Bad Habits

Seven years ago I was in love.  When that ended, I swore I would stay single until I was over him.  By the time I was over him, and ready to start dating again, I was happy being single.  I began dating guys and never developing feelings for them.  Whether this was deliberate or just a result of being single and happy in myself I don’t know.  I met one guy that I had feelings for right away, you remember V?  But those feelings were never returned, so we never developed a relationship, I was never even physical with V.  Over the years I have continued to date guys that I never developed feelings for, and I was ok with it.  Being in relationships with guys that I knew I would never love, allowed me to demand the very best from every relationship.  I would joke that all my relationships had a one-month expiration, because that was typically how long they would last.  First sight of hormones, and they would be gone, because I didn’t ever care enough to filter my crazy.

I was quite happy dating in this way because it protected my heart.  If I never fell in love, I would never get hurt.  I could end relationships as soon as I was unhappy about something, and never shed a single tear.  I could push them as far as I wanted without ever worrying about them ending it, because I never cared if they did.  I am now learning however, that I may have also picked up some pretty bad dating habits by dating this way.  I am spoiled, bossy, demanding, controlling and crazy (I’m shamefully laughing as I admit this). 

A month ago I began speaking to a guy that I worked with.  I had always thought he was cute, so when he added me on Facebook I jumped at the chance to talk to him, even though I was already dating someone (though not exclusively).  I knew I was interested in D, and I knew I wanted to kiss him.  I had no idea however that dating him would lead to me feeling things that I haven’t felt in seven years.  Imagine my surprise when I began falling for him.

I can’t even begin to tell you all the ways that D isn’t my type.  But damn if I’m not crazy about that guy!  He is the sweetest, sexiest, most hardheaded pain in ass, and I’ve fallen hard for him.  He makes me so happy.  I miss him when I’m not with him, and I never ever get tired of him when we are together (which is unusual for me).  When we spend the night together not only do we cuddle all night, but also I WANT to be cuddling him all night.  For those that know me, they know that this is unusual for me even when I’m in love.  I don’t like to be touched at night when I’m sleeping, but with D, I’m waking him up if he’s not cuddling me.  I don’t recognize myself.  And I love it.

So here’s the problem.  Like I said, over the years I have picked up some bad dating habits.  The difference now, dating D, is that I actually do care if we break up.  But I’ve spent so long treating guys a certain way because I don’t care, that I’ve developed dating habits that I must now break.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not horrible, I’m still friends with all of the guys I’ve dated over the years (well kind of) so it’s not like I treated them terribly.  And with D, because I have feelings for him, I’m naturally very affectionate and loving. 

But remember, I’m spoiled, bossy, demanding, controlling and crazy.  These things do not make for a good, lasting relationship built on compromise and selflessness.  Things almost ended a few days ago because I pushed D too far with my bossiness and my attitude.  I cried which is very unusual for me, I couldn’t even tell you the last time I cried over a guy; I think it was a year ago because of V, and I think it lasted ten minutes.  I cried a lot longer than ten minutes at the thought of losing D, and it was a wake up call for me. 

D is very understanding of my hormone imbalance; he seems to be willing to deal with the crazy once a month.  But I need to work on how I speak to him when I get that way, and do better at filtering the crazy.  I need to treat him like someone I don’t want to lose, because losing him is not an option for me right now.

Luckily, I am very self-aware of the bad habits I’ve developed, which means I have a good chance of fixing them. 

Perhaps it’s premature to say, but I believe I’ve found something real with D.  Our differences scare me sometimes, and I know that it could be a challenge making things work, but I believe we can.  I believe D when he tells me he feels the same way I do.  I believe that we have a connection that is rare, and therefore we must fight to protect what we have.  His family likes me, and my mum likes him (he meets the rest of my family next week, and I know they’ll love him).  I think they can see how much we care about each other, so how could they not approve.  I realize that I have become one of those soppy people I used to make fun of, but I don’t even care.  I’m so happy.

It is of course terrifying to feel this way.  Every day I worry about how much it will hurt if this ends.  But I don’t care.  I wont let my fear of striking out keep me from playing the game.  The only thing worse than getting hurt is being afraid to get hurt.  I’ve jumped, and there’s no going back now, the only thing I can do is enjoy the fall and hope that I land softly.  Love is scary, if it wasn’t a risk, it wouldn’t be as special when it works and it would be easier to find.  I don’t know how I will feel in a month or two months, or how things will go.  All I know is how I feel now, and this feeling is completely worth the risk.  It’s amazing.  I’m crazy about him, and I’m going to do everything in my power to make it work (while he’s good to me anyway). 

