I’ve been hearing this a lot lately and I want to talk about it. I do not think I personally have trust issues but a lot of people struggle with it so I think it’s an important topic. How do you know if you have trust issues? Well here are some signs. You don’t believe anything anyone tells you and you jump to the worst possible situation as an explanation. There is a very thin line between healthy skepticism and having trust issues but in general; try to evaluate where your distrust is coming from. If it’s coming from the behavior of a person in your past then you need to work on separating what has happened with what is currently happening.

For example, let’s say a potential significant other that you have been interacting with for the past few weeks doesn’t respond to a message you sent them for three hours. When they finally do; they apologize and say they were working. Do you A) believe them or B) not believe them. If you chose B, why did you choose B? Is it because you had an ex say that for three weeks in a row and you found out later that he/she was cheating on you with their coworker? If you don’t believe the person currently in your life because of something that happened in your past without considering what you know about that person, then you might have trust issues.

But not believing something someone says does not necessarily mean that you have trust issues. I am in no way suggesting that you should blindly trust everyone. For example, if you chose B) do not believe, because two days ago they informed you that they’d lost their job; then you should definitely be skeptical of the excuse that they were working. But the point is that you evaluated their statement based on what you know about them, and that, my friends, is logic.

In general, I will pick A) believe them, because I don’t care enough about the promptness of their response to struggle with whether to trust them or not. But even if I did care; constant communication wouldn’t make me trust someone more or less. If he’s a two pump man, he could’ve cheated during the five minutes he didn’t respond. And if he didn’t respond for an hour, mathematically, he could’ve slept with 20 different women. And he’s responding every five minutes to keep you from guessing that he’s cheating. This thought process does nothing more than cause your head to spiral with worry and you have no reasonable way of verifying or disproving what he did within every five minutes. So my point is that no amount of communication or validation is going to help you with your trust issues; it just puts pressure on your partner to compensate for an issue you won’t deal with.

Now I know what you’re thinking: But I’ve been hurt in the past. They lied. They cheated. They stole. They took advantage. I get it. It’s happened to me too. It’s pretty much happened to everyone. You aren’t special because you got hurt. Everyone gets hurt at some point in their life and most people let it continue to negatively affect their current relationships for years after. You may think that putting up a wall protects you and keeps you from getting hurt but it’s doing way more harm than good. Not only does it fester and slowly chip at your positive view of the world, ultimately destroying your happiness but it also creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. Have you ever noticed how people who constantly talk about getting cheated on are always getting cheated on? Or what about the person that is always claiming to get abandoned? They seem to not have any real friends.

Think of the game I-spy that some of us played when we were kids. “I-spy something green.” Your mind automatically filters out everything in your eyesight that isn’t green. You focus only on the green objects; ignoring the colors of everything else to search for what you’re looking for and for a second, it feels like EVERYTHING IS GREEN! It’s the same thing with how we interpret human behavior. You will almost always see what you’re looking for. When you learn to trust, you won’t filter out the good and focus on the bad, you’ll see the whole beautiful picture and then you won’t see the bad as necessarily bad anymore just as part of the experience. It’s a long process, dedicating yourself to trusting and focusing on the here and now and evaluating the people in front of you based on their own merit instead of how someone else treated you, but I promise; it’s worth it.

What do I mean by control? When you are in a relationship or talking to someone or dating someone whatever the title is, and things are going great and then all of a sudden the other person tries to impact your interaction with your family, friends and your hobbies. For example, one night early on in the relationship you go out dancing with your girlfriends and you get a text message from your current love interest that says “Video chat me when youre home so I know you’re safe and didn’t go home with anyone *sticks out tongue emoji* *kissy emoji* lol.” And if you’re like me, you instantly have this thought. Fuck you I’ll take someone home if I fucking want to, we aren’t official and you don’t own me. Ok, calm down you rebellious psycho, I might think trying to reason with myself. So I have a second thought. Ok it’s actually sort of sweet that he’s worried about me and honestly I would like to video chat with him because I’ve really enjoyed our chats so far. So I respond, “Of course I’d love to chat with you later!” and you put away the phone and continue chatting with girls in the bathroom or continue dancing.

