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Maybe this is just our Disney story?

You know the main parts that make up a Disney love story right? No? Ok let me lay them out for you.

1. You’ve got the accidental (or destined) meet of the two lovers, the prince and the princess.

2. Then you have the conflict (whatever battles the two of them must try and get through together).

3. Then the evil witch pops up that stands in the way determined to rip the two of them apart.

4. And finally …. the happily ever after (or so we hope).

The moral of the love story tends to be that once they vanquish their foes, they can finally be together, and Disney will have you believe from then on that it’s happily ever after and will only be easy from this point as they walk off into the sunset (I’ll get into why this maybe won’t be the case eventually).

So, if you’re reading this as someone who has a romanticiser relationship tendency, I’m going to try and explain this story in a way you may understand, because I know how much you want to believe that the if you were with the right person the love should be easy and effort free, with no hurdles and nothing trying to keep the two people apart (dumbass).

Here begins our once upon a time…..

The meet of the two characters destined to fall in love was kind of cute actually, kind of unexpected and lead to a push and pull courtship. The princess didn’t actually want the prince to begin with, she was so adamant she didn’t want love (because she was terrified of it) that she pulled away and that lead him into a push mentality (pushing towards her to fill his craving for acceptance from people who show you distain) the courtship phase was a tricky one while the prince battled the thoughts of trying to fulfil what his families wishes for him (cue how we’ve stollen part of our story from the tale of Cinderella, he had to marry a princess specifically chosen for him even though he didn’t want to but that the role the one he had to go along with as a prince) anyway, he found the princess he wanted, but she didn’t quite fit the mould of what everyone wanted for him, which created their first conflict … well mental battle kind of conflict for him to sort out.

But actually, their main conflict came into play, when the evil witch appeared in full force and stayed present constantly manipulating the prince in the story (now we’re seeing how we’ve got some alignment to the little mermaid).

The irony of how the evil witch was in his ear trying to get him away from the princess he wanted, convincing him to believe a fake reality. A reality that didn’t involve his princess at all.

The conflict section of this story ended up tearing them away from each other. Resolution was avoided. For months actually, so the evil witch won … for a while.

But of course that’s not the end of the story, because we’re telling a romantic story and in this world love will always prevail over evil (always).

They found each other again, these two people that fate was determined to pull together at some point during the course of their lives.

And this time, they tried to avoid the evil witch in their Disney story by using magic techniques (cue Harry Potter magic, yes I am aware of the fact this isn’t Disney whatever) they walked around under the nose of the evil witch wrapped in a cloak of invisibility.

All the while they were wrapped up together his princess was trying to free her prince from his demons, the ones that she saw turn him into a version of himself that he wasn’t (now we’re into beauty and the beast vibes) she saw how the expectations of those around him was draining his energy and he needed her, to bring out the side of him that he’d forgotten existed, the side that came out when he was given unquestionable love and support, although she knew he was kind, gentle and selfless, he’d lost sight of that for himself and was tricked into believing he wasn’t worthy of love because those around him had spent so long convincing him he lacked worth.

That phase of romantic bliss where they were undeniably happy all of a sudden was whipped away from them when the evil witch got a sense of someone around her being happy and she didn’t like it, she thrived on those around her being unhappy and unfulfilled like her. She was happy when the prince could be on her level. And she wasn’t happy when he was happy because of someone else. To her if he wasn’t the same as her, which was platonically unimpressed by life and things around her, she didn’t like it and would set out to destroy it.

So just like before, she destroyed it and the worst part was …. he let her, by unwittingly falling victim to her toxicity by being so used to listening to negative comments about his decisions. He was blinded by wishing that somewhere deep down the evil witch was in fact good (but she never was).

Ultimately, if we put this into modern day psychology terms, his soulmate mentality overrode his fix-it mentality and just like that, he let his happily ever opportunity slip away because he wasn’t brave enough to stand up for his princess. The one who made up his Disney story (and he loved the idea of true love).

But Disney romances never end badly, right?

TO BE CONTINUED…..

