Category Archives: Relationships

I am me and by “me” I mean that I am many things, some good and some bad. After all, I am only human and none of us are perfect. I am struggling right now with some heavy stuff. At the same time, I am learning to let the little things go (I am, in fact, reading Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff…); it is not always easy however. The book advises us to accept ourselves for all we are, including the bad parts. The sooner we accept our negative feelings, the more efficiently we can work through them instead of denying that they exist which makes them into bigger issues.

Understandably, I am having many negative emotions right about now. I am angry and sad. I am hurt and regretful. I am scared. I feel disappointed and regretful. My heart is breaking. I feel lost. But that’s okay. That is all to be expected. It is entirely normal. It would be scary if I did not feel those things.

Despite how I feel, I know that I will be okay, eventually. No matter how things turn out. Life is not hopeless, even if I feel that way sometimes. It would be a shame to get divorced, that’s true, but I am resilient. If I didn’t learn to deal with what life throws at me, I would have killed myself a long time ago.

And, truth be told, I’m glad I didn’t because then I wouldn’t have spent the last 7 years with Ryan and I would regret that far more.

I realize, that despite the age difference that makes you nearly a decade my senior, you don’t have the maturity to be in a healthy relationship. You, on the other hand, do not seem to realize that. Perhaps that is why you decided to string a good friend of mine along for over a year and then break up with her, without even telling her. Yea, thanks a lot.

And perhaps it isn’t even my place to say anything (but, hey, it’s my blog asshole) but I’ve been listening to her issues about your relationship for damned near a year. In my book, that’s long enough to wait for you to pull your head out of your ass and work on your shortcomings. So what I don’t understand is how you even have the balls to break up with her when you’re the one who should be wallowing in self pity after a particularly eye-opening dumping.

Without further ado, here is a list of things you need to work on in order to be successful in a relationship. Otherwise, your future endeavors will soon find themselves following the footsteps of your ex-wife and my close friend and not because of lack of trying on their parts. Wake up or, yes, you won’t ever find someone.

Learn how to communicate (Listen up, moron).

Seriously. Learn how to listen to people and hear what they’re saying or have them clarify without throwing everything through your stupid “I’m a man” filter. Then, learn how to tell other people how you feel. I’m pretty sure “I’m breaking up with you” falls into this category.

Prioritize your time (Get a fucking PDA).

You don’t need to please everyone or help everyone or do everything. You need to figure out what’s most important and dedicate sufficient time to those things and people. Working to earn a living? Important. Spending time with your loved ones? Important. Fixing everyone else’s shit? Not so important. The sooner you learn, the better. Otherwise, you’ll just wind up hurting those you care about. Furthermore, your friends and family are sick of you being so damned undependable.

Get over yourself (Now!).

Why should others make time for or care about you when you won’t return the favour? Don’t expect people to sympathize over your situation when you don’t give a crap about theirs. The double standards suck.

Take responsibility (Grow the fuck up).

Relationships are a two way road and if they’re not working, changes are both people need to step it up. You need to make an effort to recognize problems and continue making an effort to minimize them for life of the relationship, if not the rest of your life. Relationships take work and before you can do said work, you have to take responsibility for your share.

These four steps may not be simple or easy but they will help you have a healthy relationship with people. Once you can see beyond yourself, you can see why others have issues with you. Taking responsibility for your roles in those issues and resolving them will be so much easier when you learn how to listen and speak effectively. Unfortunately, this is a lifelong process that never ends. If you’re not up for it, kill yourself.

At the very least, stop fucking my friends around with your shortsighted childishness.

Sincerely,
Cole

Ashe sent me a link to this article on some Love+Sex blog on Yahoo (Who even knew Yahoo had blogs? Way to be hip.. and fail! LOL), entitled “5 Things You Don’t Need to Have in Common” and I was intrigued. I thought it might be eye opening and dug in to read. That’s when I discovered it’s a complete waste of time.

I do believe a healthy relationship is one where everyone involved is unique, rather than a carbon copy of the other person(s). Plus, having different interests allows you to breathe fresh life into the relationship and gives you something to talk about. After all, Ryan and I are different people despite some overlaps in our tastes. On the other hand, if you don’t have anything in common or the right things in common, I think you’re going to wind up feeling awfully lonely in your relationship or trying to move mountains.

