Its Life Is A Priority

Love is a living thing.

Trust is too.

But I have had trust and love issues.

I used to think it made me a bad person; to not trust people who gave me no reason to not trust them. I accepted it and owned it with shame. I even went through periods of being in denial about it. It became really noticeable and hard to navigate in my romantic relationships. I hated to think that I was so untrusting. But there it was. The feeling was there. And it always came up in times of conflict. My last two relationships were especially tricky this way. One of them lasted 8 years. The other one lasted 3 years. But in both of them I felt untrusting of my partners. And I didn’t understand why. They felt that I had a hard time trusting them. And they would call me out for it. And I would deny it, because I couldn’t understand it.

They would argue that they gave me no reason to not trust them.

They didn’t cheat on me. They didn’t lie to me. They were trustworthy partners.

But if we are being truthful, they did lie to me. But they usually came clean about the lies. They showed guilt and remorse for having lied to me. So this should have restored and built up trust. And in some ways, it did. But it also made me wonder sometimes if I was hearing the truth, or not. Because I had also come to learn about why they had lied to me. And it was always for the same reason. Every time. With both of them.

It was to avoid conflict and confrontation.

Being honest takes courage. It takes a willingness to be vulnerable. And being vulnerable with your partner takes trust. You must trust that your partner will not get upset with you. That they will receive you with compassion and care. That you will not be attacked for being honest about something potentially controversial or even hurtful. You must feel safe with your partner.

And this is where trust starts to work both ways.

For what I have learned is that my trust issues stemmed from feeling unsafe. I recently came across a video from a guy who talks about relationship issues and solutions. In it he says:

“Trust is so much more than confidence that your partner isn’t going to cheat on you. Trust is confidence that your partner is there for you when you need them; that they care about you. They care about what you need to feel safe, loved, appreciated and desired. That they think you’re important enough to respond to with kindness and compassion. Trust is faith that when I need them, if I reach for them during a vulnerable moment, that they will be there for me. I can count on them. They are my person. Trust doesn’t require perfection, just consistency. If we truly want to say that we love someone, we should want them to feel like they can trust our words and actions, right? They have confidence in as a partner that we will move in the direction when they are hurt or in pain. Especially if we unintentionally caused it. The way this shows up so often is in our conflicts.”

I realized that what I was feeling in both of those relationships was that I was not ‘safe, loved, appreciated and desired’. I mean yes, at times I did… but not consistently. And this is FUNDAMENTAL to a healthy foundation of trust in a relationship. My partners would on occasion receive me with hostility when I approached them with vulnerability. They would be inconsistent with warmth, desire, loving care for my feelings, and they would both make me feel like I was not a priority. Or feel like my feelings were not a priority. And it was because of this, that I felt untrusting.

I simply did not feel safe.

I wish I knew then what I know now about this. If I had, I could have advocated for my needs better. I also could have given voice and reason to what I felt, in understanding it better. And that would have empowered me to make healthier choices for myself. But as it was, I was unable to do these things. And so I went through the painful moments and motions of self-defeating behaviours and situations, trying to pour faith into places where I felt unsettled. And it came at great personal cost.

It cost me a lot of calm… and sleep.

And when I tried to ask them about what I was feeling, or why, I was met with defensive anger, hostility and accusations that I was attacking their character. And this in turn worsened my state of trust. It made me feel very unloved and unwanted and like I was such a bad person for these things that I was feeling. And all I wanted really, was to understand and to feel better about the things I didn’t understand.

We must all learn to know and understand things about ourselves better. And in that pursuit, we must learn to trust ourselves. If something doesn’t feel right, we must believe that there is a reason for it. And that reason may not be because there is something wrong with us. It could just be that there is something wrong with a situation.

And if there is going to be trust between two people, they must trust that each can be vulnerable and open with one another; that the other will not reject or abuse them for their feelings. For their love is like a plant. And as a living growing thing, it needs to trust it will be cared for. It will receive warmth, water, light, love and nourishment.

It will not be left alone, to whither and die. But rather, it will know that it is safe and cared for and its life is a priority.