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Therapy session 1 – it’s a process

Sending yourself to therapy, does that make you crazy? Maybe it makes you attention seeking? Like you’re looking for a problem that maybe doesn’t even exist. You’re looking for something or someone to blame all your out of character actions on perhaps?

But your brain is an organ, and just like your liver or your heart it can get sick when it isn’t treated with care, right?

We know all about the things we should and shouldn’t eat, we know how much water to drink, we even know how many steps we should be doing a day and how many times a week we should be hitting the gym. So why do so many of us seem to falter when it comes to looking after out minds, like we don’t know how to care for that part of us or like asking for help from people to give it the care it needs means we feel weak and damaged.

Would you call someone who’s constantly suffering from heart attacks crazy for trying to go to a professional for help? Doubtful. so maybe more of us should shut the f***k up when it comes to giving an opinion on someone and their need to give their minds some more care and attention.

You know what the sad fact is, the people who take themselves to therapy are in most part only there to deal with the people in their lives who should be in therapy. Ironic really.

But anyway, how can I be a such a big advocate for something and be out here telling people around me that they’d benefit from going without actually trying it myself? Seemed hypocritical.

All I can say on a verdict on session one is this – we all have issues. Therapy actually takes a lot of mental strength. Most of us go into defence mode when someone points out an issue in us, so get ready to battle some demons that you’ve hidden down VERY deep. Get ready to have memories triggered that you didn’t even know existed. And for me, quite possibly the worst part …. get ready to cry in front of a stranger who’s managed to trigger an emotional response in you just by talking about what’s currently happening in your life.

Something no one knows really is this, you’re actually going to feel worse before you feel better. As memories and experiences get dragged up out of the gutter of your subconscious it feels like you have to start from basement level to work your way up.

If you’re going to therapy to look for other people to blame for your issues, then you’re probably not going for the reasons you should be, and if you come away with a victim mindset, then you’re not ready to do the growth you should be expecting either.

Therapy isn’t there to give you an out for being a shitty person. It’s there to help you understand all the things that go on in your head when you don’t understand them yourself. It’s there to give you valuable tools so you can stop falling into recurring toxic patterns and making the same mistakes.

But above anything. I think the most important thing to understand is this: therapy is not for the weak, it’s for people who want to understand themselves and are ready to stop making the same mistakes they always do.

It takes a lot of mental strength to voluntarily go through a process like this. And I’m still very much a big advocate for it, but only for those who I think have the mental competency to hack the journey it takes you on.

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Why verbalising “I love you” seems so damn hard (to me)

The last few weeks have felt very self reflective for me, I tend to direct myself towards the route of self discovery and personal growth when faced with situations that I find emotionally challenging, so it got me thinking …. Why does telling someone I love them feel so unimportant to me, until people around me start asking if I’ve told the person I’m dating that I love them yet, it really doesn’t enter my head.

I really had to delve into my childhood to find an answer to this one, but really it came to me after an off topic conversation with a friend about the importance of understanding a partners love language and what we naturally gravitate towards to express our love for another person.

It suddenly dawned on me that ‘I love you’s’ weren’t something that were thrown around left right and centre as I was growing up, and I’m not saying that’s because there was no love in my family, in fact it was quite the opposite, but we knew we loved each other in different ways rather that constantly telling each other that we love them.

As I was growing up, I was shown continuously that the way someone expresses they care about you or love you is through doing things for you, from cooking you a meal, helping you with homework (one of my parents expressions of love), buying you new things or taking you on days out etc. 

Even when I look at the relationship my parents had (all be it not an ever lasting love affair) but my mum would show she cared about my dad by looking after me and my brother and not asking for help and always making sure she had home cooked meals prepared for him, it was even shown when she supported him throughout a career change. And my dads way of showing love was through financial support, he would ensure we kept a (large) roof over our heads and he would always take us on a lavish family holiday once a year. 

But this proves my point – all of these expressions of love are action based, not word based. And this was what I grew up around.

So now here’s my question I’ve had to ask myself, is this why I have such an issue with verbally expressing how I feel about someone? Quite possibly.

