mindingmybiz

Love and Shit

So, another intimate relationship has fallen through the cracks for me. I’m coming to accept this through grief and self-reflection. On this path, I find myself asking, “why?”

I believe all intimate relationships that cannot overcome its obstacles boil down to this: at least one person is not committed to dealing with their own shit.

This closed door between them and their past shit, comes in between their intimate relationships unless the other party is willing to settle for dysfunction or disconnect, and be at ease with dis-ease.

Everyone has their own shit. Shit from either childhood or adulthood, and usually a mix of both. Humans are biologically wired for relationships. There’s a ton of scientific evidence to support that, go Google it. This is neither good, nor bad. It just IS. When in an intimate relationship, you will find opportunity to either deal with your shit, or have the relationship suffer. Nobody can make this choice for anyone else. It’s a free-will decision that impacts others, but is only controlled by the one making it.

You need to own your shit, or your shit will own you. It’s simple, but not easy.

People who shrink back from going into their shit, will create more shit.

There are a million different ways to shrink back from your shit, which in turn produces more shit, which in turn produces more shrinking back…you see where this leads? To a lot of shit.

A few common ways people shrink back from dealing with their shit, which produces more shit is:

• Violence/Aggression
• Isolation
• All sorts of addictions. Some are more destructive than others and some are more socially acceptable than others but they’re all an escape from your shit.

What keeps you trapped in this downward spiral is the practice of consistently shifting blame onto others for your present day behaviors. This is an effective way of ultimately betraying yourself. When you refuse to take responsibility for yourself, you don’t have to sit with what can actually save you, guilt and self-reflection. This may work for you temporarily, but ultimately comes with a huge cost. Because temporarily is only temporary.

Guilt will lead you back to yourself, but you’ve got to be comfortable enough in your own skin – all of it, to be in it. It’s the language of your own internal moral compass, which is always on your side. But people can spend years, decades, even most of their lifetime, at war with their own moral compass. This is an exhausting battle.

Guilt is meant to jar you, because if you avoid it for long, you’ll eventually experience a break down. Accumulative guilt will weigh a person down with such a heavy toll that they have to self-destruct to find momentary relief, with suffering at the tail-end. Unless you have a serious mental illness where you cannot feel any guilt or shame, in which you are a very dangerous person, especially to those who are closest to you but even to the general public. In that case, you’d be a sociopath.

What do you do when you’re in an intimate relationship with someone who WILL NOT GO THERE…to where their shit is? Clinicians call it trauma. Some people call it baggage, their shadow, or their inner demons. Whatever you call it, if you’re with someone who is unwilling to go there themselves, let alone with you – you are faced with the reality of your powerlessness over someone else you care about.

I’m learning love does this in that painful place – let go.

The most loving thing I can do for the other, and for myself – is to truly let go.

This is where I enter into addressing my own shit.

Doing loads and loads of grieving.

But if I do not enter into this work, I will return to it with more shit. I’ve been here before. I now know, what I didn’t know before. When an intimate relationship ends, there is a need to let go, and grieve with other safe people, and most importantly, with myself.

This is where I will find my own healing. For some people, what doesn’t kill them will break them down, and for some, what doesn’t kill them will make them stronger. I will to be the latter, and need support from others to do so because self-reliance is a sham. It actually makes me weaker. When I self-deceive myself into the delusion of self-reliance, I’ll will create more shit.

I don’t have to shut-down or close the door to my heart, even especially when I’m hurting. I will open myself up to what IS available, instead of fight what isn’t, even if it hurts at first.

I’m ready to meet life, on life’s terms and grieve the losses I’ve experienced and am experiencing. I will remain open, to what is, even though I close myself to what isn’t. This takes strength. The kind of strength I didn’t believe I had, until I was faced with the choice to either shut-down which would hurt my children the most, or to live, and let live.

There is serenity in acceptance, but the path weaves through grief, and will turn out better for me in the end. But now, it’s hard as hell.

But this too, shall pass.