Perception

So a girlfriend texted me this morning and asked: Why do I always attract the wrong kind of guy? To which I had to reply: For starters, loaded question, and also: it's too early in the day for me to be drunk enough to have this conversation. Then I went on to give her my opinion that she tends to go for guys who are 'broken' that she thinks she can 'fix' because she needs desperately to be needed, and worshipped, and guys who are broken tend to lean heavily on her, which makes her feel needed.

If I may, I think I will expand on that idea, since I think it needs to be done, and this will be more than can be typed in a text. So here ya go, in no particular order of importance, here are the things I wish I could have texted her this morning:

When you are with someone who you see as a 'fixer upper', you are not being genuine in your feelings for them. You are enamoured with who you perceive they could become. Now I realize this is not a new concept, but it bears repeating since I see so many folks out there still doing it! One of the facets of my relationship with my spouse that actually works is that we are both aware that we each are damaged in some way, and are very keen to help the other become whole. This works for us, since we each put as much value  on the other's emotional growth as the other. Does that make sense? Let me try another phrasing: I put as much value on His emotional well being and growth as he does on Mine, so it is balanced, at least most of the time. In the case of my friend, she was putting all of her energies into helping someone who was putting significantly less energy into helping her. This is not balanced and is not healthy for either party.

Another point I'd like to have made is this: It is important to tend to your own garden. If Farmer John's neighbor gets injured and Farmer John then spends his time and energy taking care of his neighbors crops... come winter, Farmer John will be hungry. One of the things I've noticed with my friend, and let's be honest: I am guilty of this quite a bit. is that it's very easy to wrap ourselves up in someone elses issues. It's very very easy to let ourselves think that someone elses 'woes' are worse than ours, or more important than ours, and deserve our time and energy more than ours. "I'll take care of mine later" just really doesn't work. Eventually you get so worn down physically and emotionally that there is very little 'mine' left to take care of! Or weigh too much if you catch my bad pun. I am more than 100 pounds overweight right now. Closer to 150 if I were honest with myself. I have spent so long trying to make sure that every one elses needs were met that I have almost entirely neglected my own, including my health.

The one piece of advice that I gave my friend was this: Be Single. Embrace it. Make a commitment to it. Be With Yourself. Take a set amount of time, whatever feels right to her be it 6 months, a year and a day, whatever, and commit to being Single. Commit to being her own lover, her own best friend, her own best advocate. Re-learn her own likes and dislikes. Find a new hobby. Say No to dates. Tend your own garden for a while. Learn to love the skin you're in. Before I met my husband, I'd had a string of uninspiring romances, and a couple almost awful ones. Learned some painful, yet necessary, lessons from most of them. After one particularly hard break up, I swore off of men for a while. I did what I recommended my friend do: I committed to being with myself for a period of time. I was at an age (Right around my 20th birthday) where my perception of self was still pretty malleable, and I wanted to take some time and make sure that I was becoming who I wanted to become, not whoever someone else wanted me to be. I was clearly in the 'fixer upper' category, and wanted to do my own fixin. It worked for me: almost a year later I met my spouse. If I hadn't taken the time to get to know myself again, I might not have been open to the circumstances that led to meeting him---- and I might not have been a person he wanted in his life!

I think perception of self is also a concept that needs to be explored more, and I wish I knew how to express this to not just her, but to my kids and all my friends and loved onese as well. How we perceive ourselves is so so so important. If we see ourselves as lacking in some way, so will others. If we see ourselves as 'less than' or any other negative you like, so will others. That perception of self is energy we put out there into the world, and The Universe uses it to manifest what we think we deserve in our lives. The opportunities and choices we see presented by The Universe are really reflections of our own self image / self worth / self concept. There are limitless possibilities and opportunities out there in The Universe, waiting for us to reach out and grasp them with both hands, but --- and hear me on this--- we only see what we think we deserve.

And on that note, I am going to sleep.

Good night Internet.