To me, as soon as I start going above and beyond for someone through doing things like booking weekends away, cooking for them, making the bed and making them a coffee when they want one, I’m showing how much I care or that I’m falling in love with them (because trust me, unless I really like you, I will probably always hesitate to do things for you) and it replaces the need for that all be it intimidating (to me) three word eight letter sentence.

I also tend to forget that not everyone will understand this expression of love and will need to hear exactly how I feel about them because doing things isn’t an obvious enough sign if your love language isn’t acts of service. But here’s the funny thing, I don’t want to receive love through acts of service. In fact, I want someone to tell me how they feel about me, I like having viral reassurance which is why words of affirmation is my joint top love language – so although I cant express love this way, I do want to receive it this way, which has some kind of twisted irony to it really!

But here’s the thing, the type of love you grow up around will either do one of two things to you as an adult. You either admire the love you’ve been around as a child and want to replicate that in adulthood, or … you want the total opposite because you crave what you didn’t have.

So although I can’t bring myself to tell someone how much I care about them or how much I love them, I do want them to tell me – talk about hypocritical. But it does make sense because I want the opposite of what I’ve grown up around.

My childhood also wasn’t filled with constant expressions of PDA either between my parents or towards me and my brother from my parents. We weren’t raised by overly ‘huggy‘ parents and yet for me now as an adult, physical touch is the joint top love language I want my partner to express towards me to show that they care.

So here’s the question I’ll pose to you – how did your parents express love to you and your siblings and each other?
And how do you think this has impacted what love actually is to you?

When you actually sit down to think to answer the question of ‘what is love to you’ its initially going to be hard to answer, but a lot of us will form our answer based on what we’ve seen and experienced, either through what we’ve grown up around or from the rom coms we’ve seen at the cinema. But it’s important to be able to answer the question taking out external factors that may have shaped our opinion.

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KISMET; Our story by definition

Kismet; destiny; fate. Commonly used to refer to something that one believes was “meant to be”—or the reason why such a thing happened.

In a world where leaving each other has become more and more frequent, I can’t help but sit and wonder, what are the break up rules for something that doesn’t feel like it’s actually over? How do you handle going from having someone who’s your everything to suddenly nothing, not because anything has gone wrong or someone has done something unforgivable, but actually because one persons mind has gone into such a negative place that they’ve pushed you so far out of the picture they can’t even have space for you anymore.

When should you listen to what your gut is telling you and just give up on all hope of there being a potential with someone? But what’s even more confusing is when your gut is telling you not to give up. It’s saying don’t give up on a person because although they aren’t there right now somehow you know they will be in the future.

Should we be prepared to go through a long slow painful process of letting our hearts heal, or should we just throw caution to the wind and jump straight back into the dating game even though we know the person we’re supposed to be with is just missing right now.

Maybe healing is hidden deep within long conversations with friends who help you to understand where things went wrong. Or maybe it’s in the many glasses of wine consumed in front of your new Netflix binge with your housemate. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s hidden in the new self discovery path you’ve decided to take to better understand yourself and how you can make yourself feel more confident and successful.

So here’s to us, and our ‘kismet’.

I’ll always believe this …. because there was too much ‘coincidence’ surrounding me and you for it not to have been fate (or my new favourite word kismet) that we would cross each other’s paths one day.

However, I’m not sure it was actually for the reason that I thought it would be.

When we talk about fate we imagine some kind of collision of worlds, where two people who are meant to be together finally find each other and above everything else in the world they’ll figure things out, fight for each other and push through anything that life throws at them (once they’re together) because they are just MEANT TO BE.

But that isn’t what happened, in fact the twist of fate that bought us together shon a light on the aspects we needed to work on without ourselves so brightly, that the need for personal growth and reflection was almost uncomfortable and it drove us apart.

But maybe that’s what fate had in mind? Maybe all the ‘coincidental’ twists that made our lives so similar in such weird ways were bringing us together to force us to see how we needed to grow. Or at least, that’s how I like to think of it.

Do I think that’s the end of the journey that fate had planned for us? Absolutely not.

Do I think that changes need to be made before we actually work? Absolutely yes.

Do I think you’ll do the personal work you need to do in order for us to work? Again … absolutely not.

