These questions came in recently from a friend:
“How do I know what is just me being hyper-critical vs. what should be a genuine red flag?”
“If I am not content with "reality" that is in many ways quite good, then will I just go through
life chasing a fairy tale?”
“If I do not feel complete peace, safety, and certainty about the person I'm dating—and even
when I read these words I feel a little hungry hole in my heart—is that a sign that he isn't
good for me and I should just end things quickly and move on?”
My initial reaction to these very thoughtful questions is twofold.
On the one hand, I have to ask, have you done some deep work on yourself, to identify your scars and hurts? Until you do that, and do it thoroughly, you might simply be projecting your own sense of shame or guilt or fear or even anger onto any other human no matter who it might be.
So first you have to ask, do I love myself? Do I like myself? Do I enjoy spending time with myself? Have I forgiven myself for every single “mistake” because I love myself and accept the fact that I was always, always doing my best in each moment, no matter what happened?
Can you say to yourself: “I was doing the best I could do at that time, given who I was and where I was. I really did my best.” Can you say that?
Because until you love yourself, and until you let go of all shame, it is possible that you will be looking to someone else to make that shame-pain go away, or you might be possibly doubting that anyone could really love you in the first place. You might be pushing real love away. Only you can know. Shame is a major block to all love and healing.
(If you want me to write more about releasing shame and healing and loving yourself, I will. Just let me know. Any readers, feel free to comment and ask for certain topics, or submit a private comment form to request an answer to your question.)
On the other hand, let’s say that you have done that deep work, and that you are in a good place with yourself, and you are in a relationship with a person and you can’t decide if it’s a good relationship and worth working on, or if possibly you are ignoring red flags? Are you being too critical, or are you wasting your time?
The number one way to answer this question for all of time is this: do you articulate to your friend what you need and then do THEY try to make that happen?
This is the key to all relationships. The Gottmans call this a “bid for attention” and it is CRITICAL that anyone you are in relationship with acknowledges your bids for attention at a much higher percentage than they miss them. We will all miss bids from a partner from time to time (or drop and ball and ignore one – APOLOGIZE), but for you to literally feel heard and seen and loved and good in a relationship of any kind, the other person needs to make you feel heard and valued. They need to care.
Simply listening to you is not enough. They need to lean in. They need to hear you. They need to feedback, not criticize, not get defensive, and then they need to try to meet you in the middle. THIS is the work of loving another person. Some couples or friends will do this more effortlessly, and some will need to work at it. Think of your best friend: if you called him or her right now and said, “I need your help” they would absolutely hear and attend to your bid for attention. Love works the same.
Some people will refuse to work or meet you in the middle at all, and they will say you need to accept them just as they are. That is not reality and they need to grow up and realize that we all work to get along—even parents and children, bosses and employees, bus drivers and passengers…everybody! Communication and compromise is not a luxury or the province of the diva—it is the norm.
If a person does not want to hear you, then you have to ask yourself in your heart of hearts if this person is as into the friendship as you are, and you MUST be willing to hear the answer! Are they? Ask them. Ask kindly. This isn’t about ultimatums and tantrums and slamming screen doors. This is simply about you, calmly, deserving to be loved and asking the person that you are currently with if they are interested in building something together, with you. Ask. And then wait. And HEAR THEM.
And look at their body language. Hear what they are not saying. Are they as into you as you are into them? Yes or no? If yes, then fine. Proceed. You’ve got your answer. This person values you and your happiness and they want you to be happy; make sure you reciprocate!! It is important that you immediately let them know that you want them to be happy, too, and that you want to hear what you could do to improve things for their experience in life.
But if no, if they are just not that interested in showing up or being present or compromising—if they would rather go about their life without you than do any work—then you are BETTER OFF without them, so move on NOW. Do not waste another day or give away ANY MORE of your power to someone who does not feel the same.
If you just want a casual situation where nothing is growing or being built, then presumably you would not have asked them this question in the first place and you can be fine with a stagnant situation. But if for any reason you would describe your situation as “one-sided” then you are telling me that you want a real friendship. If you want one, then seek one among others who want one. You can do this. You are worth it.
And if you are afraid to ask the person the question, then that tells me two things: first, you don’t yet know that you are worth being treated like a treasure (we all are) and you probably already know that they don’t care about you as much as you care about them. Stalling discussions or hiding from issues is weakness and cowardice. Face the truth. You can do this! You are not alone. You are not weak. You are strong! Believe what is true! All of your angels and spirit guides and ancestors are with you. The Divine is with you—God the Mother/Father. I am with you. You are not alone.
And let me tell you what you ARE—you are WORTHY. You are worthy of love in all its fullness, right now, just as you are. You are worthy just because you were breathed into being. We need you here. And you are BECOMING. You are becoming the fullness that your soul incarnated to be. God sent you here to do something. Your soul is here to do something that we need you to do, and only you can do it, and you will do it, in your time. You are so beautiful and your spirit is so beautiful and I love having you on this planet.
So how do you know if you have a good partner who loves you like this, like your friends do? You also asked me:
Am I looking for a fairy tale vs. loving and accepting reality?
