I lay awake in bed last night, losing sleep, contemplating the intricacies of personal relationships. To have a meaningful relationship of any kind, you must open yourself up and share the most personal parts of your soul. Some are the secrets you keep closest to your heart for fear of exposing them would expose your weaknesses and leave you wide open and vulnerable for ridicule. As much as you try to keep these things to yourself, once someone knows you well enough, these secrets you keep expose themselves and you must trust that those who see them will know you better for it, but also keep them as closely guarded as their own secrets.
Unfortunately, that’s not exactly how it works.
Even the best relationships hit ruts sometimes, and even those closest to us will sometimes use our secrets to hurt us. It is here that I find the line is blurred and the futures of my relationships grey.
What do you do once someone calls you out on all your shit? When they yell at you the same things your inner voice tells you on your darkest days?
Common sense tells most of us to cut this person loose and that anyone that would do such a thing has no place in your life. But matters of the heart rarely use common sense, and things are never that clearly defined. People lose their tempers. Arguments happen. Feelings get hurt. Even with those we love. Especially with those we love.
So do you bounce back and suck it up, or cut them loose?
Sucking it up sometimes takes more forgiveness than I can muster. The cost of love is sometimes too high for me to pay. I know my faults and weaknesses and I don’t need to be reminded of all I lack and all I can never have and never be. Getting over having it all pointed out for me is often too much to recover from and once my trust is shaken it is nearly impossible to gain it back.
The alternative is to cut someone right out of your life as soon as the first argument occurs. But is that reasonable? Don’t we all argue occasionally within our own relationships and friendships? If you cut out a person the first time they upset you, won’t you always find yourself alone? Sure, you could keep up a façade, for a while, and pretend that nothing hurts and we’ve nothing to hide, but in the end who does that really hurt? Without opening ourselves up fully, we will never really be close to anyone, never feel the joy that love can bring, and never feel the sting of the words you wish they’d never said.
I suppose it is the yin and the yang of love.
