Everyone comes into your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime.
This is a difficult concept for most people. It is hard to be taught how to connect to people, only to let them go when the "learning", or the growth experience is actually over. I have gone through an extremely difficult breakup, and in evaluating myself and trying to gain growth from the experience, I question who I am every day. Who am I? What can I do differently? What do I want?
The experience, I find, is challenging because I have been the road runner in the past. I run at a moment's notice. I live by the notion that life is short... don't miss anything. Live for life. Make it about the journey.
So, when meeting someone that you absolutely connect with and it doesn't pan out, it takes a toll on who you are. When dating in general, it is easy to move on, there is no investment. It is open for the anticipation of the end. Possibility is the bottom line. When you connect with someone, anyone - the promise of "forever" is what strokes the pain of ego.
The conversations, the intimacy, the sharing of "like" - it all bears against the investment of life and love.
I guess I should feel lucky that I haven't had my heart broken over and over again.
I look at Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins as one of those couples that connected. They got it. They overcame the celebrity and maintained a relationship for 23 years.
I can't maintain a relationship for longer than 5 years. I can connect with pretty much any one for the short term, but what I question is, what is it about me that prevents me from getting over the long term hump?
I have plenty of relationships I know fulfilled whatever limitations the purposefulness was - why, in fact, it existed. But, there are those few that lurk - that concept of why people share themselves only to walk away.
Is that who I am?
Is that what I have done to people in the past?
Have I finally hit the glass ceiling of relationship purpose based on who I have been in the past and what I am capable of offering or fulfilling?
photo courtesy Adam Russell
Sherri, this is one of the best things I've read this year. I've struggled with the exact same thing, and thought a lot about the same things you've written. I am making a conscious effort now to move beyond it. I think realizing it and admitting it to yourself is the first step. :)
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