Are you fed up with putting yourself out there, only to find yourself single once again? Trusting someone new after having been let down many times by others is difficult, yet essential to finding a partner.
Trust is an interesting thing, as no matter how often you've been let down by the men/women you trusted, you must trust other people, in order to find someone who's right for you. That is, if you go into every new interaction with the mindset that you'll be let down, you'll end up not giving the person a fair chance, ultimately ruining any chances of things going somewhere. Because instead of opening yourself up to the person, you'll be too busy protecting yourself from getting hurt by closing yourself up, which will create a distance between the two of you.
It's difficult to connect with someone when you're too busy protecting yourself from getting hurt. Yet, it's also difficult to trust someone when you keep on getting hurt. This catch-22 is what I often find myself facing. I want to find that special someone with whom I can relate to on different levels. But I don't want to find myself hurt yet again. Thing is, finding love can be a painful process. Every time you trust someone, there's a chance you'll get hurt.
Take me for example. I recently met a man with whom I felt a genuine connection with early on. And I don't tend to find myself this connected to men. Anyways, he seemed to feel connected to me as well and things were going great. Until one day, things abruptly ended. I was left feeling silly for letting my guards down (for once) and opening up to someone. A part of me wanted to give up on trying to find someone else, while the other realistic part of me knew things weren't going to get better, if I just stopped trying. It's OK to take a break from the dating scene and even necessary at times. Yet, once you do get back into it, it's important to have a positive attitude.
While you can't always see pain in the forecast, extracting the lessons from your past experiences and applying them to your new ones, makes the love process easier. Learning is growing. So you have a frustrating experience but at least now you know something new. For example, from the previous experience I mentioned, I learned not to completely open myself up right away. Of course, I was just being my genuine, open self but in doing so I felt that I invested so much in this man, although I barely knew him! That is, the more you give of yourself to others, the more difficult it becomes to let go. Now I know, in order to not be so torn about someone who is practically a stranger to me when things end, I should take things slower and invest less, until I get to know the person better.
Finding a balance between giving enough but not too much of yourself, when you first get to know someone is trial and error. We got to try in order to find our comfort zone. Love is about losing before you gain. This is because love is irrational, unpredictable and a gamble. There's no formula to love that tells us if you do so and so you will get such and such result. At first, we love and we learn, not the other way around. Eventually, we are able to apply our lessons to love. The lessons we were taught give us insight and help us make better choices. Experience is key. But to get that experience, we got to trust and take chances.
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