Which is sad. Because I do genuinely believe there’s a reason why me and you keep getting drawn back together. I think it’s on a subconscious level that neither of us really know what to do with.

So until the next time of being drawn back together. I’ll enjoy thinking about how our story is still unfolding.

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Sounds like you’ve got a lot of baggage

Imagine that. Imagine someone who used to claim to love you telling you that no one after them will love you because you now sound like you’ve got ‘baggage’

Maybe that should come on the warning label when you date someone with a narcissist personality. Not only will the tear you down when you guys are together, but they will continue to do so once they aren’t even in your life.

Funny thing is, that so called ‘baggage’ they’re claiming makes you unlovable is only from all their unneeded extras they’ve left you with. You know when you get to the airport and realise you need to get rid of a few things you don’t actually want because your suitcase is too heavy, yeah well that’s the crap they left you with.

You were just fine, in fact your suitcase was way under the weight limit, but the stuff they left you with weighed 10x the amount of anything you actually owned yourself.

But it’s ok, because a heavier suitcase just means you need to develop a more keen sense of awareness for what muscles are working to carry this heavier weight.

If we’re speaking metaphorically, the muscle they’ll have left you needing to work on is actually your brain. But god damn will that muscle be toned af for the next person who wants to try and join you at this made up airport (kind of like a terming to jet off to a perfect healthy relationship).

Here’s the part when you can thank your narcissistic piece of s**t ex for leaving you with the weight of your relationship and where it went wrong because all they’ve done is provide you with the ability to sense someone with negative intentions a mile off.

Typically speaking, this kind of ex will normally be the second person you fall in love with. And this is based off of the findings of anthropologist Helen Fisher and according to her we only fall in love three times in our life but our second love, well that’s the hardest one.

It’s the one that teaches us lessons about who we are and how we often want or need to be loved.

Our second love will typically become a cycle, often one we keep repeating because we think that somehow the ending will be different than before. Yet, each time we try, it somehow ends worse than before and we focus so much on making it work that we will tend to lose sight of if we actually should be trying to make it work at all.

More often than not, our second love is unhealthy, unbalanced or narcissistic. Most likely there will be high levels of drama. This is exactly what keeps us addicted to this storyline, because it’s the emotional roller coaster of extreme highs and lows and like a junkie trying to get a fix, we stick through the lows with the expectation of the high.

So it’s no surprise really that this love has just us with some ‘baggage’.

However …. what it has done is shown us exactly what we don’t want from a love that we will have forever. It’s also taught us lessons that we would never have learnt if it wasn’t for going through this experience.

So thank your second love, for leaving you with their baggage (and then kindly reminding you of it years later just to make sure you don’t move on from them) because without them, you wouldn’t know what a healthy long lasting relationship is and how to cherish the man/woman that makes you feel safe and respected.

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What if fate said….

What if fate was screaming at you both that you shouldn’t be together by never letting you live life running on the same timeline?

Would you listen?

Or would you put your fingers in your ears and sing to yourself to dull out the sound of life maybe having a pre planned route for you?

I’m talking like the adjustment bureau kind of vibes. Like there are some people who come into your life either to steer you into your real purpose or away from it.

Would you listen to fate if it was trying to tell you the person who’s constantly been your maybe is actually a no. That actually ‘timing’ was never the issue between you both but actually you just shouldn’t be together.

I can almost hear what people will be saying ‘but I know I should be with him/her just not right now, we’re on different pages’ but that’s the thing about literature, the pages are never the same, but somehow they still move in chronological order.

If you two aren’t even making chronological sense then maybe it’s time to accept that somewhere life never intended for you guys to be together, you stumbled across each other by a totally romantic accident and that’s ok, because they’re part of your journey but they aren’t your destination.

And what about the other end of the scale?

Those of us who life and fate has continuously attempted to propel together but by some crazy miracle or inconvenience you’ve kept missing each other.

For years the two of you had life plans that should have naturally twisted together but something has kept drawing you away from each other, maybe those people just weren’t quite ready to be shown what their ‘forever’ looks like quite yet.

