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SimplyMichael -> BossyShoeBitch (12/18/2011 9:50:55 AM)
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As a few of you know, BossyShoeBitch and I had a not long enough torrid love affair that lasted for a few years. Less of you know of the occasional bitter fights we have had, but the fuel for those fights was the love (in the Philia sense) we had/have for each other. It has been a struggle at times for both of us to come back to the table so to speak, we have both had to struggle with different issues with maintaining the friendship.
So with that bit of preamble, I have two goals in writing this, one as a bit of ode to her and the other to extole the virtues of when possible, remaining friends with those who you shared deep relationships with. So, let me begin with BossyShoeBitch herself and then on to the virtues.
A few are still here from the days when I first appeared on CM but those who were know how much I have changed, certainly I hope for the better. Much of that growth is either directly or indirectly the result of her. When I write something gutting someone, I can hear her voice telling me to “be nice” as that is a trait that is deeply important to her and I often delete my first draft or two until I feel I am at least being more constructive. But that is simple stuff. Part of why she left me was because at the time, it would be charitable to describe my life as “static” and probably better to call it “slowly sliding downhill” and the deep and crushing pain of losing her caused me to spend the next half decade pushing myself to be better, to improve my lot in life. I had been successful before meeting her, owned a house, had a nice job etc, but things had changed and when I met her I was staying at my mom’s, working a dead end low paying job, and half assed going to school. She isn’t perfect either, those things ate at her, ate at her desire for me and she remained silent until it killed her desire for me. I have pushed her to be more open, more honest with her loved ones ever since and she has made great progress and I am deeply proud of that accomplishment on her part.
So, in those years I have pushed hard to become a success, I went into sales and have really found my path. Her approval is still important to me and she has often, even probably when she really didn’t care or was pissed at me, taken the time to show her pride in my small accomplishments on the path to where I am now. I actually blew her away the other day when I told her how far I had come. We sort of shared a personally relevant benchmark that I had been shooting for and I will blow past that early this year.
However, money is meaningless without real happiness in your life and there too she has helped me. I had worked out a lot of anger issues long before meeting her and we had an emotionally rather perfect relationship, or so I like to think. However, dealing with her AFTER we broke up was a nightmare of old issues. Resentment when I didn’t get what I wanted/expected from our friendship often drove me to lash out. She rarely if ever lashed back, she might step back, but she delt with my ugly side with the class and grace people her know and love her for. Took me a few years to start seeing it and a few years to bring it under control but in so doing it helped me in other areas of my life as well. In fact, in some ways her being my ex was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. In striving to fix the things that prevented us from being friends, pushed me to grow, made me face things I would not have had to deal with or would have been difficult to recognize otherwise.
Another important lesson was about happiness. I am hoping I can capture this in words but being with her was one of the happiest times in my life. I had an amazing beautiful woman who loved me deeply and things were perfect in my life. So when I lost ALL of that, I was the most miserable I had ever been and that sort of emotional pain is a wonderful catalyst for growth even if it experiencing it is dreadful. In hindsight, I realized that I was happy not because of her but because I CHOSE to be happy. We only saw each other for one weekend a month but I was happy going to events alone because I ALLOWED myself to be happy and content, I CREATED that happiness. We didn’t live together, so on some level it really wasn’t her presence in my life, it was my attitude toward life. I have in no way shape or form mastered manifesting that level of joy in my life but the effort to do so HAS made me a happier, more content person. She also, or we learned together, that we CAN have what we had in our lives and it has been both a blessing and curse. We will never settle for less, know what we can have, and are willing to wait for it.
Its not easy for either of at times to be friends, there is still emotional energy there that is at times not appropriate or distracting but it is also part of why we are drawn to each other. Learning to deal with all of this has truly deepened our relationship with ourselves and the partners each of us have in our lives. We know each other better than anyone and we are able, when we are talking (lol) to offer insight to each other that no other person in our lives to date can match. She is a very special woman, one I was blessed to love and one I am certainly blessed to have as a friend. We struggle, it is not always easy but it is always worth it.
So, long ramble, but I haven’t been able to write in a long time using an actual keyboard so forgive me if this is long winded. So, the other part, staying friends with your EXs partners…
Its true, you got to pick people you actually like for more than the physical attraction but you should probably be doing that anyway. The pain of losing someone or even of betrayal isn’t easy to forget and sometimes takes a long time to fade to the point that communication is possible. Learning to forgive, to understand that other people make mistakes, that they make choices that seem baffling, or just simply that you don’t want them to make, doesn’t make them bad people. Hopefully you shared deeply of yourselves with each other and that is a treasure not to be thrown away lightly. It’s a struggle to make it work as friends, sometimes it will not work, sometimes it just won’t work right now, this week, this month, or even this year. Don’t give up. Learn to forgive, learn to set boundaries, keep the parts that drew you together and understand and make room for the things that pushed or pulled you apart.
If you are very very lucky, you just might end up with a very special friend…
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