But then 2 hours later, it’s 3am and you find yourself waltzing in the dining room of Waffle House because we are dancers and we will literally dance anywhere. But while you’re dancing, you miss three of his calls and you don’t respond quickly enough to his message saying “Are you ok? I’m getting worried.” After sitting down you’re laughing and the waitress is placing your waffles on the table so you return his call. “Hey!!! Yes I’m fine! I’m at waffle house!!” You say excitedly. He’s quiet. “Why are you so out of breathe?” He asks. You laugh. “Oh, Kaitlyn and I were just dancing in the dining room at waffle house! We had to cuz a waltz came on!” He’s quiet for another moment. Yes can I have some more salsa please. You say to the waitress. You turn your attention back to the conversation on the phone. He hasn’t said anything. “Are you ok?” Finally you notice he’s acting different. He responds quickly. “Yes, just call me when you get home.” And he hangs up.

Fast forward three months down the line. You no longer dance. You no longer go out with your friends. And the only time you do go out is with him to maybe see a movie. Maybe he’s not that bad. Maybe he still lets you go dance but he has to be there with you and he has to see you within a certain amount of songs. Or maybe he doesn’t let you dance with other guys at all. Even the gay ones. Because you know, you’re just so hot, you’d turn them. Ok I’m harping a little on dancing but it’s a major hobby of mine and the minute someone tries to control it. I have a red flag going off. I love dancing. And if you truly loved me or were interested in me then you wouldn’t get in the way of it. And you wouldn’t because you have a self esteem that is better than a thirteen year old girl worried that her breasts aren’t going to come in.

Obviously, I escalated this example but that’s because it’s not that far from a relationship that we have ALL experienced. I have literally never met anyone that hasn’t complained about being in a previous relationship where the other person got controlling. And it always escalates because they start out small. They start with a small stream of control flowing down from the mountains but over time, this small stream erodes your solid ground and turns into a raging river. But you’re okay with the river now. You convince yourself that it’s out of concern or love. They wouldn’t ask so much of you or worry about losing you so much if they didn’t really love you. And then after some more time, you look back at the river and it’s turned into the fucking Grand Canyon. Somehow, they managed to carve a huge hole out of your life and you don’t even recognize yourself or your personality anymore.

I’ve had a relationship that carved a Grand Canyon into me and it was hard to climb back out. I’m still climbing to be honest. I don’t regret the Grand Canyon; it made me stronger because I had to force myself to climb out and figure out who I really was. And in that process, I learned that I shouldn’t tolerate a stream of control. I shouldn’t even tolerate the first drop of control. Because control and manipulation is NOT an expression of love or interest. Let me repeat that. It is NOT AN EXPRESSION OF LOVE!!!

How is love expressed? It depends on the person but the prevailing idea is associated with Gary Chapman’s book titled The five Love Languages: How to express heartfelt commitment to your mate. I link explaining the five languages in better detail will be included below this article but to summarize. Chapman says that humans express love in five distinct ways. We might have one or two that we use dominantly and the others we use rarely. They are gifts, acts of service, words of affirmation, quality time and physical touch. When we buy that tshirt for our Dad, we are expressing the gifts love language. When we watch our friends cat over the weekend, we are expressing acts of service. When we tell our mom that she looks beautiful today, we are expressing words of affirmation. When we set aside date night with our boyfriend we are expressing quality time and last but not least when our friend is crying and without saying anything, we wrap our arms around them and pull them in for a hug; we are expressing physical touch. Sometimes we use more than one at a time but note; not any one of those languages is there embedded “control your partner because you’re afraid of losing them.”

But control in a relationship is often seen as an expression of love because it’s disguised under protection or glossed over because they say something like “well I’ve been cheated on a lot in my past so I have trust issues.” And because you love them, you don’t want to give them a reason not to trust you, so you accommodate their pettiness by meeting their relationship demands. Do not validate their insecurities by compromising yourself.

So if control and manipulation isn’t an expression of love, then what is it? Why is it so bad if it’s disguised under protection? A controlling person is the single most petrifying sign in a relationship because it is actually an expression of a lot more hidden things that that person is dealing with. Which include but are not limited too; deeply embedded insecurities, emotional imbalances, an inability to love themselves or an unhealthy desire for perfection. These issues corrode a relationship and it has nothing to do with you, except that your presence in their lives feeds their ego and they want to keep from losing you because they know that their ego wouldn’t be able to handle it. You are a projection of what they value and their self esteem believes they lack. If they can hold onto you. If you are theirs then they have this thing that they desperately want to have themselves. The ironic part is that they will tear down the part of you that they value and want themselves because they are that controlled by their ego and jealousy. If they value beauty and they think they are ugly. They will pick that one imperfection you have and harp on it every day until you no longer think you’re beautiful and you are theirs to control. If you have a great family, and their family is shit, they will point out every flaw within your family so that you separate yourself from them and then guess what, they control you. Is this starting to make sense?