Maybe the two of you have been so busy forming yourselves into the person you want to be by gaining a tonne of life experience with the wrong people. You were busy getting your hearts broken to get remoulded and put into shape ready for the person fate has in mind for you.

Or maybe the two of you will never meet?

Either way, maybe fate and life has a pre planned idea of who we should be with, or maybe it doesn’t. And maybe we don’t actually have any control over how our life will end up.

Edward Lorenz suggests that ‘Small actions will eventually lead to vastly different outcomes’ so weather we’re pulling away from our forever person or pushing towards them, if you’re meant to me together eventually you will be, once you’ve done all the ‘life stuff’ you need to do first.

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Just one more

Animated gif about love in r u mine? by mami on We Heart It

Do you think you’d be able to give me one more kiss?

Because maybe I’d be able to find closure on your lips and then I’ll feel like I can go.

Maybe, we could also have one more breakfast, one more lunch and just one more dinner, because then I’d be full and happy and then we can part ways.

But maybe in between the meals we could lay in bed together one more time and create one more prolonged moment where times stands still and everyone and everything around us just falls away as I rest my head on your chest.

I guess my hope is that if we add up all the one mores, they’ll add up to make a lifetime and I’ll never have to get to the point where I let you go.

But that’s not real is it? There won’t be any one mores and there won’t be a version of us where everything is new and exciting and the possibilities of the world seemed endless. I mean they still are endless, for you and for me, but not for us.

Somewhere between here and there, and then and now, we just stopped working and we grew up. I guess that’s the thing with childhood love though, it seems perfect and unbreakable … until it isn’t.

So maybe I just want one more opportunity to accept that we’re done and that closure will never be found with you, but instead it will be found in the life I create without you. In all the new moments I have in my life where I don’t have thoughts of you and I and that’s where I’ll find my closure.

Because I don’t want to risk having my heart break all over again, just to have one more moment with you.

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When the unexpected punches you in the face

I bet you didn’t even realise that you’d feel like this, after having something taken away from you that you didn’t even know you wanted, or at least you didn’t know you wanted it right now.

Darling girl, it’s ok to admit how much it’s hurt you to have to get through this by yourself, not having anyone to hold you while you’re curled up in pain, which constantly wakes you up throughout the night. It’s ok to admit that it would have been easier to do it with him than without him, that doesn’t make you weak, it just makes you human.

I know you’ve spent days sitting there wondering what you did wrong, how you could have avoided creating the total and utter mess of a situation you’ve now found yourself in. If you’d have known, what would you have done differently, would you have looked at yourself in the mirror in a different way each morning? Would you have moved slower, eaten better, or even started meditation?

But hey, guess what? You didn’t know. And although you’ve already heard this from anyone around you that you’ve told, it really wasn’t your fault. This was just life’s way of saying ‘not right now’ and that may hurt, you may want to kick or scream or punch anything you can. But it doesn’t change what has happened.

Sometimes, life takes a choice away from you before you even knew that it was a possibility and maybe that’s because it knew you weren’t ready to make that choice yet.

Not all beautiful things are supposed to unfold how you imagine they will and it’s just because they’ve appeared at the wrong time.

Imagine it like this: a flower has accidentally decided to try and bloom in winter, instead of the harsh weather letting it come out and struggle through a phase it just wasn’t meant to see, the cold will kill it off before it even has a chance to suffer. That beautiful flower has been saved a load of unnecessary pain, Mother Nature just had to hold it back and say ‘now is not the time, one day not far from now you’ll blossom into something beautiful, but now just isn’t the time. The world isn’t ready for you yet’.

It’s okay to cry for the loss of something you didn’t even know you wanted, it’s okay to be hurt at the fact a decision was made out of your own hands, grieving for something you didn’t even know …. is understandable.

I know you feel like your body is fighting against you, the one thing you thought you had control over during a time of uncertainty now also feels like it’s betrayed you and let you down, and the worst part is, this crazy surge of emotions being fired up in your brain, is fighting for something that isn’t even there, making you question your own judgements and I know the confusion just makes you want to cry even more.

It’s ok to miss the idea of something you never even really had. It’s ok to hold on to a ‘what if’ even if it’s just for a while. You haven’t been given a set time to get over how something could have been if it had been left in your control.

