 Navigating high school romance is never easy. Adolescence is that developmental -and experimental- stage where crushes and romantic love can often seem sporadic or not even last very long. And, while break-ups and broken hearts are difficult at any age when it comes to love, they can be particularly devastating during the turbulent teenage years. After all, there are many intense emotions (and surging hormones) involved as teens try to figure out life for themselves, especially while dating. Feelings can even be more distressing for teenagers because of how they process and handle failed romantic relationships. Knowing how to do so with integrity, however, allows adolescents not only to mature but also to build many important interpersonal skills they will eventually carry into adulthood. It’s part of developing healthy self-esteem and self-worth, and a sexual identity, too. A problematic trend in the present dating world is called ghosting. And, for the record, not only teenagers do it. Ghosting happens when the person you thought you were dating suddenly stops responding to your calls, emails and texts (or blocks you completely) with no apparent explanation or warning, unilaterally ending the relationship and disappearing into thin air. Poof! Gone! Deleted! The cutoff just happens and the person being ghosted is often left in shock, literally haunted by what happened. Not only is it disrespectful, but also heartless and a cowardly way of ending a relationship and, sadly, becoming more and more commonplace in the digital age. The only thing worse than saying “I don’t feel the same way”, is not saying anything at all. Aside from abruptly cutting yourself off from someone who is a threat to your well-being, ending a relationship by ignoring a human being is just plain wrong. Providing a reason and establishing closure is fair and should always be done face-to-face. Accountability. A relationship, no matter how long it lasted, somehow mattered. People matter. And, if you don’t believe that, you are also setting yourself up for failure. How? The very same screen you use to hide behind as an easy way out, (even if you convince yourself it’s more about not hurting someone’s feelings) impedes the social skills required for relationship success: maturity and conversation. Avoiding life’s challenges, conflict or confusion, disappointment, pain and loss only exacerbates uncomfortable situations and the vicissitudes of life that much more. Acknowledging them actually helps build empathy. What many ghosters fail to see is that much of the relationship anxiety they also feel is actually perpetuated by the false sense of security and control they think their device offers. Running away from situations or problems is never a healthy coping skill. Often the harder thing to do and the right thing to do are the same. To hear more tips and techniques about good communication skills please go to Love On the Run with Lydia -a relationships podcast at www.letstalkaboutlove.ca originally written for YA Magazine
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 Have you or your partner ever experienced infidelity? Did it feel like the ultimate betrayal? Were you able to heal through it? If not, perhaps you were unaware as to how to even begin to navigate all of the complexities inherent to understanding infidelity, nor ever had the opportunity to have the right conversations and guidance in order to be able to do so. One thing for sure, understanding affairs and betrayal beyond the perpetrator-victim perspective is essential, if true healing is ever to take place.
I often meet with couples who are dealing with the aftermath or crisis of an affair. My priority is to provide them with a safe and gentle restorative setting. My objective is to help them discover the reason behind the affair. Often the difficulty lies in discerning -and accepting- the duality of the meaning, as in “what the affair did to you and what it meant to me”. It’s never easy but these are important conversations to be had, nevertheless. Following are some essential points to consider whenever choosing to rebuild trust, healing and getting past an affair:
2. The partner who had the affair needs to want to learn what to do in order to rebuild and restore trust, which includes “putting up” with their partner’s in- cessant pain. To be sure, there are no quick fixes here, and only the passage of caring acts and compassionate experiences will help make peace with the past. Accountability, remorse, responsibility and sensitivity are key! Hard as it may be, the hurt partner also needs to focus back on the relationship and learn how to steer away from their obsession with the lover. Both need to choose the relationship, even if one feels totally not responsible for the affair. 3. Making meanings out of the motives will only come about from those couple conversations which consist of integrating the infidelity or transgression into the narrative of the couple relationship. To do so requires knowing how to move the conversation from an investigative quest-such as rifling through emails and text messages- to one of exploration- embarking upon a quest to understand the meaning of fear and loss, separateness and togetherness, love and desire, longing and loneliness…all important discussion themes when unpacking the meaning of an affair, but also part of a much needed awakening, especially if deciding to forge a brand new meaning of your couple connection and life together. Understanding infidelity is often a complicated state of affairs. “People stray for many reasons - tainted love, revenge, unfulfilled longings, and plain old lust. At times, an affair is a quest for intensity, a rebellion against the confines of matrimony. An illicit liaison can be catastrophic, but it can also be liberating, a source of strength, a healing. And frequently it's all these things at once. Some affairs are acts of resistance; others happen when we offer no resistance at all. Straying can sound an alarm for the marriage, signalling an urgent need to pay attention to what ails it. Or it can be the death knell that follows a relationship's last gasping breath. I tell my patients that most of us in the West today will have two or three marriages or committed relationships in our lifetimes. For those daring enough to try, they may find themselves having all of them with the same person. An affair may spell the end of a first marriage, as well as the beginning of a new one.” (Esther Perel, 2017)  The Invitation By Oriah Mountain Dreamer It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing. It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love for your dream for the adventure of being alive. It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon... I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain mine or your own without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy mine or your own if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful to be realistic to remember the limitations of being human. It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy. I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence. I want to know if you can live with failure yours and mine and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, "Yes." It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children. It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back. It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments. One of my favourite poems about authenticity and intimacy. Happy reading! |
Hi, I'm Lydia- a modern-day warrior of the heart with a mission to reconcile the mystery and mastery of Love.Archives
December 2022
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