growing pains...

if love becomes so painful, let it go and save yourself.  you can find another love but not another self ~Unknown

i pulled this from a friend's facebook page. 

if you read my blog then you are aware that my blissful relationship has taken a sour turn.  i am calling it growing pains.  we all have them.  i think they are unavoidable.  there are tons of growing pains in relationships, whether that be in a business relationship, with your best friend, your parents, your children,  your life partner, or even yourself.   how we face, deal and move past them can determine our success. 

i am not an expert in relationships.  in fact i am very green around the gills when it comes to a functioning adult relationship.  i actively participated in a very dysfunctional marriage.  i don't want to make the same mistakes that i made before, but i find myself falling into old patterns.  it is frustrating to be able to recognize that you are repeating history, but seem unable to do it differently.

i think i approach situations from a very rational logical perspective.  for some reason when i am faced with a "make or break", i throw all my rationale out the window and my perspective gets all foggy.  the end result, i end up agreeing to something that i know doesn't work for me.  this drives me completely bananas.  a character trait that i absolutely can't stand about myself, but seeing as how i am 35 and have done this ever since i can remember, i don't see this changing anytime soon, sigh.

so how can i ease these growing pains?  when my kids bodies are growing i give them tylenol.  i don't think this works for the psyche.  some would say pray about it, others say find an outlet like working out, find a hobby, see a therapist...i don't know the options seem endless.  for me, finding a way to deal is often times just as overwhelming as actually dealing. 

i have my "sounding boards", the people in my life who i tell everything to, because i am a person that typically needs to "talk it out", listen to my voice or see it written from a hundred different perspectives before i can wrap my head around the issue and make sense of it.  these select people have different backgrounds and they are of different genders, but they all have an interesting perspective on things.  i don't want them to tell me what i want to hear, because that is counter productive.  i rely on them for their objective view as an outsider.  they usually don't agree and give me very different advice, but in this case, they are all in agreeance. 

so why have i dug my heels in?  why have i taken the advice of my sounding boards, tossed it out the window and stood my ground defiantly?  a few weeks back i wrote about not being able to make a decision and just waiting to see what happens, standing at the intersection of uncertainty.  i reread that post yesterday and realized i am not any closer to making a decision.  each choice i have (walking away or trudging forward) comes with big consequences.  neither of which i am ready to make let alone face.   

and here is what i am learning, that while i have been standing at the intersection wondering what to do he has been there too, at the same intersection trying to make the same decision.  we have been on opposite sides of that intersection.  we have said some unfair things to each other, stomped our feet, shed some tears, threw our hands up the in air and then sat down.  neither of us refusing to budge, neither of us willing to make a decision of what to do, basically we are just staring each other down.

through the process of our temper tantrum we are growing as a couple and learning about each other's strengths and weaknesses...growing pains. the process isn't fun, but it is necessary.  when i do get to a point where i can commit to a path i will have gained at least one thing...more knowledge about myself.  which i think is priceless.