“Betty’s so cute,” I gushed.
I was at a café with a friend. My husband and I had just gotten a puppy. “Except she hasn’t figured out that peeing in the house is frowned upon.”
“Shhhhh!” my friend scolded.
My friend, now ex-friend, shushed me in public. Like I was a toddler. I wasn’t being loud. And I hardly think I was being crass. WTH.
Why do relationships go south? Sounds like a question with a complicated answer, doesn’t it? It’s not.
When we are not comfortable being ourselves, we get prickly. And the opposite is true. When we don’t allow the people in our lives to be authentic, things start to unravel.
Have you heard of Byron Katie? She’s a wise woman who encourages loving what is and has a method to help people do that.
Basically, she says you can’t change anyone. And if you want to, what you’re doing is not loving the person as they are. You’re asking them to pretend to be someone else.
We certainly don’t want anyone to ask us to pretend to be somebody else. We can’t expect them to pretend either. And there is no should. There is only reality.
“She shouldn’t be so competitive.”
“He should know what I want.”
“She shouldn’t go out with friends so often.”
“He should be less crabby in the morning.”
Except she is competitive, he doesn’t know what you want, she does see her friends a lot, and he’s not a morning person.
Love them as they are. Love who they are.
I’m not suggesting we be doormats. We can express how we feel. We can tell someone how their behavior affects us. But without expectations. If we decide we would be happier without that person in our lives, we can leave the relationship.
Asking someone to pretend to be someone they’re not is like asking a spoon to be a banana. If we wanted a banana, the spoon wasn’t the right choice.
I broke off my friendship with The Shusher. It felt like she had been on a decades-long quest to improve me. That “shhh!” was the straw that frosted the camel’s ass. I had accepted her when she seemed a little crazy. That’s just The Shusher, I’d think. I didn’t see a need to change for her. I like who I am.
We are each unique. We long to be accepted, not in spite of our quirks but because of them. We want to express our authentic natures.
So, you be you. If someone doesn’t love who you truly are, move on. Because imagine the joy of finding someone who loves you just as you are.