The Sun and Illusory Stars

I failed again in a relationship, I know everyone does it, but you would think that after three years of research around love and relationships as a documentarian, that I might have a knack for this about now? Who do I blame? My own expectations… and my inability to discern illusion from reality. When one partner wants a partnership that focuses on a family, and the other just finds it convenient to have casual sex, it is a mix match. It plagues our society more often than not and becomes more complicated when lots of emotional investment is at stake.

As I reflect back on my situation, in my gut, I knew something was off. The actions I experienced, like short casual meetups that usually focused on sex, were different from what I was hoping would eventually happen, a natural organic evolution into a close relationship where we included each other in our everyday life. I was hurt when things failed to come to fruition. I created an expectation or illusion of a future, which in general never really happened. Now I am a big girl, and I understand that what I usually imagine about the future, often does not resembles what I am expecting, but something was off, and it was leaving me with this empty feeling. 

I ignored the data points in front of me, hoping it would get better. Which brings me to my second point, be authentic. Authenticity is incredibly important for all relationships. Authenticity is actually a relational behavior, not a self-centered one. Meaning that to be truly authentic, you must not only be comfortable with yourself but must also comfortably connect with others. I think there are three core areas that I could have been more mindful of in this relationship: 

1. Have a realistic perception of reality (I had to see that he was not that into me and accept that is how it was going to exist).

2. Express my emotions freely and openly (We finally had a conversation at the end of the relationship, where I told him that I loved him and that I could see having kids with him, which actually surprised him. If I had expressed that freely when it was clear to me earlier in the relationship, he would have been able to communicate with me that he did not see having a family with me from the beginning. This was hurtful, but helpful.)

3. Truly understand my motivations (I have always been on the quest to find the ultimate partner that can match my intellect, leadership, spiritual depth and sexual energy.  Quality time is also a love language for me, but for the past several years I have been playing it as the cool single girl who is super independent and doesn’t need a man or that quality time. I found myself being afraid of admitting to my needs and transparently communicating these needs at the beginning of a relationship, hurting myself in the end. You have to say who you are, if they do not like you from the start, they never will, and it is better to know sooner than later.) 

Essentially, when you listen to your gut, have no expectations and stick to your authentic ways, you are better able to exit a relationship with misalignment. It saves a lot of time and eventual pain. Rejection is hard, it is actually one of the only emotions that are connected to the same neurons as pain. It actually hurts. But continued usage and exposure to rejection can help the neurons of those experiences create a stronger lining within the neuron and allow a stronger connection that is less painful for the next round. Rejection gets easier the more you expose yourself to it. And short, easy, quickly terminated relationships are a much better approach than drawn out, life-encompassing, deadly ones. 

The rejection is also not just a reflection of me. There is another half, he is also no longer connected to this relationship, in the same way.  He no longer has access to my friendship, intimacy or benefits he once was receiving. We still have something, it is just now filled with distance and hesitancy.  It’s two-sided, both of us lost. 

External factors play in this story too.  Absent ties have become more significant in the past 100 years. You see, we used to marry people whom we were somehow connected.  But the process of how we meet our romantic partners has changed over the past hundred years. Mainly attributed to technology (airplanes, telephone, internet, apps). We are least likely to marry our best friend but more likely to marry someone we have a loose or almost absent tie with. People who are not very close to us, either physically or emotionally, help us to relate to groups that we otherwise would not be linked to (Rees, 1966; Corcoran, Datcher and Duncan, 1980; Granovetter, 1995). For example, it is from acquaintances that we are more likely to hear about job offers. It helps us connect the wider global community. 

The invention of new technology spreads the layers of overlap that we have in our social networks. For example, a husband and wife may have met at a local dance hall in a little city where both had the same schooling, religion, food, exposure to sexuality and philosophical ideas. But technology and online dating change that in that we are now more likely to connect with someone far away with a completely different set of circumstances and context of life. 

To further investigate the scenario and understand how to approach dating for future ventures I reached out to an advisor, Persian Medium, who talks to hundreds of thousands of people about this subject and wanted to get her expertise: 

In the end, he did appreciate me, he let me shine as bright as the Sun with what little time we did spend together. But after 8 months of waiting for more, sleeping under the stars with him by my side never happened. Waking up to this reality sooner would have saved us both time and misunderstanding of each other. I would like to openly apologize to him for being reckless about how I navigated the situation.

Looking forward. I am taking the extra steps that I need to explore how to do this better.  I am going to be creative and challenge myself with a different approach and really understand my needs before I jump into this again. More will come out of this self study and next time I hope I get bit by the moon.