Knowing your mistakes: The gift and the curse

I woke up from a dream that I was both hoping not to finish and anxious to see what happened at the end.

I dream in epic fashion. It is not uncommon for my dreams to go from romantic comedy to gangster movie to Marvel comic action movie to musical to WTF in a matter of dream seconds.

So it was not surprising to be running through parking lots and roof jumping to then end up in bed with my first love.

What was surprising was our conversation.

I kept refusing to look in his eyes and I just rested my head on his chest. We didn’t have sex or anything. He just held me in his arms. He told me how he knew how I was and that nothing short of Jesus coming back and negotiating on his behalf would get me to give him my heart again. He just wanted to know exactly what went wrong with us, besides the obvious. I told him that of course it was over because he lied to me. Then I finally looked him in the eye and told him that I lied to him to. I lied to him every time I told him I was okay with how our relationship was. I lied when I said it was okay that we were just friends. I lied to him when I pretended that I didn’t know that he was lying. I lied by never telling him how in love I was with him. We both lied until it was too much for me, the person who can’t stand liars. It got to the point where I hated us both.

His response was unexpected. He squeezed me tightly, kissed me on my forehead, and told me he understood.

And then I woke up.

 

*insert long sigh here*

 

So now I am awake, early on a Saturday morning, thinking about all my past romances and how I was to blame in each of them.

Don’t get me wrong. Don’t start yelling about how it was likely the guys did something to end things as well. I know all of this. Trust me. I just like to own up to my part in things. I need to learn from my mistakes.

My first love was my first Sagittarius relationship. I am a Sag. The end of that relationship was when I decided that I shouldn’t date another Sag.

My second relationship of note was almost love. Didn’t quite get there. Wouldn’t call him the rebound guy but I was trying to take things slow and doing it all wrong. He was trying to move real fast and irking my soul. He was also a Sag. He broke up with me via text message. I said okay. I realized that I wasn’t ready. I knew that earlier but I didn’t tell him. I probably should have. Oh well. Too late now.

My third relationship was love unlike what I was used to. I was ready to jump head first off a mountain into this relationship because he felt so right. The only problem was that it happened during the worst year of my life to date. I lost two important people in my life, within months of each other. As much as was giving him my all, it wasn’t enough. There was a huge part of me numb from that feeling of loss that I had never experienced before. I tried and tried and tried. I traveled to see him spending money that I didn’t have because he was one of the few things that made me happy. I was hanging on my a thread. He cut that thread via email. (Did I mention he was a Sag too?)

That was the fourth loss that year (if you count the family turtle dying, which I do because I loved him). Losing four loved ones in one year was tough. Having one of them still be alive but just not wanting you anymore was unbearable. I can honestly say that I don’t know how I survived that year because I got to the point where I didn’t want to.

Coming up from the smoke I realized a lot about myself. I began to learn to accept that I am a handful. I deal with anxiety and depression and that is a lot for someone who has no clue how that life works. It can take a toll on a relationship if both parties don’t understand it and/or don’t want to understand it.

I also realized that forcing it is just not a good plan. I fought for that relationship when I honestly shouldn’t have. I was fighting with myself. He had tapped out long before he even sent the email and I knew it. Yeah, he should have said something earlier. But I also should have said something when I noticed it.

I decided to take the time to fall in love with myself, having experienced what it was like to fall in love with someone else. I knew that I had to put way more than a couple months into a relationship for it to grow to what I wanted, a long lasting situation. I knew I needed to make myself happy.

I also learned that I valued friendship more than romance. Out of the three significant relationships I had, I really only missed the friendship. That was the part that hurt. Bonds were growing, but the focus on romance and sex and the like didn’t allow them to get the attention they needed. That is why all my relationships ended with clean breaks. The friendship wasn’t strong enough to outweigh the hurt ending a relationship caused.

When #4 came along I thought that I was ready to try this relationship thing and do it the right way. I mean he wasn’t a Sag. That had to be a step in the right direction. I discussed with him taking things slow and my value on friendship. I was open about the areas that I felt I fell short in the past and what I needed to work on. We seemed to be okay. Then things started moving too fast. I spoke up, as best I could, about it. He was constantly having issues with me and how I had changed. As much as I would try to explain that I go through cycles of energy and happiness it all just came off as an excuse. I knew that only time could fix things but when he wanted instant results I realized that as much as I wanted it to work it wasn’t going to happen. He broke up with me via Facebook message. I said okay and bye.

I was so deflated. My efforts to try and build a friendship failed. All of the things that went wrong began to play through my mind constantly.

I couldn’t figure out how it got screwed up. But yet I knew exactly how it got screwed up.

The gift and the curse was knowing what would go wrong but not knowing how to stop it from going wrong.

Some of us actually do learn from our mistakes. The trouble is that we get into situations where we can’t figure out how to use what we know. Our head battles our heart and we end up making a mistake. It may not be the same mistake. Sometimes it is. It is frustrating.

If it weren’t for my grandparents and select couples in my life, I don’t think I would have any faith in romance (other than the fictitious stories I write). Seeing it in real life lets me know that I am not making all this stuff up. It really does exist.

The question becomes if it is even meant for me to have.

I haven’t given up. I have just decided that I need a better balance of head & heart the next time. I want to build a friendship before the relationship and romance even starts. Otherwise I am worried the friendship will end up taking a back seat and when things go wrong there will be nothing to stop the end. Like a building a house on sand instead of a strong foundation. The tide comes in and the house falls.

Nobody wants to be in the friend zone but they all wonder why things end so badly. I see a correlation there, but I’ll save it for another blog post.