I've been thinking a lot the past few days about...a lot of stuff. I had a conversation with an ex, commonly referred to by a friend as "tiny Jesus girl". This nickname came about eons ago when we were dating. She was a good, religious girl and I was hell on wheels. We only dated a few months. The joke is that the tiny Jesus on her shoulder was telling her to get out as fast as she could. And I can't deny that was probably true. Her mom hated me, her dad, sister and brother thought I was a nice guy. But of course they only saw the sanitized version. To this day, they don't know about the details of our relationship and my issues at the time. Inevitably, we crashed and burned and the end was much worse for her than it was for me. I saw her as just another conquest. She was gorgeous and she was a "good girl", that's all I needed to know. She saw me as relationship material and, for the life of me, I don't know why. I grew bored and, without telling her, started to pull away. Realizing this, she began to try and conform to what she thought I wanted her to be. The more I pulled away, the more she tried to change. But all of her changes were lost on me. I knew what we had was temporary and I had no intention of continuing it. Once we officially ended, we basically cut each other completely out of our lives. Last year she turned 30 and decided to do 30 things she'd always wanted to. One of those things was to mend fences with me. I was surprised when I got her call since I never expected to hear from her again, but I was thankful for the opportunity to genuinely apologize. Even as I was being a bastard to her, I knew it was wrong but I was so fucked up that I didn't even consider apologizing. I felt SO much better once I did though. That entire relationship, or more the way I treated her during it, was always one of my only regrets. I asked her why she kept trying to change for me and kept clinging to me and her answer was simple - because she knew that somewhere in there was a good guy that she could really have fallen for.
I have been many things in my relationships, but capable of changing who I am in order for them to continue is not one of them. I'm a firm believer that you cannot go into a relationship hoping to change someone, or even something about their personality. Do I adapt to the demands of the relationship? Of course. But I've never attempted to change myself for someone. At least, not with the intent of actually changing. The one time I did some semblance of this was when I dated someone who we'll refer to as T. As per usual with me, it was infatuation that led me into the relationship and my bad habits that led to the end of the relationship. She had no idea what I was into when it all began and once she found out, she basically shot me an ultimatum that I could cut it our or she would cut me loose. I did try to stop all the bad stuff for awhile. But then I decided it was easier to just omit what I was doing when she asked me about it. It worked temporarily. And we were doing quite well at the time. Then, it all fell apart when I came clean about what was actually happening. And that was it, we ended shortly thereafter (but lingered for a few years). There's been no other time when I've attempted to change who I am for somebody else. As of right now, I like me. And that's a lot for me to admit. I loathed who I was for a very long time but now me and...uh, me have found a pretty good place to settle in. I'm ever improving, as I would hope we all are, but this particular model o' me isn't half bad. I'm a good father, I'm a good son and sibling and, someday, I hope to be a semi-decent partner in a relationship. Ah yes, there's one thing I'd like to resolve to be next year - good at relationships. Unfortunately, I don't believe in New Year's resolutions. But I do believe that taking a glimpse into the past can help you in the future so let's do that, shall we?
Relationships...are really not my thing. But I have been good at them on occasion. I've even been great at them once or twice (okay, probably just the one time). But overall my record is not stellar. A combination of things play into this; I get bored easily, I choose to go it alone when I should be part of a team, I can be a bit passive aggressive and/or aloof when I'm unhappy, and then there's our good old friend self-sabotage. I'm also stubborn as hell sometimes. But lately I am learning which of these things are changeable and which are not. I can change whether or not I go it alone. I can flip the switch on the passive aggressiveness. I can even be less stubborn, although that one takes the most work on my part. I could probably even keep the self-sabotage at bay if I really attempted it (I'm also a firm believer that anyone can do anything if they put their heart into it). I'm curious as to how much of my losing relationship record is part of a mental block and how much of it is really me being terrible at relationships. You would think someone as...experienced as me would have learned a damn thing over the past 18 years (yes, I've been in and out of relationships for almost two decades now). And I guess I have. I don't consider all relationships that end to be a failure. My determination of whether or not a relationship is successful is if you learned something from it. If you did, whether that something be about yourself or about relationships in general, then it was a success. After all, not everything is meant to last forever. Some people are meant to come into your life, school ya and then make their exit. I'm nothing if not a student in this life, so no matter how fucked up a period I've been in, I've always been opening to learning. As you can imagine, my penchant for dating older women has led to all kinds of learning experiences about myself and about love. But I think a lot of those lessons have been stuck to the outside of my brain and are just now being absorbed. I'm just now getting why some women said certain things about me. About how I could be, about how I am. It amazes me how some people can see right through your BS and know what kind of person you really are. Ironically, at the height of my bastard days was when I got the greatest amount of compliments from my girlfriends. And back then I would grumble about it because I didn't believe I was, nor would I ever be capable of being, a good dude. But I'm getting there. In some ways, I'm still who I was back then and that will always be a part of me. But I'm changing. For the better, I hope. I'm learning not to go it alone and that you should soak up all the love you can get (actually love, not one night stands...okay, those too). Because you're lucky if you find people who aren't required to love you but still do, no matter how bad you can get sometimes. People who love you for who you really are; not what you could be, not what you might one day be, but who you are in the moment. And I'm thankful for all those who have helped me get to who I am right now. Whether they're in my life at the moment or not.
