There’s a point in every relationship when you finally get past the need to sell yourself, to show off your best qualities and virtues, and to bullshit a little about who you’re not really at all.
Some people have a gift for honesty and boldly going forward without the need for any pretense, or games, or sensitivities. This can be abrasive or quite refreshing.
Some are hardened and shut down from past hurts and couldn’t be bothered anymore. Or will take a long time to want to genuinely sit at the table.
Some are just treading water and can offer little or no energy toward the relationship, consciously or not.
We must always remember empathy and compassion, yet should never blindly expect them in return.
Control dramas are plentiful in our society today. Generations of “adults” have grown through, modeled, and survived numerous traumas. They’ve learned how to manipulate from their earliest days, or they’ve built habits around superficial mental constructs to get what they think they want… when they don’t know the first thing about their actual needs.
In the end, or perhaps in the real beginning, we can be only who we are. Any and all facades will be found out or will fall away… or just require too much work to maintain. In the core of our true selves, we desire to be recognized, understood, and seen for who and what we really are.
Everything else is eventually exhausted.
The most important relationship is, of course, with ourselves. Therein can lie the most challenging work.
Yet, through our toiling and battles, through arguments and misunderstanding, through vulnerability and painful and awkward discovery in the mirrors and reflections of those who come across our path, we find our way home to our authenticity.
Every realization, every revelation, every layer delved into connects us more to the source and the heart. The more we go in, the less we need to carry on with and maintain the dysfunctional stories and ideas we have held about ourselves.
Turning pages…
Be real.
Solvitur ambulando