I’m proud of myself for being brave enough to go for it with D.  And I’m thankful that he’s so caring and understanding with me.  We agree that communication is important to make a relationship work.  We will talk through any of our problems and work past them in a healthy way, because we both see value in this relationship.  We both want it to work.  And we both believe that it can.

Taking responsibility for my happiness

For those of you that follow my blog and know who V is, you are about to get pretty frustrated with me.  Of course, I have been talking to him again.  Yes, this is the same V that I have written about quitting numerous times.  It seems he’s not quite as easy to quit, as I would have hoped.

In my last blog entry I wrote about taking my life back.  I wrote about getting healthy, mind and body.  I have been losing weight (slowly but surely), some days I struggle more than others to stay focused and motivated, but I’ve not gained and I’m still losing.  I didn’t talk to V for three weeks.  I stayed strong, and didn’t contact him, even though I really wanted to.  Until one night when I sent him a text, asking if he had missed me.  He responded telling me that he had, and he wanted us to talk again.  I told him we couldn’t talk again, nothing had changed, and I shouldn’t have text him.  He then told me how much he had missed talking to me and he had missed my laugh and my positive attitude.  He swore that he had learned his lesson and that things would be different this time.  No more being cruel for cruelness sake.  No more mean jokes or mind games.

We began talking again, and he really did keep his word.  He was sweet, kind, comforting and wonderful.  He would still make jokes, but that is his sense of humor, and he was no longer mean to me.  He would even ask to call me, and tell me he missed me or missed my voice.  He would talk to me for hours and then tell me that I had made him smile.  He still maintained that we were just friends.  But we txt all day every day, and called each other two or three times a day, whenever we could.  Talking to him made me so happy, I looked forward to hearing his voice, and I swooned knowing that he looked forward to hearing mine.

A week is all that this wonderfulness lasted for.  Of course I began building romantic ideas in my head once again.  Ideas of love and being together, and, one day even, ideas of marriage and children.  I was a fool in love all over again.  Telling myself that he MUST have feelings for me if he missed my voice and my laugh.  I mean, I love my friends, and I miss them, but I don’t miss the sound of their voice.  His is the only voice that I miss like that.  I deluded myself with thoughts of him realizing his love for me.  I duped myself into believing that we were in some sort of relationship, and would one day be together.  I did all this, in the full knowledge that we were “just friends”.  I believed that he really did have feelings for me, but was just afraid of them.

V asked me to call him after work last night.  I knew he needed to go to bed early for work the next day, so I rushed around getting my things done so that I could get out and call him.  When I txt him, he responded telling me he was with a friend, and was busy.  He didn’t txt me again after that.  Something in me snapped.  I convinced myself that he must be with another girl, which is why he couldn’t text.  It’s important to know that I am not the jealous type, I am very trusting of my partners, and I never worry about them cheating.  But with V it is different.  We are not in a relationship; he can do whatever he wants, with whomever he wants.  So I snapped.  I was mad that he didn’t let me know that we wouldn’t be able to talk.  I was mad that he was (maybe) with someone else.  I was mad that he didn’t want to be with me.  I said some things I shouldn’t have, and I have not heard from him since.

I realized something today.  It doesn’t matter how nice or supportive V is to me.  His meanness was never the reason why he was bad for me.  I am the reason V is bad for me.  It is my one sided love for him which is why he is bad for me.  V was never the one responsible it was always me.  V was mean to me because I allowed it, when I put my foot down and refused to accept that kind of behavior from him anymore, the behavior stopped.  V was never the problem it was always me.  V might have feelings for me and be confused, or he might genuinely not have any romantic feelings for me whatsoever.  None of that matters at all.  What matters is that he does not reciprocate the feelings I have for him, and therefor I must move on.  Being friends doesn’t work.  I can’t handle it; I get hurt, angry and jealous.  V is toxic to me, because of how I feel about him, not because of how he feels about me. 

