Relationship Musings

I've heard it said many times before, and I never thought I would be the one saying it, but it seems like everyone I know is getting married or having babies.

This holiday season alone many of my friends, family, and acquaintances have gotten engaged or had babies, or announced they are going to be having a baby. It's like it all happened out of the blue.

To any of my regular readers it's no surprise that I do not keep or create relationships very easily. I am an introvert and relationships seem to run against the grain of who I am, and yet I do crave companionship. I'm not talking about romantic relationships solely, but friendships in general. I am always amazed when I see new relationships form and grow and develop. Different lives combine and part and start over again like a dance. Most days I feel like I'm just a wall flower at that dance. It is a mystery to me. What I wanted to write about is a series of short thoughts on those mysteries I want to understand better. The following are a random collection of stories and thoughts that illustrate my understanding, or lack there of, and experiences with relationships.

Back in the day, at bible college, a friend of mine got engaged. About a quarter of the student body got engaged to another quarter of the student body. They don't call it bridal college for nothing. Anyway, my friend was sincere and his fiance was great. She was one of three females I hung out with at school and felt comfortable around. After school ended they travelled to each other's home cities and spent some time with each other's families. Normal stuff I suppose. A couple days after she left for home, my friend asked me my opinion of their relationship. As an INTJ (Myers-Briggs personality) or someone who hadn't learned to refine his social skills too much at that point, I told him what I thought without much filtering. I told him I didn't think they worked well together. I thought they were too intellectually different to have a meaningful discussion on anything of importance. He was smart, she wasn't. I told him I didn't think it would last. Ultimately he broke it off. He told me later he agreed with me. A decade later and he's still not married. She is, with two kids. I sometimes wonder if I may have cost him an opportunity that has not returned since.

I have a friend who seems to be with a different girl every couple months. I don't know how that's even possible. Of course I have a friend who seemed to be with a different guy every two months for almost 10 years and now she's married with a baby and another one on the way. I have a cousin who dated one girl in Junior High and High School and ended up marrying her. They've been together for 25 years, married for 20 and have a gaggle of kids.

I know a woman who was going out with a man. I don't know how the relationship began, I just know that one day, there it was. A couple months later it was gone. I don't know how that happened either. Shortly after the dissolution they both started expressing interest in different people. A couple months after that they were back together again as though nothing happened. I don't understand.

I rented a room to the boyfriend of a girl who was helping with youth group in the Spring. Six months later they were engaged, to other people, on the same day. I don't understand.

I know a guy who I've worked with for a couple years now who had everything I want. He's a guy who seemed to have an idyllic marriage and a couple kids. And he's crossed a line that could destroy his relationship with his family. That has really shocked me. It's probably the reason I started writing this post. I don't understand.

Stuck

I went to the Christmas party. I was one of the last to arrive. I was one of the first to leave. 400+ people. I just wanted to get out. I skipped the "cocktails". I arrived in time for the meal and left right before the dancing. I don't understand it. I don't understand why anyone would want to get up in front of people and dance. I think I have some weird phobia. The moment people started dancing I wanted to leave.

I feel stuck. I've always hated these kind of parties. My whole life. I've been trying to work on it. I've tried to like them. I've tried to like dancing. I've tried to learn to dance. And yet, every time I'm at one of these things I want to escape. I want to leave. I want to go home and read a book or watch a movie or play guitar. I feel broken. I feel stuck in an old pattern and, despite all my effort, I can't change it. It frustrates me to see all these people doing what I hate and having fun. Why do they get to have fun and I don't? It just makes me feel broken and alone. That's why I avoid these things in the first place. Something's not right, but I don't know what it is and I don't know how to fix it.

The Christmas Tree

Growing up, we had a tradition in our house. I don't know if my family ever thought it was a tradition, but we did it every year since I was 5 or 6. When it snowed enough that it felt like Christmas, Dad would bring up the old, wire framed, six foot tall, spindly, fake tree and we'd decorate it. Dad would put the lights on it but my brother and I got to do the rest. Mom would carefully unpack the glass ornaments. And someone would usually break at least one of them.

Shortly after I turned 13 my grandma got sick. My mom was away for almost six weeks, off and on, caring for her mom, and dad was away working. A friend of the family watched my brother and I for that time. One day it snowed. And our parents weren't there. Our Christmas tree tradition was in danger of not happening that year. It didn't feel right to me. So, after school one day, I dragged the tree up from the basement. I had never assembled it before, but I had seen dad do it enough to figure it out. I put the tree together and my brother and I decorated it by ourselves. And it was Christmas time. That became a new tradition.