To Go Through All That

There are things that are good for us, and there are things that aren’t good for us.

Part of self-care, is knowing the difference, and being able to give yourself more of the former, than the latter. Sometimes though this means not just seeking out what is good for you, but not letting yourself indulge the things that are bad for you. It is denying yourself that which you know will do you harm. This in itself is a valuable skill to have.

It is setting boundaries.

Sometimes something will seem to be good for you. It might taste good, or feel good, or even just smell good. Sometimes it is a substance, or a food, or a beverage. Sometimes it is even a person. You may get drawn into whatever it is. It might become a habit that keeps a part of you enticed and engaged. It might even become an addiction. You might have a hard time realizing that it is not good for you.

You might not want to let it go.

Even though it does you harm. Even though it makes you feel sick sometimes. There is a lot to be said for when something makes us sick. Or anxious. Maybe our intuition about something or someone is trying to warn us away from letting that or them into our lives. But we may not listen to those warnings. We might want the good tastes and smells and feels that are also part of what is being offered. We might get confused as to why those things could be bad for us, when everything else seems to say that they are good.

Well I am here to tell you that you should listen to those voices.

Just don’t go telling people that you’re listening to the voices. Or they might just call the police. And whatever you do, don’t go climbing any bell towers either. Especially if you’re carrying a duffel bag. Because sometimes people get the wrong idea. They don’t always understand. And understanding people and things can be tricky. So this is why we have intuition. It is like a compass to guide us through the confusing darkness of life. When things are unclear or uncertain and we find ourselves heading down a path blindly, our intuition can tell us when something doesn’t feel right... or healthy or good, for us.

I have ignored those voices in the past and I have gone down some paths I wish I could have avoided. I didn’t trust what my gut was telling me. I had met someone who felt and smelled and tasted good to me. But she wasn’t good for me. She made me sick. And early on shortly after meeting her, my gut responded with a lot of anxiety and warning. But my logical voice in my brain argued that I should persevere. And so I did and that decision took me down a road of much struggle and pain for quite some time.

My heart knew it wasn’t good for me. But it couldn’t stop loving the parts that were good. Because the parts that were good, we SO VERY GOOD. It was confusing.

And I think this example can also be true of other examples too.

Food, or beverage, or substances, or addictive habits can become just as confusing in their enticement and engagement, and still be not good for us. We can keep trying to entertain and sustain them, but they will in the end be a pain. Insane. So much of ourselves gets lost in them. And all because we lose ourselves in not listening to our voices. It’s like we detach from our core, and follow something that leads us away from who we are and what is healthy for us. We sacrifice those things for the sake of something that offers so much promise, but doesn’t really deliver. It doesn’t give us anything or give anything back to us.

It only takes.

And it takes a lot of suffering before we realize how far we have wandered from where our lives felt more fulfilled. It is what happens when we chase emptiness. We keep trying to squeeze something from nothing. And it is that nothingness that triggers the emotional response in our intuition. It is what our intuitions picks up on when it senses there is nothing good for us in something or someone. Its senses are not swayed by good smells, tastes or feels. It is instead tuned into the energy of something.

And energy doesn’t lie.

Rather, the emptiness does. It lies and keeps lying to keep us following. And in following the lie, we lie to ourselves. We tell ourselves that it must be good because it has all those good parts to it. But the more we try to love it and to live with it lying to us, the more we are loving the lie. And loving a lie will only hurt us in the end. And it will end. Because no lie can last. A lie will eventually die when the truth of what is happening or what we are doing comes out. And truth has a way of doing that. It has a life force full of promise that actually does deliver. It is powerful and it creates more than it destroys. It lives in each of us, whether we choose to see it or to follow it (or believe it) or not. It exists in all things. And it always prevails.

The truth is out there.

And we know it when we feel it. It tells us if something is good for us or not. We only have to listen to it. And trust it. Because if we don’t, then we will to endure a difficult time for a period of time, that will eventually take us back to where we had wished we listened in the first place. 

But maybe there’s times we need to go through all that.