We equate relationships and love so much with control that some of us are afraid to be in them. I never try to control anyone. And I especially don’t try to control someone I love. I don’t ask you to text me every two hours. I don’t make you feel bad for doing something without me. I don’t set a time limit for a relationship to progress and I won’t even ask you to be with just me.

Because the thing about people is that the less control you try to place on them the more you see how they truly are because they don’t feel the need to hide or lie to you. And the more honest that they are with you, the more you’ll understand them and appreciate them for everything that they are. The good and the bad. Let go of any control you think you have over your partner and let them be who they are. Because you don’t have that control. It’s just an illusion. That’s why people get so upset when they get cheated on. And they lose all ability to trust people. Please. You lost trust in yourself to be able to control people. So now you’re afraid. You can’t control anyone, no matter how much you want to. So let it go. And love people for who they are.

(Disclaimer: I’m not saying get back with people who cheated on you. I’m just saying let go of the illusion that you can keep them from doing it because people do what they want. And if they do, just move on.)

Inspiration article:

The five languages of love: https://www.5lovelanguages.com/

To be vulnerable means to expose yourself to the possibility of being attacked or harmed physically or emotionally. Most of the time, it goes wrong. And we learn to avoid situations where we are vulnerable. For example, when you were six, learning to ride a bike and you didn’t wear your knee guards, you left your knees vulnerable to injuries should you fall. It only took one fall for you to learn to wear your guards and protect your knees from scratches and bruises. That was a lesson in vulnerability that you had to learn to protect yourself physically. But sometimes we learn lessons on vulnerability with emotional protection. Think about that one time you told someone you loved them or you were falling for them and they backed away and told you not too. From that day on, you learned to hesitate before stating your feelings for someone, waiting for the moment that they will be able to accept it.

But now think about the few times being vulnerable worked in your favor. The time I asked one of the best dancers for a dance, risking embarrassment and rejection and instead of being turned away, he said yes! Or even just starting to dance is such a vulnerable thing we put ourselves through. Any sport where you have to perform in front of others is a risk in vulnerability, and even though we lose a lot and mess up a lot; the act of being brave and trying leaves us with no better feeling. There is no better cure for our self esteem than to do something in spite of our fear. Starting this blog was a huge step for me in overcoming my vulnerability. I used to only show a couple people a year my writing and I was even nervous about that. And now, people can read my writing outside of my control. That concept is absolutely terrifying, even if only a couple a year read it who choose to read it.

Being vulnerable is the key to truly loving who you are, finding joy and experiencing real intimate relationships. According to this website,  https://www.girlfriendcircles.com/blog/index.php/2014/10/5-types-of-vulnerability-its-way-more-than-skeletons-in-your-closet, there are five different types of vulnerability. The first on is new ways of interacting. This is inviting friends to a paint class or going to a writing group or even going on a first date in years after your divorce. The second type is new areas of conversation. We tend to put people in conversation boxes. I speak with Joe about motorcycles. I speak to pastor about Jesus. I speak to Christina about traveling. But what if we switched this up? Talk to your pastor about traveling, talk to joe about Jesus and motorcyles with Christina. Sometimes people wont know anything and sometimes you’ll learn something. The third type is areas of shame and insecurity. I think this is what we typically associate with being vulnerable. But think about those things that have happened to you or that you’ve done that you’ve never told anyone for fear of what people will think and try to talk about them with someone that you trust. There is healing and forgiveness in being vulnerable. The fourth type is sort of an odd one and I’m not sure if I agree with it but perhaps you will understand. The fourth one deals with being afraid to speak about your accomplishments or achievements for fear that you will come off as arrogant or that you wont fit in.

                The fifth one and most definitely the one that I struggle with is: asking for what you prefer or need. I am so terrible and afraid of doing this. I’m afraid it will push people away and that what I need is too much to ask of people. I’m afraid that they will think I’m weird or not understand. And because of that, I mostly just don’t ask for what I need. It’s so much easier to stay quiet than to figure out the right time and how to word it. For example, I need a lot of alone time. Even though I consider myself a social extrovert. I require time to research, read, write and play calming video games like Minecraft. If I don’t get that alone time, I turn into the grouchiest person you will ever meet. I suddenly hate everyone and everything irritates me. But I often ignore that need because I don’t want my friends/significant other to think I’m weird or antisocial for needing time away from them. I worry that they think I don’t like them or don’t want to see them and because I value those relationships more than I do my own happiness; I push myself way past my breaking point of alone time needed. I wish I didn’t need it. I often think if I push myself maybe I can grow out of it but that doesn’t look promising. So, I need to figure out a way to be vulnerable and tell people what I need and hope that they understand and listen.

