All Problems in Two Questions

A relationship advice blogger and life coach, Jordan Gray, recently posted an article titled, “All of Your Problems Boil Down to These Two Questions”. It’s an interesting read and I am a big fan of his work, so I thought maybe I’d explore those two questions for myself and see where I got.

If you feel like exploring them yourself without reading what I have to say, here they are:

1. What emotion are you not allowing yourself to feel?

2. What truth are you not allowing yourself to face, speak, or live out?

So, here goes.

What emotion am I not allowing myself to feel? Gray talks about people who have never grieved a break up or repressed anger or sadness about how they’ve been treated by others in the past. I know that I deal with a failure to grieve. I believe that if you have to have a relationship, sex, or any attention really from someone in order to “love” them, then what you feel isn’t really love. So for the three women I’ve invested the most emotion in, I chose not grieve for what others might consider my “loss”. They still exist. They’re out there, leading their lives, experiencing their successes and failures. Achieving dreams. I am proud of who they are and what they’ve done, whether it is just seeing bits and pieces of their journeys on Facebook, or only knowing that because they are amazing women, that they are out there doing amazing things.

But where does that leave me? Oh, I’ve moved on. I’m nearing the end of a year and a half relationship. We’re good together, good to each other, we even love each other, but it’s not sustainable. I don’t think either of us could look at the other and say, “This is my best friend.” And I think that’s important in a relationship. If you aren’t good friends, there’s no foundation to keep the romance afloat. She and I have been talking about this a lot recently, and I expect at the end of the month we’ll go our separate ways. We both feel similarly. Though if it does end, it’s been a fairly glorious sunset so far.

My current relationship isn’t the point though. It’s my inability to let go, possibly because I refuse to grieve for my loss. Because love is always and if love is always, what does it matter that my hopes remain unfulfilled?

I am going to take a break from this line of thought for now. I am writing at work and I have a feeling this will be too vulnerable and emotional a subject to explore further with co-workers around.