According to the author, “Your Tango”, the 5 things which are completely irrelevant to any relationship are music, “Intellectual Tastes”, friends,financial habits and style. Let’s look at this point by point. Good to know but, you’re a fucktard, okay?

I sort of agree musical tastes. I think it’s much harder to find someone who is your musical soulmate than it is to find someone with whom you’re generally compatible. It sure makes things, easier though. Ryan and I have been together 6 years and we still don’t have “our song”. His musical tastes don’t include a lot of love songs and almost anything I could suggest, he would veto.

Intellectual interests actually gets a pass. We both read and I would say that, right now, he is interested in more intellectual things than I am. This is one of those fields that actually provides conversation fodder.

Friends are a tricky subject to handle. When we were in Misawa, I definitely disliked that all of my friends were married as opposed to all his single friends. Maybe it was an irrational worry but I just don’t have a lot of faith in packs of young, guys when the married ones are in the minority. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I worried that his friends would somehow convince him to go get a prostitute or participate in some orgy. So while it’s good for you to have friends to share memories and interests of things that just don’t interest your girl or guy, it’s important to have balance. Your friends relationship statuses or personalities should not work against your relationship. If your groups of friends are completely different, it could be a sign that as individuals, you are just too different to make it work, too.

Financial habits are something that absolutely can contribute to the health or deterioration of a relationship and that the author felt this belonged in such an article proves she (or he) is on crack. Finances rank around #2 when it comes to reason for divorce and, if you haven’t noticed, the economy kinda sucks. A lot of people are struggling right now and if half of your relationship is really bad at spending money wisely, this can put a lot of unneeded stress on your marriage vows and entire family. Honestly, I don’t know anyone who can say “My Husband Loses Money On Stocks—And I Don’t Mind” without worrying about where the next car or house or insurance payment is coming from. I guess that, here in the real world, we all don’t have such a luxury.

To further prove his/her/its idiocy, the author says all matters of conflicting style can be solved with a trip to the local mall, so break out your credit card. While style is usually not the straw which breaks the camel’s back, the author could have said so many other useful things. Instead, it turned a valid point into worthless drivel.

Like the rest of the article.

I used to chat at a website called the Park and this is not the first mention of The Park on my site). This is not news to many (and this is not the first mention of it on my site). Several of my friends on IM or Mypsace/Facebook are from the Park day when I was a wee lass of 13/14. -chuckles- The park was magnificent in its way. It attracted millions of visitors so a site that would be shamed by even the worst sites of the internet today; it was, after all, a completely product of Web 1.0. That would also be its downfall and The Park would succumb (around 2000) to the big dot com bust and not without some well-earned hatred to the Park’s founder, Brent Hunter.

A lot of the chatters who had grown to love The Park and made lifelong friendships and relationships there went on to other similar sites, most notably The Pork, where I still chat but also including Dockwave, Ozpark and Ties That Bind. None of these sites would ever see the sheer numbers of the Park, though.

Fast forward a few years and Brent is back with a new project – The Earth Comm Center – and while I think Mr Hunter had different intentions for it than his earlier project, Park followers flocked to it as a way to relive the golden age and to find or catch up with old friends. In that way, it worked marvelously. For a while, at least, until the same issues happened with Brent and chatters and volunteers became disgruntled and slanders his not-so-good-anyway name and left the site. Some followed. Many didn’t.

But then something else happened: Brent disappeared. Though the site never saw the success of its predecessor, it did bring together some people who had been torn apart by the Park’s unfortunate demise and it was clung to as a last hope for some who wished to someday know other reunions. Brent’s disappearance brought with it a lack of upkeep on the site and, eventually (late 2007), the site ceased functioning correctly; that is, no one could log in anymore. Though the site still stands, show statistics and appears to function in many other ways, no one can actually use it for any purpose.

A lot of people find this amusing, even expected. Brent doesn’t have a good track record or a good way with people, it seems. Still, it is a loss that I, among others, mourn a bit. I had caught up with some friends via ECC, including one who was, at the time, deployed to Iraq. We have since lost contact because the site no longer works. )=

Where are you Brent Hunter?

This is all fresh in my memory because I was talking to an old friend from the Park today and, as always happens with those old friends, the conversation turns to questions like “Do you still talk to anyone?” or “Do you remember this person?” And I always feel a tinge of nostalgia because the people that I talk to and remember are far less in number than I would prefer.

