Tuesday, April 6, 2010

IT'S OVER-WHO'S TO BLAME?

Most break ups tend to end in a marathon telephone conversation with at least one of our closest friends or a full out pow-wow with all of our girls. The topic? How wrong he was and how we are better off because basically, we could do better, anyway. He’s the loser and he missed out on all of the wonderfulness that is us.

What we often fail to wonder about, however, is why it NEVER seems to be our fault when a relationship ends. And our friends? Far too often, our well-meaning sisters only help to support us in our delusional thinking that we were faultless and perfect during the relationship. After all, we are ”good” women! But even though we are all beautiful, wonderful, worthy of being treated like queens, and blessed children of God, etc., could it be possible that sometimes WE may have been the pin who let all of the air out of the relationship? For many of us, it isn’t enough to have a broken heart. We have to pile delusion on top of it; as if it will lessen the pain for us if we are not to blame. It’s the man who is broken and needs fixing. Not us.

We like it when women bond. It’s good for the soul. And although it’s great to have friends who will let us cry on their shoulders and/or help to smooth our ruffled feathers, we might want to rethink the practice of running to our sisters to get pumped up after a break up.

Post break up periods are a good time for self-reflection; not necessarily a time to magnify every single perceived flaw that he had in an attempt to make ourselves feel better about no longer being in a relationship. It may very well be true that he wasn’t necessarily “man of the year” material, and yeah, maybe he could have been “wrong” about a lot of things, but how exactly does that help us? It doesn’t. It only allows us to keep our own flaws in tact while we continue to arrogantly wade around in our own messiness. Instead of gathering our friends to watch “Waiting to Exhale”, perhaps we would be best served if we used this time as an opportunity to evaluate who we have been and how we can be better partners as we move forward. Being our best possible selves allows us to attract the mate who desires to be the same. Win-win.

3 comments:

  1. Here! Here! Perfectly said. Thank you Angie and Alisa. The common denominator in ALL relationships is You. I am a proponent of US, women, not partaking of the above mentioned enabling activities too much or for too long. Get on with it. Learn, grow and love you even more and even love him. It only allows the heart to expand and receive and give more love than you ever thought imagineable. Fee King

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  2. Hey, Fee! What's upper? Thanks for the comment. Agreed. We don't like to admit it, but it is true. The one thing that all of our relationships have in common? US.

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  3. "Learn, grow and love you even more and even love him." Well said Fee. Learning to love a person that has "hurt" us (eventhough a lot of times we set our own selves up for the pain) really does make us more open, more loving. I think one of the biggest benefits is that we don't become bitter. Bitterness sneaks up on you and before you know it, it is seeping out of everything you do and say. When we release and realize we are not perfect and will make mistakes-and similarly, the people we date are not perfect, and sometimes those imperfections don't work well together-we clear the air to find a level of innocence as wonder again.

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