So maybe this was life’s way of saying ‘not yet’ but this can also be your way of saying, ‘I’m happy to welcome unexpected events’ because life is crazy and beautiful and we make it what we want.

So when life throws yet another unexpected punch at you, just thrive in the fact that each day after is a day of healing. Things will get better and eventually you’ll be in the time when these things are supposed to happen for you.

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Here’s to all the ones we thought we’d never get over

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This is for the one you thought would be etched into your heart forever. The one you sat and cried for over and over again. Or maybe you’re even still awake at stupid times in the middle of the night wishing you were waking up and seeing them laying next to you.

The reality is, missing someone is easy because it’s the part we have no control over. How we handle missing them is the hard part, do we let it consume everything we do, or do we own it and say to ourselves “it’s ok to feel like this for now”.

Its normal to miss someone when we genuinely have a connection with them. When we have a history with someone it doesn’t even matter how long the chapter was that they had in our lives, we’ll miss them. And that’s totally ok.

Sometimes when missing someone becomes hard it’s because we start to think of the scenarios, of how things could be different. What if we did something differently? Would everything change? The problem with “what if” is that we’ll never really get the answers we’re looking for because we can’t force or control the actions of others. We have no way to know how a person really feels or why they’re doing the things they do. All we can do is believe in what actions we see.

And the reality is, if they missed you too, they could do something about it. If they’re the one that walked away, they’re the one who knows what direction will also lead them back to you. Their “I miss you too’s” have as much sincerity as your mum telling you to “have fun” when you’re on your way to a party.

Actions speak louder than words. ALWAYS.

So you know what’s going to make it easier to get over the one you never thought you’d get over? The lack of their actions meeting their words. Their inability to fight for you and show you just how much they want you in their lives.

Eventually you’ll realise you’ve found someone else who treats you better than they did. Who makes you feel more important than they did and who makes you feel like they want you to be a part of their lives every day.

It’s also ok if someone you’ve been with for months had a bigger impact on you than someone you’ve been with for years. There’s no rules and regulations for this kind of chaos. Missing someone is fine.

And although maybe right now you can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. You can’t imagine not wishing they were next to you but trust me you will and that’s the day you’ll realise they didn’t fight for you the way they should have, they didn’t treat you like you were rare and something they should protect.

But that’s cool, because everything you gave to the wrong one will be worth traveling to the moon and back for to the right one.

So chin up, and lift a glass for the one you think or thought you’d never get over. Because you wouldn’t be where you are today without them.

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It’s the two of you vs the problem

Let’s play out a scenario, a couple who are crazy about each other torn apart by the concept of “what if this goes wrong”.

To figure out if the relationship is worth fighting through this cloud of doubt for they decide to spend some time apart, both figuring out if they are willing to risk getting hurt.

But the irony is, you’ve now taken yourself away from the reminder of what you’re fighting for, you want to figure out if you can get past your “what if” problem and you’ve chosen that the best way to do it is by not being around them.

It feels like you’ve taken the problem and somehow let it come in the middle of the two of you. Now it’s turned into a you vs them situation, where the game is who can act like they’re less bothered and who can pretend to care less. As if the time apart isn’t phasing either of you.

How it should have been, is the two of you vs the problem. There’s an issue in your relationship, well you know how people typically get over that? By facing it head on together and supporting each other through times of uncertainty. That’s how problems get sorted, not by ignoring them and creating more distance.

The one proven way to make any relationship stronger, is by getting through the hard parts together as a solid unit. Not by pushing each other away and hoping that an empty space will solve everything for you.

Relationships take work, so take that issue the two of you have and use it to make you stronger together, by twisting it into a the two of you vs the problem situation.

As much as some people may disagree, space and distance do not help two people overcome a relationship problem. An issue in a relationship should be handled by the two of you together and if it turns out that the problem can’t be fixed, at least you can say you’ve tried.

Giving up and pretending like you don’t care is the biggest relationship failure, give the two of you some credit. Risk the make or break scenario.

Looking back at something and thinking you could have tried harder is the biggest punch in the face kind of feeling you could ever have.