And I don’t know how to find them again. Sites like Myspace or Reunion.com allow you to find people when you do know a lot of information about them but the friends one makes in chat, even if one knows their heart and soul, may never release vital information like birth date, home town or last name.

Even Brent has a few websites up which direct the visitor to chat rooms whose core is made up of ex Park chatters but it’s not the same. I began wondering why there isn’t some type of site that allows people to reunite with others from online, with search criteria different than e-mail, age or location which you might not know. Perhaps just a giant bulletin board located at “Find People From The Park.com”.

Alas, searching for those specific people is all but impossible online and searching for the masses is an insurmountable task. If I had control of The Park domains (still own by Brent) I would redirect people to the Pork (which he refuses to link) or to the Myspace group (created by myself) or the Facebook group (created by Sara) so that we would all reconnect.

As it stands, searching for sites about the Park is limited. Eventually, my Myspace group shows up and there appears to be a single Yahoo!Answers question asking if anyone remembers. Links to Brent’s now defunct websites are what show up immediately. It doesn’t seem like many people have taken the time out to put something online to say “Hey, I was there! I remember! I miss you Bob! Where are you Jane?”

So I guess this is my way of creating something a little more permanent, in case someone else is searching and finds my site, maybe they’ll find a little more direction. And maybe, just maybe, I can find a little more closure.

Do you ever try really hard to like someone, or at least be tolerant of them, and fail miserably? I know I’m much more tolerant than I was. I know, now, that in some situations you simply bite your tongue and shut up in order to get along with someone because you have to, even if that someone is ignorant or foolish or just plain difficult. Of course, since we’re all wired with differently personalities, the people who fit the bit of being ignorant, foolish or difficult to me may not be the same for you; I may even be one of those people to you and that’s fine but because we need to live and work and exist alongside others, we must learn to deal.

I used to write people off because of face value – how they looked or what they said but first impressions can be, and often are, misleading. I was missing out on people because I was quick to label them as boring, too different, unintellectual, sheep, so on and so forth. What was really happening was that these people played the part, often unawares, in certain situations which led me to these incorrect assumptions. After all, in most social situations, we all modify ourselves ever-so-slightly as to fit in and get along?

But take an individual person or two out of these situations and provide the opportunity for me to become better acquainted with them, and my eyes would be opened to just how unique a person he or she was. This then inspired me to be able to see more of this unique person, in a group situation.

A few of these opportunities which I wasn’t so keen on, would make me much more interested in getting to know other people and, eventually, I would become much more tolerant to others and even when I wouldn’t have the chance to make someone’s acquaintance, I was much less likely to write them off or lump them in with another nameless group.

So I recognize the value and necessity of tolerance, today, and look forward to new friendships and relationships that I might otherwise have missed because of my former intolerance. Still, it’s not always easy to tolerate some personalities. In particular, 2 people are currently being very intolerable which leaves me with a rather bitter taste in my mouth and a resentfulness within me.

One of which is someone who has always rubbed me wrong but I thought perhaps I was being too intolerant and that this person needed a second chance. I went out on a limb trying to build a friendship, which never went anywhere because of their response – which is fine. I still tried to be tolerant but I noticed the things this person said and done were extremely hypocritical, rude and often condescending. While some people loved this person’s “confidence” and free spirit and others even thought of this person as fair and objective, this person only came off and arrogant, bitchy, stubborn and pretentious to me. And you know what, I don’t like that. I don’t like this person and I think that I don’t have to tolerate that sort of bullshit. M I Rite?

The other situation which comes to my mind easily is one with a coworker. Generally, I didn’t like her at first impression: clothes, make up, voice, laughter so on and so forth. Though, all of that can generally be ignored, I found I didn’t really like her any more the deeper I would delve. But, while I disliked this person overall, it was difficult to pinpoint a specific reason. We would greet eachother in the morning, bid adeu in the evening, chit chat during the day and be generally courteous but we weren’t making any effort to become fast friends. I figured that acting friendly might translate in actual feelings of amicability and truly being friendly but such just isn’t the case so I go on faking. Of course, the side of me which isn’t the better person sort of likes ‘holding’ that over someone – the not liking them but pretending nothing’s wrong thing. -eg-