| Current mood: |  pensive |
| Current music: | Daniel Beddingfield - Never Gonna Leave Your Side |
Thoughts.
Thought 1:
How do you handle being rebuffed when you make your best attempts at reconciling a broken relationship?
If we’ve lived and loved long enough, we all know the pain of a broken relationship. We also know the joy of reconciliation when that relationship is mended. Unfortunately, loving someone well and trying to reconcile with them provides no guarantee they will welcome restoration. When someone refuses to reconcile a broken relationship, frustration, pain, and self-doubts can grow. The desire to find a way to restore the broken relationship that works intensifies.
Sadly, there is no guaranteed procedure that we can follow to assure restoration of a broken relationship. Sometimes, all we can do is grieve the loss of that relationship.
One of the most frightening truths that we all must face is the fact that we cannot force someone to love us, no matter what we do. Even if we take appropriate responsibility for harm we’ve done to them, confess our sin against them, and ask for forgiveness, there is no assurance they will respond in kind. They can choose to remain distant.
While an unresolved relationship is deeply disturbing, one of the most freeing truths is that no one has the power to stop us from loving them.
We all wish there was a "next step" that would make reconciliation work out every time. Sadly, there is no such step.
We need to guard against a false guilt that assumes we should be able to do something to "fix" every relationship—as if it all depends on us alone. While we must take responsibility for our part in a relationship, we must not assume that we are solely responsible for the breach in the relationship. Instead of holding another person responsible for their choices, we can tend to let people off the hook and blame ourselves for "not doing enough" or "missing something" that would be the key to unlocking the relationship. That kind of thinking is not only demoralizing but controlling.
I've been through this so much, and I came to realize that it wasn't "all my fault". I learnt to forgive myself, as well as those who rejected me even though I tried so hard to make things work. Life began to make more sense, and so did my relationships with people.
Thought 2:
I think my unconscious mind is driven most by resistance.
I approach the world with my guard intact because unconsciously, and perhaps consciously, I want to maintain an element of control in my relationships with people. I tend to hold my private experiences just out of reach of others. I'm not one to immediately show all my cards, to let people into who I really am until I'm ready.
Unfortunately, that sometimes means I also hide things from myself. I sometimes find that my desire to remain guarded backfires, affecting my self-awareness.
Why am I like this?
It's possible that I act in this manner because of a deeply-rooted fear of being exposed, or of truly expressing myself. To protect myself from this fear, I act in the opposite manner — I am guarded.
There is a certain respect that comes with resistance, an unconscious understanding that the human psyche is very vulnerable. We all feel we have a lot to hide, and I've never been one to be intrusive or thoughtless about how I approach sensitive topics with others. Therefore I take pride in the fact that I can inspire a sense of safety in others when they are around me.
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