Your Needs Being Met

Money money money! Show me the money.

We all need it. We all want it. We all live our lives by the come and go of it. And it does… come and go. It comes to us when we work for it, or when we steal for it, or when we unexpectedly do nothing for it. Maybe it’s a cheque from the government. Or from a family member. Maybe we sold something. Whatever the source and reason, money comes into our lives, homes, pockets and into our bank accounts.

It also goes away. It leaves. We send it away. We spend it, or we lose it, or we gamble it. Whatever happens, it never stays around for long. Maybe we invest it. And we end up with a little more. Or we invest it and we end up with a little less. Money is fluid. It can dry up. It can flow freely. We never know for sure if it’s going to come or go. And it’s always risky when it comes to knowing what we should do with our money.

So just the other night I was out getting gas. My car was outside getting filled and I was standing inside the gas station store waiting to pay. There was one other customer before me. She paid and she left. A minute later, a younger couple came in and the woman handed the gas store guy a slip of paper and asked if he could check her lottery ticket. He took it from her, scanned it in the lottery machine and the digital display suddenly lit up with bells and whistles and woohoo sounds.

The screen then flashed “WINNER: $50,000!”

You should have seen her face. You should have heard her scream! She jumped up and down and clawed at her face and clapped her hands. Great BIG squeals of joy! She kept exclaiming that she couldn’t believe it. And her boyfriend just stood there and smiled. He took it all in stride. I gave them both a high-five. I was SO HAPPY for her! What a moment to witness. I wondered what she would do next. And then she wondered what she would spend it all on. This spoke to me. It made me speak up and suggest that she not think like that; that it would all be gone before she knew it.

I said it had happened to me.

Twice in my life I have come into large sums of money. And both times I fell into a pattern of thinking obsessively about how I could spend it. I would wake up each day and think about what else I could buy to make my life ‘better’. And after indulging these impulses, I eventually learned two things. First, that I didn’t really ‘need’ those things… and secondly, that the money goes fast and that I wished I had saved the money for my real needs.

There is a difference between needs and wants.

We can reduce our wants to better know our needs. We can do this by denying ourselves those impulse buys. We need to recognize the pattern of thinking that leads us to them. I think it comes in thoughts of “Hey, I could sure use that!” Or maybe it’s “Wouldn’t that be nice to have for something? I could do something with that that I have never done before”. So what happens here is that we create a need in our minds that meets the thing we think we should buy. An example would be how I thought I would like to have a bike rack for the back of my car. It cost $200. I told myself I could take my bike and my kid’s bikes to different places to go bike riding.

But, this wasn’t something we really needed to do. My kids were perfectly happy to ride their bikes from home as we have always done. But we tried. And it wasn’t a big success. So the bike rack got used only once. And eventually I sold it for half of what I paid for it. We didn’t really need the bike rack. I only wanted it… because I talked myself into why I should have it. But if one of our bikes got broken or stolen, then we would have needed another bike. That would have been something that I could have better spent that money on, if I had saved it for that.

It’s hard sometimes to know what our needs are and what our wants are. We live in a world where our thinking is heavily influenced every day by ideas of what we should be buying to make our lives better. Advertising is everywhere. We are connected and dependent on all sorts of media, whether it be social or entertainment, and advertising dominates our experiences there.

And I feel like this has gotten out of hand.

Years ago I unsubscribed from cable tv service. I didn’t see why I should be paying to watch advertising. Online streaming services were relatively new then, and they were advertising-free. That however has begun to change now. More and more streaming services are including advertising and asking that you pay more to not have it. This to me is greedy and insane. It perpetuates a world where we become mindless consumers who lose any value of quality of life and living and any appreciation for what the world has to offer.

I do not think that we need money to enjoy life. We need money to sustain life. We need food and shelter. We need resources and services that support our health and well-being. Everything else is a distraction from our needs. Not to say that we can’t get some enjoyment from those distractions, but in the end it’s only stuff. And you can’t take it with you when you die. And having more stuff, doesn’t mean having more life.

It only means living less by your needs being met.