I also can’t stand conversations that don’t have any substance. If you text me, “wyd” or “good morning,” I’m instantly irritated. Don’t message me that. Now I have to take the time out of something I’m focused on to reply back “nothing” or “morning” so that you don’t think I hate you or am ignoring you. Because I don’t want to ignore you. On some level I value the friendship but if you aren’t saying anything to me that has substance or a purpose, it’s highly likely I just won’t respond. But this is an odd thing to need or prefer and to voice it comes off as rude. Like how do you tell someone whining that you don’t respond to them that they need to be more interesting without hurting their feelings even more?

These are just two examples that I know hold me back from being close to someone since I’m too scared or worried to voice what I need unless they give it to me naturally. But I challenge you to think about the ways that you could be more vulnerable and try to act on them, even if they are small. Start small and move towards breaking what is preventing you from having true joy and intimacy.

Also watch the documentary on Netflix titled Brene Brown about vulnerability. It inspired me to write this blog and I think you will find it interesting.

For the first time a few days ago, someone recognized me from my writing and I have to say it’s probably the best compliment I’ve ever received. I haven’t written in awhile because I couldn’t decide on the topic. I wanted to write about something interesting and at the very least entertaining. So I am going to go with a discussion piece about relationships. I’m not in any way claiming to be an expert or to be giving advice. This is merely a thought provoking article about romantic relationships with a dash of dating in the dance community. Disclaimer: This is not about one single personal relationship I have had, it is a general discussion from experience and observation.

One general thing that I have noticed is that we expect too much and put way too much pressure on our romantic relationships. We demand a certain amount of attention or affection. We expect to be contacted within certain time frames. We want it to progress and move along with meeting parents, moving in together, etc within a given deadline and we follow all of these rules about relationships that read on social media and then we wonder why relationships feel like so much work? Because we make them work. We push ourselves to go through the motions or do things we don’t want to do to get that promotion in a romantic relationship. And if we don’t get that relationship promotion in a timely manner we are upset and seek advice about how to hurry things along. We expect all of this control and progression in romantic relationships and we are told to marry our best friends and yet, our friendships are completely different.

For example the frequency of contact isn’t controlled nearly as much in friendships. Some friends we see almost everyday, a few we might message everyday, others we don’t see for months, and maybe one we don’t see for years but whenever you do see each other, it’s like you never stopped talking. The point is, every single friendship is different and everyone is completely ok with that. Friendships have very little pressure. Sometimes we have to support each other or go out of our way to maintain the friendship but mostly, the relationship continues naturally. When I feel like calling up my best friends because something is bothering me or I miss talking to them, I do it. Maybe weeks after our last call or maybe I had just called them the day before. But it doesn’t really matter, we don’t spend 20 minutes complaining that they haven’t given us enough attention. We just talk about what we want to talk about and then we go about our day. Most friendships build up to spending more time together and doing increasingly inconvenient favors for one another, but in romantic relationships; you’re supposed to devote all of this time and effort from DAY ONE.

I have some of the best relationships with my best friends because the relationship grew naturally, sure they’ve gone through tests of time or a few disagreements, but eventually, we learned to trust one other and know that we would be in each other’s lives for a long time. Maybe romantic relationships would be easier if we stopped putting so much pressure and so many expectations on them and we just let them progress naturally. Take out the advice columns that list 10 ways to get your boyfriend to marry you or those dozens of memes we see everyday on social media telling us to “pick the guy that does blah blah blah” and every thought and judgement about how relationships should progress and just be patient for it to happen intuitively. 

But I understand that it’s difficult to wait. Most of us want to be happy with one person and build a life together. But we have to be patient until we find that relationship that we want and trust just like we would a best friend. Of course I am scared that I’ll be waiting for so long that I’ll never find what I want but I read a statistic the other day that said that 60% of couples that get married at the age of 18 will get a divorce, while only 30% of couples that get married at age 23 will get a divorce and a mere 5% of couples that get married at age 35 will get a divorce. What that tells me is that, as hard as it is, waiting to be sure is the best thing for me and it should be everyone’s top priority. We shouldn’t judge people for waiting to be sure. There isn’t something wrong with someone because they are waiting. It takes way more determination to wait and focus on yourself and the things you love to do and ignore the judging eyes of ‘why hasn’t she settled down yet’ than to just settle.

