This afternoon… i saw a LinkedIn page, of a girl i dated a while ago. i liked her for many reasons, but I was ultimately attracted to how motivated and driven she was… that … and how similar we were in our thought process and lifestyle….
Anyway, the point of this is… i’m currently in a relationship… yet… i couldn’t help…. comparing my current partner to this “ex” (she wouldn’t consider me an ex… but in my mind, i liked her enough to call her an ex)….
Then it dawned on me… this is really getting to me! I’m keeping a tally of past and present and taking mental notes of differences. after feeling disgusted with myself, and ashamed for doing this… i realized… this is a normal occurance people do.
When was the last time a person broke up with someone, ONLY to turn around and date someone that was EXACTLY the same? or even looked for the same qualities? more often, we purposely try to find new qualities, and seek to compare with what we just walked away from….
Why do we do that? I think, part of it is our inherent nature to gauge things off baselines…
1) is this car good?
that’s not really a question that can be answered… unless you compare it to another car…. if you’ve NEVER driven a car… how would you know? Surely, you are basing your opinion on how other cars treated you in your life….
this is the same thing we seem to do with people… as we go through relationships, we build a tally of positives and negatives, with which we judge people by. is this a good thing? I’m not sure… On one hand, if we don’t… we stand to repeat the same mistakes… on the other hand… it makes us compare and judge people unfairly without giving them a chance to thrive and show us who they really are….
ultimately, I resolved to just stop thinking about it, shove those comparisons aside… and be happy with what i have… at this very moment … a full glass of Merlot….
but that’s when it REALLY dawned on me… the answer…. relationships are meant to compliment us… AND… we compare those around us to our past experiences… yet… one thing trounces all else… WHO WE ARE! My mother told me… many many times… “be your own man… be strong… no one will be enough for you… so give up trying to find a complimentary partner… YOU make the relationship… “
I thought she was just blowing smoke… possibly cause of the half empty bottle of vodka nearby… but… now it made sense… instead of comparing, instead of concentrating on the “what i have that’s good…”… i posed my new question “what do i bring to the table in my current relationship… over my last?” sure… this alone doesn’t do much… but it gets the wheels turning… where we start to master our own lives and make decisions based on our own confidence… NOT what others are or what they can be in our lives…
I was quite happy with myself… i didn’t have an answer… not a full one… it started a string of thoughts that didn’t end… BUT , it did help me stop comparing others….