The mere nature of this question hints to me that the person you are with is not willing to build the house with you. Loving is like building a house together. How’s it going? Where are you? Do you have the blueprints? Has the foundation been laid? Materials delivered? Walls framed and up? What’s your partner doing? (Right now in this analogy, L and I are putting on the second storey. We work slowly but we keep laughing. Sometimes we get tired and we take breaks, but we take them together and we’re both always happy to be on-site.)
If you are building a House of Love then he/she needs to be on the building site with you, doing the same things you are doing, matching step-for-step, action-for-action. That is building a House of Love together.
I have argued that you cannot properly build a House of Love with someone else until you have first built a House of Self where you know that you belong and are safe and have a place to sleep and eat. You will always have both houses then. The little House of Self (one for each of you) on the same property with the bigger House of Love that you two built together. But you can’t go building a House of Love if you’ve first got no place of your own to sleep and eat and recharge and think and heal, because you will then be trying to move into the House of Love ASAP because you will feel homeless! You will rush the building of it and try to build it yourself! You will pay for dates and plan trips and make everything JUST SO EASY that you will scare the bejesus out of your partner. And from my experience, when you push and seduce and bribe someone into a house that mostly you alone are building, they inevitably leave anyway.
Match the building speed from the first moment. Step back. Build your own house first. Know you have a place to sleep and eat ON YOUR OWN. And like your place. Love your House.
It is OK (and even natural) for you to, after some time, feel like your House of Self might be lonely. That is normal. Humans are not designed to live alone. We are relational, communal creatures. So you can put your House in a neighborhood near many others—friends, family, colleagues, and you can go visiting from house to house and planning outings and trips with your tribe.
And/or you can build a House of Love with one other person, your person, and live there, while still interacting with your two tribes in the neighborhood. This living together usually involves physical intimacy, which nearly all people crave and need. (Even hugs! Post on sex coming soon.)
So at the end of the day, know yourself. Know what you seek. And find someone who is seeking the same.
What is a fairy tale and what is reality?
A fairy tale to me means that you perhaps think you will fall in love with someone who will make all your dreams come true and the two of you will never have an argument. If that is reality for anyone, they are a clear minority of people. And even for these people, don’t you want to make your own dreams come true?
Maybe some people had a blissful, emotionally aware upbringing and then married someone who also had a blissful, emotionally aware upbringing and maybe these two people are never selfish or grumpy or forgetful or even stupid in any way. Wow. They sound lucky to me, and kind of bizarre or amazing, to be honest. Or, and I lean this way: they sound like one person always gets their way and one person lets the other person do all of the thinking and deciding. That’s not how I want to live, personally. That sounds boring and like one person is a shadow.
For MOST people, you need to communicate and work together and solve problems together—including problems caused by clashes in personality or preference. That’s reality.
Thinking that you will find someone that you never have to do ANY work with is my definition of a fairy tale. But you DO have to watch the proportion of that work, right? If it’s all work and no fun, then yuck. (All fun and ignoring work doesn't tend to build for the future...) Choose other partners, both of you. People are just like chemicals in chemistry class—when you put any two together, different things will happen. Find a Chemical Other that works well with Chemical You. Better yet, find one that works REALLY WELL.
Remember Mira Kirshenbaum’s amazing work. She rightly notes that chemistry gets a couple through tough times and knits you together.
1. Are they easy to talk to and get closer to?
2. Do you feel emotionally safe?
3. Do you have fun together?
4. Is there attraction, passion, and affection?
5. Is there mutual respect?
This is the chemistry you are looking for, and it’s better than any fairy tale where one brainless person is saved from all harm and real life by an epic hero Other who makes every decision for them. BE YOUR OWN HERO. And if you want a partner, be heroes together.
Marie and Pierre Curie's chemistry lab, Paris Photo by SdC
Peace and security vs a little hungry hole in my heart
So you asked what it means if you are not feeling ultimate peace and security in your current relationship. Learn the difference between the feeling of “Hey, honey, there’s something we need to work on” vs “This will never change because he/she is not interested in hearing me.” One is work and the other is loneliness. You can absolutely be lonely IN a relationship and it is NO GOOD for anybody.
That hungry little hole you feel in your heart is your hunger for real love. We all want to be loved. We all want to be seen for exactly who we are and loved as that. You deserve that. We all do. So if your current situation does not make you feel loved—notice I did not say “is perfect,” because I believe any two people doing their level best to hear and love and accommodate one another is as perfect as love gets—but if your current situation does not make you FEEL loved, then examine that within yourself.
Then talk about it honestly and calmly with your partner because maybe you two want different things. Beware of changing what you want in order to accommodate what they want just so you can keep them in your daily routine. I see this often with the person who doesn’t want “anything official” when the other one does, and so the heart of the other one slowly dies while one person gets exactly what they want.
Beware also of demanding that everything should be your way, exactly like you like it. That’s not love. It’s called control. And controlling someone else is ugly for both of you, spiritually.
Remember, this isn’t a blame game. This is about aligning goals, plain and simple. You deserve love, and you’ll get that—when you demand it—first from yourself and then from any others whom you allow to be close to you. And remember, have fun! Gauge the fun! There is a work side to love and a fun side to love. It should be more fun than work, overall.
For those around you, it should always be a great privilege to be trusted enough to be in your inner circle.
I love you!
~Susanna
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