The Right Person Yet

Loneliness.

Not to be confused with aloneness.

One can be alone but not feel lonely. Just as one can not be alone, and feel lonely. Loneliness comes from feeling disconnected, and as a result - longing for connection. Feeling disconnected can also be a good thing. Sometimes we need to remove ourselves from our connections in order to regroup or recharge.

But loneliness comes when we are ready for connection, and none can be found.

For we all need connection. It is part of being human. We have well developed emotional states that require a nurturing reminder that we are not facing life all on our own. How much connection each person requires will vary. Some of us need more of an intimate and ongoing connection. And some of us will require only a basic and infrequent connection. Whatever kind you require, we all require some sort of connection.

And when we don’t get it, we feel lonely.

It is okay to feel lonely. It is a natural state. It is not an easy state. But it is there for a reason. The feeling of loneliness comes from our set of basic survival instincts. These are built-in systems of reminders for us to pursue the things we need in order to survive. When we need water, we get thirsty. When we need food, we get hungry. And when we need connection, we get lonely. But in terms of survival, why do we need connection?

It stems from us standing a better chance of surviving if we are gathered in groups.

A group can defend itself against a threat better. There is safety in numbers. A group can find and create the resources required for survival better. A group can bring enjoyment and engagement to those within it. For if we are alone all the time, we tend to withdraw into ourselves. We can get lost inside our thoughts and feelings. And this can make us feel apathetic. Disconnected. Out of touch with our strengths and potential. While being in a group can help us feel more purpose. More reward for our efforts, if our efforts are serving the greater good of the group.

We can share stories. Humour. Affection and warmth. Gestures of kindness. Giving. We can practice and develop skills that enlighten and inspire us. Our thinking and perspective can widen and grow. We can learn empathy for others. We can learn deeper truths about ourselves, when we see and hear how we appear to and affect others. We can learn how to overcome conflicts so that we can become more functional within the group.

We can learn how to love, which is always our greatest strength.

I have always believed in the power of love. Love has always been my purpose. In my heart, I feel much love and affection, for most people, places and things in my life. And in my life, I have learned how to love my life and all that is a part of it, better. I have been hurt. And like everyone else, each time I get hurt, I learn a little more about myself and the world in which I live.

I learn what to do, and what not to do, and why.

Sometimes it takes repeating these lessons before they sink in. But life is like that. It prepares you for the next level of life and will make you repeat the lessons you need for it, before taking you there. Now if only our public education system was like that! It used to be. But maybe that’s a topic for another entry at a later time.

I believe that life loves us. It gives to us and we take from it. But it doesn’t owe us anything. Rather, we must give it our trust and energy, in order to get anything back from it. It is a relationship. And like any relationship, it requires tending to each and every day. It needs light and warmth. It needs love. Affection. It needs to be appreciated and felt grateful for.

It needs to be held close to our hearts.

This is the kind of love that I feel will prevail and persevere in life. It is the kind of love I have always wanted to find in my own life. And while I have succeeded in loving my life in these ways, I have always felt unable to find that kind of love in another person where I could share this kind of life with.

And this inability has left me feeling lonely.

It has left me longing for a partnership where my person and I stand side by side, in love and in life, against all of life’s challenges. Just the two of us, spending our lives supporting each other’s own life and pursuits and growth, in honest friendship and deeply intimate relationship, with passion and compassion for one another. To have someone to come home to. To find comfort and understanding in each other. To share the bills, the meals, the chores and responsibilities. To make the load lighter, and to make a happy healthy life together. 

I am not sure if I am alone in this, or just lonely in this. For in my heart I believe in love and honesty and sharing and unity between two people. It is what I bring to the table. We all have things to offer. And while I truly love myself and my life, I find myself lacking someone to share my bounty with. At least, someone who is able and willing to share a similar bounty with me. It could be that what I want and need is not out there.

It has been a lifetime of trying; to know myself, my needs and my wants, and of trying to meet someone somewhere who will meet me where we share most (if not all) of these things.

And all I’ve learned for sure is that I haven’t met the right person yet.