It would be lovely if one day I could be V’s friend.  But I can’t right now.  I can’t burry my feelings, and it’s too hard for me to talk to him.  When he tells me he misses my voice, or me or compliments me in any way, I read too much into it and convince myself that he has feelings for me too.  That is toxic thinking, and I can’t have it in my life.  In an ideal world, V would love me and move to Florida to be with me.  But this is reality, and I need to stop living in a fantasy world, convincing myself of feelings that just aren’t there. 

My mum told me that I am the center of my universe and I need to love myself more than I love any other person.  She instructed me to take all of the time and energy I put into my feelings for V, and put them into myself instead.  I deserve more than to have feelings for someone who doesn’t feel the same way.  I am a wonderful person.  I need to focus on getting healthy, and the self-confidence and love for myself will come.  Until that comes, how can I expect to ever be in a healthy relationship? 

V is a good person, and he has it right.  He knows what he wants (his career) and he focuses on it.  All he ever did was try to be my friend, it was me that chose to read too much into every little thing he said or did.  I wish him all the best in everything he does.  I just need to move on from him now.  I have to take responsibility for my own feelings and happiness.  I need to focus on what I want, just like V has done.  And if being friends is not what I want, then I need to move on from him, no matter how difficult it may be.

Taking my life back!

I’ve talked before about how important it is to me to stay positive through everything that happens in my life.  I always see the glass as half full, and I am blessed as a result of that.  Recently my health has taken a bad turn, though I refuse to let it defeat me.  This episode has scared me into gaining control, and getting healthy.  I am taking my life back.  One day at a time, and I won’t be stopped.

I have been mistreating myself for some time now.  I have an unhealthy body and an unhealthy mind.  I don’t eat the right foods, or exercise and I am 80 lbs. over weight.  I allow worry and stress to effect me in an unhealthy way, and I allow people to effect me more than they should.  I have been abusing my body and my mind, and allowing myself to fall deeper into an unhealthy state of being.  I am thankful that my health was impacted in the way that it was, my body physically couldn’t take the abuse any longer.  I am thankful because it has given me the motivation and determination that I needed to take back my life.

I believe that the people that come into our lives don’t do so by accident.  We meet people when we need to, and they impact our lives positively or negatively for a reason that we aren’t always privy to right away.  I recently met a woman who sells the Herbalife shakes, and runs many fitness activities.  She is also a health coach, and she does this free of charge.  I met with her on the same day that I met with my doctor and learned what was going on with my body.  I began my Herbal Life shakes that night.  Only a few days on, I am already feeling the health benefits, as well as the incredible support from this wonderful woman.

This is the first time in my life, that I have been motivated to lose weight for health reasons.  That sounds crazy, but health was never really a motivational factor for me in the past.  I wanted to be thin.  However, after a few weeks of any diet, I would lose the motivation, because I had never really believed that I would ever lose the weight.  It’s different this time.  Yes, I want to feel good in my own skin, and feel attractive.  But more than that I want to be healthy.  This is the strongest motivation I have ever felt.  Which is why I am certain that I can do this.  I know I can achieve my goals and take my life back. 

I am also making changes in my life to improve my mental health.  V and I have been talking every day since my move to Florida.  He has provided me with a great deal of support in this vast transition in my life.  I am here alone, with no friends or family, and it has been very lonely.  V has helped me get through the days by talking with me on the phone.  He let me talk about my day, complain about what went wrong and boast about what went right.  He provided an outlet, in which I deeply needed.  I was going through some things with my family, and V allowed me to cry and talk with him on the phone.  He supported me in so many ways.  However, if you remember my previous entries about V, you’ll know, he isn’t always so reliable. 

V has the ability to be a wonderful friend, to listen and to support me when I need him the most.  However, he also has the ability to be very cruel, hurtful and unnecessarily mean.  The drastic-ness in his change of moods was exhausting, and I never knew how he would be with me from one moment to the next.  He was hot and cold and there was never any in-between.  He would have me smiling hard from ear to ear, or crying in my pillow.  I knew that I allowed him to treat me badly, but I felt like I needed him in my life.  I would never allow a friend to treat me the way V did, but I put up with it from him because of my feelings for him.  Life with him in it, no matter how damaging it was to me, was better than life without.

