and the rest wither away.
So, tell me again. How is it that we don’t begin our lives, looking for people of character, honor, honesty, good emotional bonds, discipline, and look among those good people for someone that we are drawn to?
Hmmmm…
“How is it that we don’t begin our lives, looking for people of character, honor, honesty, good emotional bonds, discipline, and look among those good people for someone that we are drawn to?”
What if you did? What if, as you wrote in this same post, love dies?
Does that make the person or you someone with any less of those qualities? Relationships of a long term (in my case, over 30) may just die, for many reasons.
I mean, little things, little slights, most likely not intended might add up. Sometimes the right thing for him is not the right thing for you, and you find yourselves disagreeing. Should the little things matter? No. Be big and move on.
I’m kind of rambling, but even stand-up people fall out of love. I know this. I see this all of the time. But yet, because of some sense of honor and duty, many stay together.
What do you think?
I think that honor, self respect, and love, and discipline, not to mention self interest, demand that we address any unhappiness our partner experiences as our own. That, like housecleaning, disaster, calls for help, and community needs, we need to address problems when we encounter them.
Love cannot die without loss of respect, loss of trust, and/or failures of character.
What I see a lot of, is people marrying a “type” – and being disillusioned at the person that breathes and grows underneath the makeup and dating wardrobe and top shelf perfume. Women that use long hair, back in the old days, to catch a guy’s eye with thoughts of romantic tanglings, and then get the hair cut after the wedding, without even mentioning the change to their new husband, are/were often surprised. Surprised because the change that to them was solely their own rather modest and ordinary kind of choice – disturbed his definition of who he married. Lack of communication that to her was due to the choice being hers, was to him a lack of respect.
Yes, love can die, through inattention, through mistakes and ill-considered liberties with character, honor, and respect. But it hopefully takes a sustained animosity to prevent repairing the damage.
This post was based on a Baggage Reclaim article. The presumption is similar to that at Baggage Reclaim – that people ill-prepared for a healthy relationship get embroiled in unhealthy relationships, repeatedly, until one decides to break out of the cycle. The first step is achieving a healthy character and self esteem, the next is selecting a healthy partner-prospect. And that is why the article doesn’t deal with how and why a relationship falls apart when it starts well. That wasn’t in the topic for this day.
Did you know that Oklahoma has a system of Forever For Real workshops, for married-to-be couples? Completing the workshop earns a discount on the marriage license. Dealing with topics on how to keep a couple together is, even more that sex education, something that healthy people should be learning at home, from living with and watching Mom and Dad and the grandparents. Yet statistics show that many don’t have the needed skills, or even an understanding of what to do when you or your partner feel unhappy.
Those with strong devotion to their faith, if shared (one aspect of a couple interacting with their community as a unit), have strongly stated expectations about how they are responsible to each other.
Others that chose a partner because of their appearance, their social standing, their wealth or a cloud of lust, have little to guide them – certainly not a trust and belief in their partner’s character and basic worth as a partner and individual. I find that immensely sad.
So I recommend finding stable, dependable people of character to associate with, and to avoid the high-risk perpetual daters. Then if someone catches your eye, you have but to reaffirm the character, lack of red flags, and your own interest in his happiness – and you have a solid basis to build a relationship. Those that look instead for the sex adventures often end up with little else.