Tag Archives: Relationships
bible.com/bible/111/1co.15.33.NIVGifted 18 years and counting
Three Approaches to Marriage
· Casual approach—Marriage is just a piece of paper.
· Contractual approach—Marriage is a contract.
· Covenantal approach—Marriage is a holy covenant established by God.Marriage is more than a piece of paper or temporary commitment that should be ended based on minor or even major differences or problems. Marriage is hard and takes work on both sides. Two becoming one is not easy, but very rewarding.
Sometimes You Are Going To Feel Lost, Alone, And Directionless
Sometimes you will have to rewrite texts and e-mails thirty times before erasing everything and decide to stay in a bubble. Sometimes you feel overwhelmed by loneliness and search for comfort on the Internet. At other times, you will reach everyone who listens. Collect text or dozens of tastes on a selfie in seconds, and get excited for a split second before they feel misery again.
Sometimes you feel overwhelming emotion. You will cry until your contacts come off. You will look in the mirror as tears run down your face, and the reflection will make your stomach firmer. At other times, you will feel numb. Your mind becomes a void. You do not care about anything, let alone yourself.
Sometimes you skip your showers and let your nail polish and roots grow, because the idea of taking care of you does not even come to your mind. At other times, the little things you have taken for granted, the things that really pleased you, like sending your best friends and eating a full meal, will become invincible missions.
Sometimes you can press the alarm one, two or three times before turning it off completely so you can sleep until noon. At other times, you will fix the ceiling because the ghosts of your past are glittering around you, mocking your memories and preventing you from resting.
Sometimes you will have dark thoughts. They will sabotage themselves. They will repel the people who matter most to you. At other times, you call friends (or relatives) at two in the morning. You will catch the shoulders. They will drain all your feelings. You do not want to let go of people who take care of you. They do not want to part for a second.
Sometimes you wonder about your goal. You will feel lost, alone and without direction. And these feelings will be so insistent, a distraction from all that was important to you, will make you wonder if you will feel so forever. You will wonder if you will ever come out of the rut that caused a life of disappointment.
But even if your hope is gone, you must continue to chug. You must believe in yourself because the phrase you heard millions of times is true. It’s better. They will see the sunlight again. You will feel relieved. You will have renewed confidence. You will recognize your own value.
Words Matter
Never say mean words out of anger. Your anger will pass. But your mean words can scar a person for life. So use kind words or be silent.
We have all gone through some obstacles at a certain point of our lives in the name of survival. We often tend to deny them as they are difficult to deal with. However, as difficult as they are to bear, it is imperative if we want to live a fulfilling life.
Happiness is based on embracing and accepting the negative aspects of life. Denying them turns a blind eye to reality.
#1 Worrying is useless
Worrying is created in the mind and really doesn’t offer any value to our lives. Will worrying change what’s going to happen? If not, then it’s a waste of time.
“Worrying does not accomplish anything. Even if you worry twenty times more, it will not change the situation of the world. In fact, your anxiety will only make things worse. Even though things are not as we would like, we can still be content, knowing we are trying our best and will continue to do so.
If we don’t know how to breathe, smile, and live every moment of our life deeply, we will never be able to help anyone. I am happy in the present moment. I do not ask for anything else. I do not expect any additional happiness or conditions that will bring about more happiness.
#2 If we want to be happy, we must see reality for what it is
We need to see reality for what it is. We need to be open minded and open to the truth, instead of focusing on our own unrealistic opinions. Many people choose to remain positive by avoiding negative situations, but what we need to do is to confront them.
#3 We need to accept change actively
We always have to remember that change is the only constant. The most basic example of this saying is the change from day to night and night to day on a daily basis. There is nothing that remains unchanged in the world, which is why it is only painful when we hold on to things as they are and cannot find the strength to accept change as it happens.
As we grow up, one also has to find the maturity to be secure enough to embrace change because of its unavoidable nature.
