Doing the Work

They say part of being in a relationship is “doing the work.” Doing the work isn’t about fixing the other person.  It’s about doing what it takes on your end to make the relationship better.  Your part is digging through your closet of skeletons and emotional baggage and getting rid of it to make room for this relationship and this person.  Part of my journey in dating has been to do just that.

I’ve been told by a few that I’m turning into a man eater. I asked my sissy about that and in all of her wisdom she stated that I am just using my professional and romantic experiences to invest my time more carefully.  Sissy also mentioned that maybe I was holding some baggage from my last dating relationship.  I didn’t realize until she said it but she was probably right.  In my last relationship, that young man and I didn’t make it to the title stage but we were pretty heavily in the observation period which lasted over 6 months. The relationship ended very abruptly with him sending me a massive bouquet of all of my favorite flowers in my favorite color only for me to never hear from him again.  He didn’t even answer the phone to let me say thank you.  Nothing. It took one of my bests to say “Bih those were break up flowers!!!!  He just dumped yo ass girl” before I accepted it.

Anyway after this conversation with sissy, I decided to wear my therapist hat for myself.  I wrote raw uncut letters to my exes.  (Well, all but one.)  While doing this exercise I said some really nasty things (I said 1 or 2 loving things too) but I got to be honest with myself about my feelings for them and about me.  I uncovered a few things. First, I uncovered my dating life had been driven by 3 primary emotions, shame, guilt, and fear.  I also uncovered that I have terrible self-talk about my love life and that all of this is interconnected.

I’ve gone from this wide-eyed hopeless romantic to somewhat hopeless.  I’ve had some terrible love affairs with some bonafide jerks.  Because of that, I’ve grown embarrassed and ashamed for loving so freely.  I felt foolish and less than. So much so, that one of them, I won’t EVER mention his name .  When I see his pictures on my Facebook or old statuses about him I delete them.  I can’t stand to be around his friends because I can’t stand the way they look at me.  That says to me, the pain runs deep and even though I thought I was over it, I had not  done the work for real.  That relationship was the lowest of the lowest moments of my life!!!  I still have a few secrets buried within about the things that happened that I am too ashamed to share with my best of bests.  Not because I feel they would judge me but because I can’t look at myself without JUDGING ME!!!  So what am I telling myself about this relationship?

In writing the letter to this particular guy,I assumed all of the responsibility.  I pretend to view myself as a realist and a champion of personal accountability.  I believe you teach people how to treat you and they can only do to you what you allow.  I found myself writing “It’s not your fault…I allowed you to…You didn’t know any better…” and then I read it back and said, “wait a minute…” I allowed things based on what I knew.  But there were many times I was intentionally deceived and that’s his portion.  There were times I loved him anyway (my portion) and there were times he exploited that to his benefit (his portion).  He has a long line of women he’s hurt and I excused his recklessness as him not being ability to help himself.  EFF THAT!!!! If he had sense enough to hide it, lie about it, deny it, and apologize for it, he knew what he was doing and he could have stopped himself.  So then I’m like “What made me put up with this shiznyee? How did I continue with the habits for a piss poor love life? All roads point to my favorite ex (the one to whom I did not write a letter).

The straight no chaser is, I had low self-esteem and no standards.  I was rebounding from the greatest disappointment of my love life.  I was trying to replace the man I thought I would marry with someone convenient.  I was smothered in hurt and loneliness.  I didn’t want a committed relationship because I was fearful of falling in love again only to have the rug snatched from under me.  So I substituted with f***ery and fell in love with it AND STILL ENDED UP HURT.  Go figure!!!  Again, the narrative about this favorite relationship was distorted.  I thought it was something I had done to deserve the bad split. I wasn’t stable enough. I wasn’t pretty or thin enough.  I was too independent.  I just wasn’t enough. None of which was the case but at the time he wasn’t mature enough to give me proper closure or a proper exit interview.  So I coped the best way I knew how: Erase… Replace… Embrace… a new face… Hello?!? (Faith Evans voice) #EpicFail

Here I was walking around priding myself on not having baggage and I had baggage so big I couldn’t see the bags behind it.  I brought trash with me everywhere I went and wondered why each relationship stunk.  Even my attempts to try again were wrong.  Instead of working on having healthy relationships, I was too busy trying to do the opposite of what I’d done before that ultimately resulted in heartache.  That’s what we do.  We tend to avoid the things that hurt us and say we’ve learned from it but really we just try not to encounter anything like it again.   We get caught up in soldiering through and getting over it that we forget to take time to grieve and really examine that thang and ourselves.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t give Jesus his due propers in this process.  Thank God for God!!! Thankful for his redemption and restoration of identity; for his love, grace, and mercy.  Like seriously, having a knowledge of God’s word and a relationship with Jesus grounds me in knowing that even my flaming hot Cheetos messes are usable and are not failures.  All of my mistakes, poor judgments, bad choices in men, missteps, all of the things people might say about me, all of the ugly lies I tell myself, Jesus says NO WAY!!! I don’t define you that way.  I didn’t make you that way and this ain’t the end of your story. It’s just a chapter in your book, keep turning the pages (or as the old folks would say keep living) you’ll get there and it gets better.  “For I know the plans that I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” (Jeremiah 29:11) That’s a breath of fresh air and a glass of cool water.  That gives me strength to endure not just in love but life overall.  I’m really grateful for that promise.

Ya know, as a professional, I teach healthy relationships (really well) and I study relationships.  I have cognitive understanding of the concept of healthy romantic relationships but I had not done MY OWN WORK.  I’ve being trying to move forward into new situations and applying all of this expensive knowledge but I wasn’t facing my own demons.  I’ve been trying to love from a hurt place, from behind a stone wall. So I guess I was more jaded and more guarded than I realized.  I needed to reexamine and rewrite my stories.  I needed to peel back the layers of onion and shed a few more tears.  I had to get my power back from situations that Broke. Me. Down. I had to speak truth, life, and love over myself. And I’m still not fully there but I’ll tell you this here… I feel a lot more open to the possibility of truly loving again, out loud and in the open; not from behind a barb-wired wall.

I still haven’t written my favorite his letter.  I have to own the fact that all of these years I’ve been chasing a love that never was.  I have to apply my expensive ass knowledge to the relationship I’ve considered the prototype for all of my adult life.  I have to cope with the fact that it NEVER measured up to the good standard. And I have to let it go.  It’s for sure a dreaded farewell but also a necessary one.

I encourage each of you whether you are in a relationship, married, or single, to take some time to write, examine, and rewrite the things that cause emotional baggage for you.  It could be issues with an ex, or relatives. But it helps to get it out of your head and heart and put it on paper so you can literally face it and correct it.  I think there is something pretty dope about being able to do this as a single person.  I’m not subjecting anyone else to my drama as I work through this.  I know that many people don’t do this until they are in the relationship and having issues.  I can imagine that to be very difficult for all parties involved. I would love to hear from anyone who has done this self-examination either alone or within their relationship.

Thanks for letting me share.

-Dev