And speaking of doing things we love to do, I wanted to talk a little bit about dating in the dance world. It has been a long-discussed topic amongst dancers whether they should date another dancer or not. We are around each other almost four times a week so we get comfortable with each other. We are passionate and we are talented. It’s a recipe for frequent relationships to pop up. And a lot of them stay together; their relationship grows out of a mutual love for dancing and they understand one another’s desire to dance ALL OF THE TIME. And the jealousy is minimized because they understand that we also just love to dance and hang out with our friends. These relationships can be great and they have the potential to last but if it doesn’t last; now you have another ex in the dancing community and then eventually everyone has dated everyone. Which is why a lot of dancers don’t date other dancers. They want dancing to be about dancing and nothing else, so they date outside of the dancing community. But with that benefit; comes a cost. For instance, non dancers or beginner dancers may not understand you or your desire to dance. They may get jealous or worried about you dancing with other attractive talented people that you seem really close to spinning and dipping and being lifted into the air, while they stand on the sidelines struggling to do a basic turn from front to back. They start to feel bad that they can’t dance as well as you or as some of your friends and even though we console them and tell them that they are the one we want; insecurities and resentment soon develops from at least one side. From the dancer, if he/she stops dancing to appease their partner or from the non dancer if their anxiety consumes them. So what should we do then? Date a dancer or a non dancer? I don’t have the answer. But I do think that even though we’ve all experienced or witnessed the struggles from both perspectives, it’s important that we talk about them so that we understand each other and adapt our viewpoints so that in the end, we can find some happiness and achieve our goals.

I haven’t really decided what this blog is going to focus on. But I think, like myself, it’s going to have difficulties focusing on anything specific. Some articles might be a rant over a hot topic or something that I read that irritated me, others might be short stories and others might be writing exercises that I just wrote to get myself out of a creative slump and basically make no sense. This post, my first blog post, is a rant on the meme I read on Facebook that said, “when those texts start getting shorter with you they’re getting longer with someone else.” I am by no means a relationship expert. I have no idea what I’m doing in my own relationships, romantic or not, about 80% of the time. However, I think this concept is ridiculous from a literal perspective.

The literal meaning is setting the relationship expectation that you must always send me long text messages, or you must be cheating/interested in someone else. I know that when I read that message, my first thought was to evaluate the length of the text messages between my significant other and myself. I realized that they weren’t ever that long. But that we do spend hours on the phone when we can’t see each other and hours talking when we can see each other. So then why am I evaluating our relationship based on the length of text messages that he sends me? I shouldn’t be. Because that is ridiculous. We don’t evaluate our friendships with that precedent. Sometimes my best friend and I wont talk for two weeks because we are busy or something else is going on in our lives. According to that meme, they have now replaced me as a close friend. So then why do we hold our relationships to this crazy standard that you must always send me long text messages? We often expect way more from our romantic relationships than our friendships, which I think is also ridiculous but I’ll save that for a different post.

Now most of you are going to say, Brittani, you are taking this to literally. It’s just a meme. Yes, I’m frequently guilty of taking things to literally. Ok fine, metaphorically what the statement is alluding to is that we should pay attention to the responsiveness of our significant other and to the non-romantic relationships that we spend time investing on. This concept I agree with. The relationships that I’ve been in that have given me the most satisfaction and fulfillment are the ones that I can rely on them to be there for me when I need them. If I send a message to my boyfriend, even if he’s super busy, he’ll send me a message saying, “I’m stuck in a conference, I will respond as soon as I’m free.” Or to my best friends that I trust with all my secrets if I call them and they can’t talk, they always call me back later. But if I messaged them saying, no this is an emergency, I’m going through a crisis, I can count on them to at least attempt to drop everything and contact me. Think back to all of the relationships that you yearned for, begging them to pay attention to you. They left you on seen for 10 hours over a simple question like “are you free tomorrow to get some dinner?” And you’re turning away other plans on the hopes that they will say they want to see you. Miserable and dark times. If you are still chasing after people like that then I feel for you. And this message is for you. Don’t try hard for someone that is giving you that awful sad feeling of being ignored in the pit of your stomach. Drop them. Then show them what they missed out on.

Anyways, I’m getting distracted, my whole point is that we read things like this and we immediately evaluate our relationships based on one dimension concerning the length of our text messages. Which I don’t think is a healthy thing to do. If someone sent me that message, my immediate response would probably be something like “Well then be less boring.”

What are your thoughts? Is there anything you would add to my evaluation of this otherwise harmless Facebook meme?

Thank you for reading,

RedRiverGirl