The following year, as Christmas started approaching, I knew we were getting close to tree time. One day after school, before mom and dad got home, I dragged the tree up from the basement again and my brother and I decorated it. It was a surprise for mom and dad. They got a ready made tree without any of the work. I'm not sure if they actually like decorating the tree or not. And every year after that, until we grew up, that was our tradition. My brother and I would decorate the tree when my parents were out and surprise them.

It's been many years since I've had a Christmas tree, real or fake. I bought 300 feet lights many years ago, just in case I ever had a tree to put them on. Well, tonight I bought a Christmas tree. It was everything I imagined a Christmas tree should be. I don't know if I'll incorporate this into a new tradition, but I do know that by tomorrow night it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

The Christmas Party

I feel like saying something tonight.

I'm not sure why. I'm tired. Peopled out. It's been a long week. Usually I don't choose to be around people in my spare time. I will make an effort for an event or something, but I rarely say to my self after a long day at work, "I want to hang out with..." It's more like I want to read up on some topics that interest me, watch AFV and go to bed. It's rare to come across a person I actually feel re-energized after being around. Don't take that as an insult. It's not you, it's me.

Tonight I felt like being with someone. No one in particular. But there's no one around. I started thinking about my next big "people" event. My company's Christmas party next weekend. I don't want to go. I'm kind of dreading it. There's a lot of people. Some are my direct employees. Some are my direct superiors. And the whole thing is a banquet and dance. I'd go for the banquet, but why do they have to dance? Why do I hate dances so much? Someone once told me if I knew how to dance maybe then I'd like dancing. That may be true. I don't know. I'm not there yet. Whatever. Either way, I don't want to go to this party. I have been to a few Christmas parties with C&C the last few years, but that took a lot of effort for me and I was usually glad when it was all over. They only remind me of how solitary I am and how I wish I wasn't this way.

I have skipped the last 7 company Christmas parties I have been invited to. I usually volunteered to work those nights. It was an easier excuse than saying, "I don't actually want to spend my free time hanging out with you." It was funny to me because my co-workers would usually thank me for being the sacrificial worker on their behalf so they could go to the party. In reality, I was glad they were going to the party so I could work and avoid the party. And yet, there's a piece of me that wishes I want to be there. There's a piece of me that wishes I could be like everyone else there.

And so tomorrow is the deadline to decide if I'm going or not. It's on a Saturday. There's no excuse left for me now. As management I'm expected to be there. It would look bad if my whole division is there and I'm not. Last year I had to endure our company website backed by a slide show of all the attendees' photos taken at the door. I heard the comments from everyone in our planning room about how much fun they all had, and how great all the pictures were. I had to listen to the slight insults of our IT student who was the only one who showed up without a "plus 1". Stereotypical techie.

I have 24 hours to decide. If I did what I felt like, I would not go. But I think part of being a man is not simply doing what I feel like, but doing what must be done, regardless of how I feel. I can't really say I must go to this party, but I know it's expected. I don't know what I'm going to end up doing. If I don't go I'm going to be asked by so many people why I won't be there. And my only answer, genuinely, is because I don't want to go. I wish I did.

Sing Like You Used To, Dance When You Want To

I've been missing music in my life lately.
Time to wake up from my slumber, open up my eyes.
I haven't touched my guitar in over a year.
I haven't really sat down and enjoyed music much lately.

I'm taking a little time out tonight to change that.

Done.

Discipline

Six years ago I decided to run a marathon. I had no experience long distance running and really didn't have any experience with physical activity for 10 years at that point. But I decided I was going to do it and that was that.

Every night I'd go to bed at 8pm and every morning I'd wake up at 4am. By 5am I was in the gym running on the treadmills. Fortunately, my work schedule allowed for the routine, but still, I had discipline. When I decided I was going to run this race I decided that I was going to do what ever it took to make it happen.

I can't say I've approached many other tasks in life with that same discipline as I did that marathon. I wish I did. I know I have the capacity to excel at almost everything I put my mind to. I think its time to think big again.

Next year I am going complete the Iron Man. I'm not exceptional. I'm just disciplined.

But that's not really thinking big. I've got bigger things in mind still. I need to be disciplined if they are ever going to happen. And confident. And committed. And maybe a little help from God too. But I can be disciplined in my prayer life as well.

I haven't been disciplined for quite some time. I think self control is part of being a man. I need to assert my self discipline. I'm still working on the whole "being a man" thing. I think this is part of it. Or the beginning of it. Good bye procrastination. Hello discipline.

God, Please help me.

