My father
worked two full time jobs for most of my life. At one point in my life he owned
property in three states. He worked hard to do this. From his example I learned
early on that through hard work and persistence you can have anything you want;
anything is achievable through hard work, patience and persistence.
I carried
this philosophy with me through my first career as a hair dresser, through my
career in music, though my career in the restaurant industry and finally
through my 25 plus years in my IT career while going to school to get, first an
AA degree, then a BS degree, and finally working towards a second BS degree and
a Masters. I applied this philosophy to everything in my life except romantic
relationships. And it got me through. Considering where I came from, I was able
to achieve a good many things. It wasn’t until I got married when I was turning
forty that I applied it to a romantic relationship.
At that point
in my life, I decided that it was time to work hard to make a relationship
work. And I did. I applied brute force to my marriage, decided that no matter
what happened that I was never going to give up and that I would MAKE it work.
In hind sight, which is in fact 20/20 by the way, what I didn’t see was that
you cannot apply this philosophy to relationships. Why? Because there is
another person involved, It is one thing for you yourself to work hard towards
achieving a goal; it is a completely different thing to get someone else to
work towards that same goal.
I am afraid
now. I recall someone saying to me once in the not so distant recent past, that
they were afraid to get involved with me in a romantic relationship because
they were afraid of “disappointments”. I asked at the time, who are you afraid will
be disappointed, you or me? And his response was “Both of us”.
This is why
you cannot apply the “work hard and you can achieve whatever you want”
philosophy to relationships. Because in trying to reach that lofty goal of
having a happy healthy relationship, there are a lot of “disappointments” along
the way. It’s a tough journey, fraught with dangers. You find out the little
lies you’ve told each other. The habits that were once so adorable you now find
annoying like nails on a chalkboard. And sometimes you find out deep dark deal
breaking heartbreaking secrets that you wish you had never known.
I have
learned an invaluable lesson in the last few years. There comes a time in a
relationship when it is time to STOP working hard. There comes a time when it
is time to give up and move on because no matter how hard YOU work, the
relationship is never going to work. There comes a time when the
disappointments outweigh the love and you just have to mark it up to a goal not
achieved and there’s no harm in that. It doesn’t mean there’s something wrong
with you. It doesn’t mean that you are deficient in some way. It just means
that you got involved with someone who is on a different path than you. It
means that you got involved with someone whose personal rules of behavior are
different than your own. And everyone has done it. Even people who now have
happy healthy relationships, have been through disappointments, either with the
person they are with or with people they have been with previously. No one is immune
to these disappointments, they are part of life.
For more than
two years, I went to temple every weekend; sometimes on both Friday and
Saturday. I would see couples, examples of people who, at least on the outside
had happy healthy relationships with their spouses. The woman who would tell
stories while we were all working in the kitchen together about her husband
whom she had been married to for many years and had three children with. She would
still have that gleam in her eye when talking about him that said “I am still
in love with this man after all these years”. I saw many examples of this and this is what I
have always wanted.
One of my
most favorite sayings is “There is a lid for every pot”. I still believe this;
I just don’t think I have found my “lid” yet. Perhaps, at my age, I never will.
I was always a hopeless romantic. But when I gave up on my last potential “lid”,
I gave up on everything. I gave up the hope of ever finding that one person who
thinks the way I do and doesn’t have some deep dark secret they’re hiding from
me. I gave up on the idea of finding someone with whom the love outweighed the
disappointments and with whom I could finally have the happy healthy
relationship I wanted. I gave up on finding that person who when talking about
him to a group of women on a morning in a Shul kitchen, would still bring a
gleam to my eye, years after we had found each other. Some people are lucky in
love. I don’t think I am one of them. I believe I am destined to be on my own.
A year ago, this was a devastating idea to me. It is something now, I am
learning to accept. And when I’m not afraid anymore, I will venture back out
into world. I will find my hope again. Not for romance; THAT hope is never
coming back. But at least I will find hope for people again, for life, and the
pursuit of other things that make me happy. And I know I will still have
disappointments. But without them, you will never know when you are actually
happy. The balancing act is best performed when you can manage the
disappointments with life’s good fortunes.
