Telationship rips?

Once upon a time I, a self-proclaimed connoisseur of relationship folly(especially the male/female kind), wrote what I will fondly refer to as tips about relationships. Not necessarily romantic relationships, but what I hoped were tips that were useful in other relationship arenas as well.

Over the past year however as I've struggled in personal growth and development I've been spending so much time looking at my internal struggle that I've neglected the external struggles around me. Each of us has so much going on within ourselves and with those closest to us that there is never a shortage of examples of what might, could, and does go awry in human relationships. Once someone asked me why I don't like dramas, be it film, television or books, and I replied because I have so much going on in my own life and the life of those around me that I don't need to be stressed out about some more that isn't even real.

The real question is are we looking at them? Learning from them? Dare I say it, maturing as a result of them? As I shared in the previous post recently someone I know was talking to me about a relationship dilemma they had. The topic of the conversation...unrequited love (or other lesser, but still meaningful emotion). Recently I've been having this same conversation with different people. I've spoken to both men and women, requiter and requitee, and even mildly biased observers of the situation. And whether we like it or not as long as people are attracted to people and other people aren't, unrequited love will always be an issue.

After recently watching a clip from one of Madea's live performances, I was again reminded of one really important thing. If you want to be with someone and they don't want to be with you...let them go, and move on. Now I'm not saying moving on is easy or that you will get over it quickly, but if you don't try you will be that person that annoys all your friends with "Woe is me, why won't he/she love me, why can't we be together" sob stories over and over again. You will also be the person who can't have an emotionally stable relationship with anyone else because you will always be thinking about what might have been. Nothing kills peace and happiness faster that the "what ifs" and "might have beens".

Now on the flip side if you are the unrequitee (is this a word) you're also faced with the tough decision of dealing with the unrequited love. How do you handle it when someone comes to you and professes feelings that you don't return and usually wasn't even thinking about returning? Well the best thing is to be honest with that other person because there's nothing more vulnerable than a person who has just put themselves out their emotionally and from the people I've been speaking with there is nothing worse than false hope, except probably the instant where you realize it was false hope. There are so many people walking around with bitterness right now because someone held that false hope out to them that something could happen when they knew it wouldn't. The next thing to do would be to take a time out and examine your feelings because maybe it's possibly the love isn't unrequited after all, but if you need that time tell the other person, please. A soul-destroyer exercise is one that involves open ended emotional stress and tension.

Now after all this has been worked out no new relationship has been formed, there is a tendency for the unrequitee to want things to go back to the way the used to be, to want to "still be friends", but that isn't going to happen. As long as men and women are different, this won't happen, unless both parties are mature enough to handle the shift in the relationship. You have to understand that 99% of the time it wasn't anything the unrequitee knowingly did to stir affections beyond friendship, but they feel like they needed to be guarded and that changes the entire relationship from easy going friendship to high tension.

Be that as it may, I'm at the end of this for now. No conclusions of what can be done, but at least I know what's going on :) well, mostly.


As always have a good day and enjoy.