The Corollary

The thing about yesterday’s blog is there is a corollary between how I have felt about money and debt and how I feel about love and relationships.

I’ve surely written about “Romance and Finance” before, but it’s worth repeating, for my own sake.

If, as I stated yesterday, the belief has been, If I have debt, I can’t enjoy nice things, the (my) logic continues, If I have “work” to do on myself, I can’t enjoy relationships. The belief in both cases is that if I am not “fixed,” then I am not allowed to engage in the world. Or, another way, if I am not perfect, or my vision of what that ever-moving target of perfection is, then I am not allowed to receive or have good things.

Because, to the logic brain, it makes sense, doesn’t it? You have debt, you can’t buy the nicer shampoo that doesn’t fry your curly hair. If you have … let’s call it “intimacy issues,” you can’t be in relationship. BUT, as we saw yesterday, and I’ve seen in these last months, I’ve been eroding that belief around money, and allowing myself to enjoy things, even though I have debt. So… shouldn’t the corollary continue, that even though I have work to do on letting myself trust others, I can still allow myself to exist with them?

Eek. As a serially single person, I can’t tell you how hard that is to even hold on my tongue for a minute. Because it brings a challenge, a “put your money where your mouth is.” It means, that if I really am trying to believe that I can be imperfect and still enjoy life… it means I have to start … trying. Trying to be in relationship, not dating, not sex, not flirting, relationship. The kind where you say, You know what, I’ll commit to you for an undetermined period of time. I’ll commit that I will attempt to be as transparent as necessary, and as soft toward you as I can be. To me, to be in relationship means that I will not duck out at 2 in the morning, I'll be present during sex, I won’t throw barbs or use sarcasm to keep you away. To be in relationship means sitting through the discomfort of softening into another person --- and HELL if that’s not the scariest thing!!

I have and continue to do work that is helping me to soften into myself, and surprisingly, I’m actually having a good time of it – this “loving myself” thing. I’m actually getting the hang of it, and becoming habitualized to it. So, it follows, that I am situated to extend that love, that softness, that vulnerability outward. To someone else. Who I don’t know.

And trust that they won’t use this access they’ve been granted to my heart as a pass to do damage, to infiltrate me and plant a bomb, to establish trust and then usurp it, tragically.

Because it’s always been tragically. That’s the story, that’s the history, but it doesn’t have to be.

That’s the same with the money. I’ve always earned less than I’m probably worth. I’ve always worked in jobs that don’t fire my faculties. But, it’s meaning less and less to me; it’s goading less and less of me into self-flagellation.

So, just because my love story has always been one where I am left kicking myself for trusting someone… well, it doesn’t have to be. It doesn’t have to mean as much.

Letting go of the story doesn’t invalidate my past experience; but it doesn’t have to determine my future anymore either.

I am sure I’ve said it here – that with the pattern of awaiting perfection, which perhaps here may have meant perfect immunity to hurt, to betrayed trust, to love-- Ha! I’ve been waiting for immunity to love in order to actually let someone love me and vice versa. Nooot sure how that logic works!

But, if I have been waiting for some illusive “fixed,” and an ever-changing target of it, then I will never be “ready” for a relationship. (Strangely, most people [I hear] look for a relationship to fix them, whereas I look to be fixed before I get into a relationship.)

So, the idea, then, is to change the goal. The goal, now, is to not be fixed, but to be human. To allow myself to try to trust someone else with the soft content of my heart, and believe one millisecond at a time that they’re not a suicide bomber.