Triple trouble

Here’s an upside to break-ups: it makes you realise invaluable things about relationships in general. Or at least that’s what happens with me: I’m learning A LOT.   

I have known for a long time now that relationship has nothing to do with any of “the other half”, “the only one” or “happily ever after” kind of bullshit. If you so very wish, you can believe all those things about love, but leave the relationship out of it. Love by definition is (or at least should be) free and unconditional, but relationships aren’t. And they were never meant to be. (I wrote about it here.)  

What have become crystal clear to me is that every relationship is a tripartite system, equally composed of you, your partner (as two fully independent beings) and something that you are consciously choosing to build and share together. Something that will function, change and breathe on its own, even though it’s been constructed from bits and pieces of the other two components.  

What I learnt from my anger

I have always been a very impulsive and emotional person. I’ve always felt things before I knew or understood them. I’ve always seemed to feel stronger and deeper than anyone else around me, just as I’ve been getting affected by other people’s emotions way more than anyone else. Emotional landscape was quite naturally my kind of world.

Of course, over the course of my life I’ve been led to believe that this is undesirable, unhealthy, childish, irrational, hysterical, problematic – all sorts of bad, really. It got hammered into my head that I need to change it, hide it, withhold it. My parents, while they’ve always meant well and wished nothing but the best for me, managed to convince me I have some anger issues (I don’t). That I’m too loud, too direct, too vulgar and no one will ever want me that way.

And yet, even though I tried hard, I could never successfully supress my emotions, be this restrained, levelled “adult” people expected me to be. Sure it caused one hell of an inner conflict and laid out solid basis for most of my existential crises in coming years. I’ve been conditioned to believe that my natural sensitivity and emotionality are bad, at best unwelcomed. And so I kept them to myself, consequently denying myself the right to be vulnerable in front of the others.

Loads of bullshit that I now have a doubtful pleasure to unlearn.

Must admit though: it teaches me A LOT.