As always, this is an incredibly self-centered post. The site is called “Tinu Stuff” people. Get used to it, LOL!
Seriously though, the reason I have a special site that acts as the public side of my personal journal is for three reasons.
First, I like to keep written records, both on and offline, of how I feel, what I think and how I came to certain conclusions, etc., to help with my own evolution. I’m always attempting to make myself into the best me. This helps.
Second, pure entertainment value. It amazes me how many people just enjoy seeing what is in someone else’s mind and heart.
Third, I’m hoping that some small part of this blog will be a help, inspiration or warning to someone. Even if it’s one person. I know that there have been several times where reading someone else’s thoughts on a situation they were in helped me immensely.
Today I’m thinking about what would make my relationships in the future more successful. And I’ve come up with several things.
First, in the beginning, I have to start keeping all thoughts about the situation to myself unless someone should expressly ask. I’ve become conscious of the fact that I vacillate between complete radio silence and bursts of emotion, and that it’s potentially quite unnerving. It’s usually because when I meet people, I watch and circle them for weeks or months before actually engaging. Then, in the few circumstances where I feel I’ve met someone I can connect with, I’m so happy about it that my filter turns completely off.
The problem is that while some people welcome this wholeheartedly and with relief that they can now do the same, other people don’t find it as cool. On top of that, I often do it in writing. And if you’ve been here or to any other site of mine before, you can see that I can sit down and write a 1000 word stream-of-consciousness brain dump in less than an hour, and read one in less than 3 minutes.
I easily forget that not everyone is a speed reader or particularly fond of reading long prose. Ah, well. In business, I learned to write for people who scan. Not so much in my personal life — if anything I’m more verbose.
Secondly, I really have to think about what I truly want in a relationship versus what I think I’m supposed to have.
Yes, I want to fall in love. But I don’t want, need or expect love to be all-consuming. I want to have a life outside my primary partnership and I want my partner to do the same. That’s how we can keep things fresh – space and lots of it. I believe true love is about freedom.
Yes, I want to get married. But I don’t want to have a traditional marriage. Not to say I wouldn’t adore being a house wife. I’m down for all of it expect cleaning, so I’d probably keep my business open part-time to guarantee we’d have household help. I’m not damaging my health for anyone, ever again.
What I mean by non-traditional is that I’m not a traditionalist in most respects, as far as relationships are concerned. I’m from a culture where a man and a woman go to a party together and everyone dances with everyone else’s spouse. I thought this was normal until I went to college and faced issues of possessiveness and jealousy whenever I was what I felt was a little flirty.
That’s really the shallow end of the pool though. I believe men can be tender and still masculine, gentlemen and still respect equality. I also don’t believe that you can or should possess another person, outside the romantic sense of the word. I believe we are brought together to love each other as we are, not “fix” each other. I believe in freedom, on both sides of the fence… while I want to be part of a couple that does things together, I don’t believe we have to, or should want to, spend all our free time together.
I’m a creative person, and when I get into my creative space, I need to be alone. That can last for hours sometimes and I need to be with someone who is okay with that, or better yet, just not around certain times of days or days of the week so I can habituate myself into summoning as much of my inspiration as I can in that alone time.
That’s not to say I want to end up with someone I don’t see. Not at all. Just that I’m the type of person who could be with a basketball player who was on the road for weeks at a time, as long as the quality of the time we have together is superior and prioritized.
Actually, judging by past relationships, I think I would thrive on it. And I also see how not having those options sometimes made me feel smothered. I was once deeply in love with someone who wanted to be with me every day, all day, no matter what. I appreciated his devotion, but was frustrated with the fact that we didn’t ever DO anything once we were together. So we had all of the time but none of the spark. No intellectual stimulation, no conversation, no exploration or travel.
Yeah, there was the sex, but since I was better at it than he was, that kinda sucked after a while – not horribly.
But have you ever had your favorite dish, prepared the exact same way for three weeks in a row, at every meal. Trust me by the time you get to week three you want to punch newborn kittens in the face.