#4 The root of suffering is pursuing temporary feeling
Most people crave feelings of happiness, such as joy, euphoria, and excitement. However, these feelings are temporary and the pursuit of them turns into suffering. True happiness comes from inner peace and it is based on a feeling of being satisfied and happy with your true self. Yuval Noah Harari explains that people can stop suffering only when they understand the impermanent nature of their feelings and stop craving them.
#5 A relationship with our creator and savior is the path to reducing suffering
Reading the Bible, praying, and studying the ways of Jesus, which emphasize love and acceptance of others, compassion, honesty, and the ability to forgive. The Bible teaches us everything we need for a for filling life of love and connection to others. My faith has been a life line and source of strength in my suffering through trichotillomania, bipolar depression and mania, and anxiety.
What Not to Say
Boundaries
“I Love You” From The Perspective Of A Narcissist
To this disenchanted generation, ‘I Love You’ are worn out words. They’re said too much but not enough. They mean different things in different contexts, but they always carry a special significance.
Sometimes, the words are said by people who don’t fully grasp their meaning, by those who are completely self-absorbed, people who cannot love anyone other than themselves.
We all have encountered such dangerously toxic people in our lives, whose definition of love is control and obsession instead of care and understanding. If you have been unfortunate enough to be loved by a narcissist, you will definitely relate to this letter written from the perspective of someone incapable of thinking beyond themselves.
“Dear Codependent Partner,
I will never say these words to you in reality because if I did it would reveal how I deliberately exploit the world for the only thing I care about – my benefit. Since I only care about myself, I need you to carry all the load of the relationship while I reap the benefits of it.
When I say I love you, I really do mean it though. I love how hard you work for me. I love that I have forced you to compromise about everything to keep me happy. I love that you do everything for me but you have given up expecting me to return that courtesy.
I love that I have the power to reduce you to tears, make you feel small and insignificant, and gloat in how powerful that makes me feel. I know you let me walk over you, and I keep pulling you down so that you don’t realize you deserve a lot better than what I give you.
I love how I can blame you for gas-lighting or just call you crazy when you bring up things I don’t want to discuss. Also, I love that I can keep expecting more and more from you while you keep lowering your expectations of me. It makes my life so easy when you let me walk all over you!
I love how I can take your innocence and kindness for granted, using it for my thrill and pleasure. I love how I can always keep all your focus on alleviating my pain and discomfort. Nothing ever is enough; I don’t feel loved enough, respected, admired and cared for enough. And all of this misery I dump on you to fix.
It is not that I don’t know that you need support, love and care; I just don’t think it is as important as my feelings. I am the priority for the both of us, and that is really all I want. It is never about the closeness, empathy or connection you want. It is never about how I hurt you. It is always about how I can control you and make you feel like you are not doing enough.
I am superior to you, and I love you as one loves a precious possession. You are just like all the other nice things I want to own and I love the envy others feel when they see you on my arm.
Since I am constantly hurting others, my brain suffers from self-loathing 24/7. This is why I love spending time with you. I love feeding off your emotional support, and I love hating you for needing you constantly. I love blaming you for my own narcissistic tendencies.
I love you because I am scared and tired of the self-loathing inside me. All the feelings I am too scared to have, the neediness, the emotions, everything I call you weak and crazy for, makes me love you because I feed off of you. I love you because I can treat you like a punching bag when that deep weak part of me threatens to open up. You keep all of it at bay and I take you for granted because I hate that I need you as much as I do.
Of course the day you realize all of this, you will leave me. So, I will never tell you, and I will always keep you hoping that I will become a better person, but in reality I never will. Only if you walk away from me, will my complacency ever get displaced. The day you stop caring, I will fall and I will learn my lesson. Yet I know that day will never come, because I keep you so tangled up in my concerns that you can never think about yours. And that is just perfect for me.
With my endless self-love,
Your Narcissist Other.”
This letter is of course fictional, and a true narcissist would never be this candid even to himself. But if you have had a toxic partner in your life, you will know how important this kind of honesty is to help you forgive yourself and move on.
Source: simplecapacity.com
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