That same day that I met with the Doctor and my new wonderful fitness coach was the same day that I said goodbye to V.  I deserve to be treated amazingly by every person in my life, whether it is a family member, friend or a partner.  I shouldn’t settle for less in any of my relationships.  I am a wonderful, loving and loyal person, and I deserve the same in return.  Saying goodbye to V was hard, and I miss him very much.  It’s lonely without him.  But I am stronger than I give myself credit for, I can survive loneliness.  I don’t need him!  I am taking my life back, and in the long run, I will be better for it.

I have a long way to go before I am healthy.  But I am already feeling happier in myself, knowing that I will achieve my goals.  I am feeling the health benefits already, and it hasn’t been a week yet.  It won’t be long before I am feeling better in myself, and feeling stronger on my own.  I can do this.  I am positive I can.  I will take my life back because it is mine, and I deserve it to be the best it can be. 

This is my life, and I’m taking it back!

Type A

“What’s your type?”

“Oh, I go for funny guys.  I like to be able to laugh with a guy.  I like a guy that respects me, and listens to what I have to say.  He isn’t afraid of his feelings, and loves to spoil me and be romantic.  And if he’s tall that’s a bonus!”

So this is a typical response that I give to that question.  It’s a lie.  Ok, in theory, all of that sounds absolutely lovely.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if that were my type?  I do ‘like funny guys,’ that’s about the only honest part in that statement.  But funny certainly does not seem to be enough for me.  I know this, because I have wonderful, hilarious friends that remain in the friend zone.  I have often asked myself why I am not attracted to them, they are sweet, funny, good listeners… so why?  I’ll tell you why.  It’s simple.  It’s because they’re not A**holes! 

Excuse my colorful language, but there is simply no other way to put it.  I do have a definite type, and it is A**hole!  I’ve spoken before about that attraction we seem to have towards bad boys.  But it’s deeper than that for me.  Show me a respectful, decent, kind, funny and romantic gentleman, and I’ll turn him down in a heartbeat.  I’ll say, “There’s just something missing… I’m just not attracted to him… there’s no chemistry there… we don’t have that spark.”

But show me an emotionally dented, screwed up, selfish man whore that doesn’t know what he wants and isn’t ready to settle down, and I go weak at the knees.  “I don’t know what it is, but I’m crazy about him… there’s a connection… there’s chemistry… there’s a spark between us.”

Oh yeah, there’s a spark all right.  It’s the risk that at any given moment, he could take off and break your heart.  Isn’t that exciting?  No it’s not, it’s self-harming is what it is.  That thrill of the drama that I confuse for a spark, or chemistry, is exactly the reason why I’m alone.  There are plenty of great guys that get sent my way.  But I am not interested because we don’t have chemistry.  Instead, I chase the inevitable heartbreaks. 

So with this newfound knowledge and understanding of myself, you would think that I would consciously try to make a difference, and go for the good guys.  But it is harder than it sounds, because you can’t fake attraction.  And the bottom line is, that I am attracted to these losers.  The good guy just doesn’t do it for me, as they say. 

I’m taking baby steps.  For instance, I deleted and blocked the most recent disaster that I was wasting my time with.  You may remember ‘V’?  We were on again, off again all summer, until I eventually realized that I could not be trusted to make the right decision myself.  So I blocked and deleted him… so as to save myself from, well, myself.  I have since decided to ignore most of my initial instincts when it comes to guys.  In other words, if I am greatly attracted to him… I stay well away.  If my initial reaction is, “there’s just no spark…” I take that as a green light to go for it.  It’s baby steps, and so far, it’s not quite working.  I can’t fake attraction, remember?  I’ll get there though; it will just take me some time.

I know not all women are like this, just look at my sister, she’s in a healthy relationship with a wonderful guy.  She has it right; she doesn’t self-harm, so to speak, in her choice of partner.  However, I know I can’t be alone in this.  There are women everywhere, asking themselves, “Why can’t I just meet a nice man for a change?”  Well now you have your answer ladies.  You probably have met him, but you dismissed him on a false pretense that he lacked the certain spark that you search for with a man.  I think the only way around this destructive path we have ourselves on, is to re-program ourselves.  We must train ourselves to be attracted to the nice guys.  You never know, they might have a hidden wild side that surprises you.  Sparks will fly, but they will be the good kind.  Not the ticking time bomb kind that we have grown so accustomed to.

Follow me ladies.  No more ‘nice guys finish last!’  Time to end this cycle once and for all.