The Drought Ends

I wrote in my journal last night.
The first time in 67 days.
Something happened last night that I felt compelled to record.
I still don't know if it was good or bad. Mostly a blur. I've relived it over and over again in my head a million times and I still don't know. It involves the area of my life I am weakest in. Think Sheldon Cooper on a date and you're in the ballpark.

I wish I could write more in this space but I don't know what to say except I don't understand social customs and don't pick up social cues easily. This creates a lot of frustration and confusion in my life. Friday night was very confusing for me.

And now I need to go pray and process what exactly just happened.

Proverbs XIX

There's a lesson in there somewhere.

The Journal

When I was 18 a friend bought me a journal for Christmas. I didn't really know what to do with it. Journal in it I guess. I wasn't a journaller. I didn't keep a diary, outside a few school assignments when I was 13 and 16, but I had to hand those in to my teacher. So, I started writing in my journal. I wasn't really sure what to write about. Stuff, I suppose.

It started out mostly about the daily events happening in my life. That got boring. Eventually I started writing my thoughts about those events. I started writing about what things meant and why I thought people did or said the things I wrote about. And then I started writing about my thoughts, separate from the events in my life. And almost daily I wrote in my journal. I became obsessive. Sometimes I would write 5 or more entries a day. Even if I went away on vacation I would bring it along. I would rarely go for longer than a week without writing in it, and that was only if I was physically separated from my journal. I documented everything. If something happened in my life that I wanted to share, I didn't share it with my family or friends. I wrote it in my journal. It almost became like a confident to me.

I haven't written in my journal for over a month now. I've been busy, but that's never stopped me before.

I wonder what this means.

Dropping Truth Bombs on the Fortress of Pretty Little Lies

A while ago I posted some dialogue from the movie The Matrix.

Here's a couple of videos to bring you up to speed.

The Red Pill and the Blue Pill represent reality and fantasy respectively.

Or maybe it's more accurate to say reality and un-reality.

I don't believe that the world we live in is a computer simulation like in The Matrix, but I do believe how we perceive the world can create false realities just like the Matrix. It's been said that perception is reality. The truth however, is that perception is a viewpoint of reality. Reality is truth. Our perceptions can shade the truth, selectively  see part of the truth or ignore the truth completely. Two different people can see reality and walk away with completely ideas of what they just saw. And to each of them that was the truth. That is the power of perception.

Morpheus offered Neo a choice. The Blue Pill would allow him to see reality with the same perception he always had. That Perception was blind to the truth, but the un-reality that Neo knew was the only truth Neo knew. The Red Pill would allow him to see reality as it actually was. No tricks of perception. No philosophies, ideologies, pre-conceived ideas, biases or omissions. Just unfiltered truth.

Have you ever had a sense that something you "knew" wasn't quite right? I have. What if what you thought you knew was completely wrong? About 8 months ago I stumbled on to something that I didn't believe was reality. My perception was challenged. Everything I thought I knew about something was wrong. I was living in the Matrix. I was living in an unreality created by my perception. At first I couldn't accept what I was hearing and seeing. I had heard people talk about these ideas before, derisively. They would only mention them to knock them down or point out how wrong they were. And yet, there was something in those ideas that seemed to reflect reality. It was like I knew it was the truth, but I chose to believe the lie my perception presented, even when I suspected it was a lie. However, eight months ago, I I took the red pill. I discovered the reality that had been hidden from me my whole life. I had believed a lie propagated by virtually everyone in my life, and yet I could sense it wasn't right. (I even suspect some of them doubt the "truth" they were peddling, but wanted it to be the truth so badly they chose to ignore reality. They chose the blue pill.)

It's not that the Matrix is a bad thing. In some ways its un-reality was better than the real thing. The only strike against it, was that it wasn't the truth. The Matrix I have escaped from wasn't bad. It could be quite good if you are willing to be a slave to its lie. But the truth, however more harsh, is more real and offers more satisfaction and opportunity as well as more pain and suffering. Some people discover the truth and decide to go back to the Matrix because they like it more, even though its not real and they know it. I can understand the reason for those people's decision, but I can't accept a lie substituted for the truth any more.

Looking back on it now, I can see reality screaming at me, "Wake up! You are in the Matrix!" It's only after I've escaped do I understand everything I heard and sensed at the time. Living in the Matrix, those truths were changed to fit the lie instead of the other way around. Now that I know the truth it all makes sense.

I know I've said a lot without really saying anything. There has been a common idea floating through many of my blog posts the last 8 months or so. This post is the first of many trying to explain what I have discovered. There will be more.