I also feel that freedom is important here. Over the years, I’ve found that I’m not so much a jealous or possessive woman at all, it’s just the way I react when I feel the relationship is insecure. Once the declarations of love come into play and are reinforced with some regularity, and my position as his lady is secure, I get very laid back as far as feeling secure in the relationship.
In fact, I’ve come to realize that I’m actually not the jealous type at all when I’m feeling balanced. I was just unbalanced so often, in so many of the wrong relationships that I thought it was the norm.
This is important because I want to be married to someone who is ambitious or has some kind of purpose to their life with respect to adding to the world, not just living in it and taking from it. Nine times out of ten, that means you’ll be looking at a creative type, or a social type, both of which have to deal with either fans or making social connections.
And if you’re constantly asking “Who the hell is Christine!?” and waving business cards in the man’s face? Probably not a good match. When I realize that this is what I wanted, and how the way I related was incongruent, I fixed it fast.
Now, granted, in my last major relationship, I fixed it TOO much, because who seriously goes for marrying a guy with 6 kids by four mothers, who lives in proximity to two of them, and can barely support themselves? And on top of that wanted to keep me a secret until we were at least 2 kids deep?
Yeah, I’m talking about Droplet. Let’s not even get into THAT.
I’d prefer it be an artist – it’s been a lifelong dream to find a way to marry a poet or a painter – or better yet be one – and still live a comfortable life.
I want – need – to be with someone who wants to travel. Who enjoys it. Because one of my favorite things in the wide world is to hotel hop for a couple of weeks and live off room service. In about five years, I’ll probably try to figure out how to turn that into a career.
There was a time when I used to make up reasons to travel, just because I had the money. Other days I would say I was traveling, and go to a hotel in my home city instead. I adored having a good reason to hotel hop in Vegas.
And I don’t need someone else to be there. I can have a perfectly fantastic time on my own, not to mention that since I can work from anywhere with a high speed connection, I never need miss work because I thought it’d be a nice day to island-hop. If I get bored, I just go out and meet people. Folks just like to chat with me for some reason. I’m told I have one of those faces.
There are physical and personality characteristics too.
Yep. I have a list and I’m ain’t settling. There are certain things I’ll give up to get other things, but some stuff is mandatory.
I’ll post that whole list later.
The point of all this is, I’m starting to see how deep my issue of choosing the wrong men goes.
Whenever I chose someone physically unavailable, who couldn’t be near me, it’s because I wanted to be in love without the responsibility of doing anything about it.
When I would chose someone who was emotional unavailable, it had a lot to do with how much I valued myself and my belief that I was worthy of love. And it was often because I wasn’t ready for the level of commitment – and I never will be because I want to be in love and married BUT I don’t want to be in the standard relationship….
I need a man who is away sometimes, whether that means marrying an entrepreneur who doesn’t work out of the home as I do, or being with some salesman who travels the world for his job and takes me with him.
Now, choosing someone technically unavailable must be sub-conscious. I’m so ready to find a person to be with and stop dating and starting over. I want to build a future with one person, in a relationship we define together, rather than one we find ourselves prisoners to because “that’s what people do.”
For a while, I even talked myself out of finding a man who was a friend to me first, simply because none of us hurts our true friends the way we do lovers. That friendship is the bedrock that I believe takes you through the hard times. When you know that other person is your captain or first mate, that it’s the two of you teamed up against the world, it adds so much to life.
And no, those aren’t all the things I’ve decided I want. Matter of fact, tomorrow or Tuesday I’ll put up the list – so if you find him you can tell him I’m looking.
Hm. Actually I might not be at the moment. I have one guy I’m looking really seriously at, and another waiting in the wings behind him (if he acts right), just in case.
Which I deserve a wrist slap for, I know but it’s not like I’m doing this on purpose.
Besides, it’s too early for me to tell with this person. The instant he says he’s mine, all other bets are off. So I’ll put it up for entertainment value, ‘kay?