R is for Relationships

There was a girl at my school who was a coupla quarters behind me. She is a very young, 21. She friended me on FB and I don't know her at ALL, but I friended her back to be polite.

The first time I met her at school, she walked up to me and my classmates and introduced herself.  I liked that. Then I saw her shirt. It was a very "Jesus is Lord"-type shirt, and I sighed inwardly.

Because she friended me, I see her posts on FB. They are all either very Jesus is Lord or very tragic. She writes depressing haikus about her life, Friends.

Haikus.

Seriously.

Everything to her is so deep and painful, and I can only imagine I was that emotional when I was 21. Ugh.

She actually dropped out of school after becoming a stripper.  Now, we all know I have NO problems with strippers.  I just think it's funny she was so gung-ho religious, and now she's stripping.  Dave calls her Stripper Christian.  Her FB feed is my guilty pleasure.  Some people have Jersey Shore, I have Stripper Christian.

Anyway.

I never post anything to her posts, and I usually don't even read them, just skip over them because she and her emo life are none of my business. But sometimes it catches my eye, and I REALLY want to post stuff. But I don't.

Wellllll, once I did.

She had a picture posted that I'd seen online once or twice. It's a man's naked back with some female arms around him. On her arms are written, "He told me he loved me." On his back is written, "I lied to get into her pants. It worked."

I couldn't take it. I wrote, "I'm sorry but this picture reminds me of every sad little girl who equates sex with love. They are not the same thing. Never have been, never will be."

16 people I've never met "Like"d my comment.

I want to sit her down and give her my life advice for women. It wouldn't work. Not anymore than it would've worked on me at that age. Although, most of this drivel I'd worked out for myself by 21.

I'm posting it here and I'm doing my best to instill this junk in my own kids (at age appropriate times/language).

My life rules concerning relationships:

1. I don't give a rat's ass what anyone thinks about me. If I'm living my life to the best of my ability - doing what's best for me and/or for my family.  If someone has an issue with it (or me), than that's THEIR issue, not mine.

2. The person who made up the rule that men can fuck anyone they want and they are a star, but if a woman does that then she's a slut? That rule was made up by men. It was made up to keep women in line. Do who you want, when you want. Be monogamous if you want.  If that's not what you want, be up front and honest about it.  Take precautions and protect yourself, but don't let anyone tell you that you're a whore for doing what men do freely.

3. If my SO makes me cry or hurts me out of carelessness or cruelty..... NEXT! Why waste time on someone who is careless or cruel? Why waste time on someone who is going to judge me or make me feel less than. That kind of attitude in a person never changes and only gets meaner as long as it is allowed.

4. Don't date crazy. 

That last one, the boys already know by heart.  (We say "date" for them instead of "Don't fuck crazy.") 

There is a caveat on the crazy...

A few years ago, I had a long conversation with my ex-boyfriend (A) from the Army.  He had been with a woman for the previous 11 years, and they just broke up again.  He met her while he was installing cable in her home in GA.  She was married to a major in the Army, and she and her husband had a couple of kids together.  She left her husband for A, and over the course of the next eleven years, they would be together and break up and get back together.  She moved to Seattle with him the year previous to our conversation (he's from Seattle).  They got engaged, and a few months after that, they broke up again.  She wouldn't let A be involved in the decisions and/or disciplining of the kids.  He asked what I thought about that.  I asked if he really wanted to know, and he said yes. 

I told him that if she won't let him participate in the raising of the kids when he's been a big part of their life for eleven years??  To me that means she's telling him, "You will NEVER be a part of my family." and that's no way to have a relationship.

He asked what I thought about finding "the one" - as in, what's the criteria.  Here's what I came up with:
 

My whole thing is... every one has their own piece of crazy. If you find someone who's crazy you can live with and who can live with your crazy, then that's the keeper.

 

With our boys, that's not the kind of crazy we are talking about.  We are talking about the kind of crazy that scares you.

 

With my ex, we also talked about setting ideals for what one wants in a person.  He thinks that's valid, I think it's setting people up for failure.  I told him:

 

If you are with someone and you are always looking past their shoulder for the perfect/bigger/better thing, you'll NEVER stop looking away instead of looking at the person in front of you.

 

But step one of any successful relationship is definitely step AWAY from drama.  The fact that the two of them had so many breakups over the eleven years... That alone tells me it's not going to work.

 

I was a sucker for chaos before I had therapy in my late twenties.  I often tease Dave, saying that if I had met him just three months earlier (pre-therapy), I never would have gone out with him.  He was too normal and stable!  It's amazing what happened in my life when I stopped dating jerks and basketcases.

 

Happy to have found my "one", Ruth!