Musing No.8

Olivia: I don't want normal, and easy, and simple. I want..

Edison: What? What do you want, Olivia?

Olivia: I want painful, difficult, devastating, life-changing, extraordinary love. Don't you want that, too? 

Edison: Love is not supposed to be painful or devastating. Love isn't supposed to hurt, Liv

 I wrote my first musing close to 9 months ago. As conflicted as I felt at the time I still wrote from a place of hope. I may have managed to deceive myself that I had two choices and I could make either but it’s now pretty obvious that I always was going wade in deeper “into the murky thing that may be love”.

Well, I’m here to report that sometimes the murky stuff is just plain old mud – no romanticizing it! That sometimes obstacles in the way may mean stop and aren’t actually some epic challenges that your true love is meant to overcome. 

Sometimes when something is broken it’s meant to stay that way. But we’ve become a generation of “Fixers”; adept at CPR, at the resuscitation of something that would be best left cold & dead in a ditch.

What I’ve learnt is that sometimes a relationship is rocky because it’s unstable, not safe and not meant to work. But every time you blow air into it attempting to breathe some life to it, you aren’t fixing it. You are just dragging it out; delaying the inevitable. 

I’ve only awakened to the fact that we’ve become these fix-it junkies and our support systems, our friends have become well-meaning enablers. We spend our time reading endless blog posts and magazine articles, on “how to make him a better communicator”, “how to improve the trust in your relationship”, “10 easy steps to a happier relationship”. 

We just want to fix, fix, fix! It’s DIY gone wild.

We need to STOP.

We’re sending each other the wrong messages. Maybe the reason that the trust is missing in the relationship isn’t because you haven’t found the right Cosmo article. Maybe it’s because something’s happened that’s broken that trust. Maybe your intuition is picking up on the signs that you can’t see clearly. 

The more energy you use to fix what’s meant to be broken is energy you’re taking away from bringing more positive and enriching people and experience into your life. Its time you’re taking from yourself and depositing it into something that wouldn’t have the payoff you hope it will.

And you know what, I no longer buy into that BS that love hurts or love is hard or love has to be difficult and devastating in order for it to be life changing and extraordinary. I’m backing up Edison on this one (ref. the video link above).

So many other things in this brief and beautiful life are going to hurt; loss is going to hurt, rejection is going to hurt, failure is going to hurt. The one thing that’s not supposed to hurt is love.

We need to modify what we believe a relationship should be like and appreciate that healthy, happy relationships don't feel like work at all. 

They simply work.