Ballerific Relationships: The Dream We All Sell Ourselves

Why do we sell ourselves a dream over and over again? You know that dream that you’re going to meet someone and have the best life with them ever? You know that dream where the person you meet just automatically sees how great you are and does everything for you? You know that dream where we believe that just because we see the best in someone that they will do the same? That dream where we have this magical power to make people change and act right? Yeah THAT one.

There’s no such thing as a guy or girl waking up one day and suddenly wanting to act right in a relationship. It’s nothing that can be controlled by somebody else. You can’t make someone want to get their act together. It’s something they will have to want to do when it’s time for them. The mentality that you can change someone is what keeps people in the cycle of bad relationships. There’s a belief that if we act right that will make someone else want to act right too. That’s not the case. Acting right isn’t enough and we should know that by now. You act right with every person you interact with just to realize that it’s not enough and just to keep trying again and again. Something has to change.

We confuse loyalty and staying down with putting up things that aren’t worth it. We’ve become so focused on being the good person or the hero that we don’t allow ourselves to see we’re fighting a battle that is already lost. Staying down doesn’t mean you put up with anything or everything. The whole phrase is suppose to be stay down till you come up. But you can’t stay down with someone who doesn’t want to come up. And you can’t be loyal to someone who doesn’t want to be loyal to you. We continuously find ways to make excuses for ourselves when we entertain the wrong people. “Everybody cheats it’s not worth ending the relationship over”, “They’re going to get better I was doing some wrong too”, “I wouldn’t want someone to give up on me, so I’m not going to give up on them.” All that sounds good but if that’s not the mentality on both ends then it’s pointless. You can’t fight for a relationship by yourself. Somehow, we have decided that we can run the whole ship by ourselves. We put the weight of other people’s pasts, their mistakes, and even their future on our shoulders.

It’s not your job to make sure someone makes the best decisions. It’s not our job to make sure that every time we’re in a relationship or situation the other person gets everything while we get nothing in return. We’re not superman or superwoman. We have our own lives that come with enough problems to try to take on someone else’s. The stress and strain that causes doesn’t do anyone any good. You start to get so stressed out that it ultimately hurts your relationship even more. After awhile you are going to get fed up. And when you get fed up after feeling like you’ve done everything you can, the end results are terrible. This contributes to our generations’ perception of relationships being all bad. We look at relationships as additional sources of stress because we make them that way. We start thinking that we don’t want anybody around because we don’t want to deal with their problems and baggage on top of our own. But really your partner should be the one helping you through it all. We’re suppose to be the escape for each other. We’re suppose to be the ones that each person feels can help them the most.

We have to realize that it’s up to us to figure out the other person doesn’t want to act right before it’s shown to us and feelings end up hurt. There’s clear signs that are shown when someone doesn’t act right. They move differently. Their energy is clear. The countless little arguments and debates we have show us everything we need to know. We just ignore it. People that don’t want to act right make it clear. We even ask people what their intentions are but continue to make our own beliefs. You can ask someone what they want and if they tell you they want a relationship and their actions don’t match up we’ll still choose to believe their words. Or if someone says I don’t know or I’m not looking for anything we take it upon ourselves to believe that we can make that change.

Now here’s the thing. You might be able to make them change but you have to be willing to stick through whatever they decide to do in the meantime if that’s what you want to do. You can’t be mad if they don’t adjust at the pace you want them to. Someone saying “I want to be with you” doesn’t mean they’ll start acting on it immediately. An “I don’t know what I want” won’t change into “I want to be with you” right away. We like to take on challenges that don’t do anything but cause us problems. When someone doesn’t want to be with us right away, we decide that we’ll do whatever it takes to change their mind. Now that’s not always a bad mentality to have. Yes, you do have to put in the work to get what you want. But there’s a difference between putting in the work and doing too much. You can put in the work and do nice gestures, and show someone you care about them, add some fun to their life, make them happy every time you’re around them. That is perfectly okay. But we don’t have to put ourselves in an one-sided relationship to get the point across. For some reason, we like to believe that if we show someone what we’re like in a relationship right away that will make them change their mind. Acting like you’re in a relationship before you are actually in one just makes someone feel like they won the prize before the game. This just makes the other person feel like they don’t have to do anything and never will. Think about it? If your boss told you that you were on a six figure salary and could go on vacation whenever you wanted without coming to work, you wouldn’t go to work just cause. If Stephen Curry could continue being the best shooter in the NBA without practice, he wouldn’t spend countless hours shooting for no reason. We get so stuck on the vision of what could be that we don’t embrace the reality of the situation. We choose to ignore the present signs because in the future that we see everything is perfect and it all paid off. Life isn’t a movie. Things don’t just happen that way.

We have this fairytale that we’re all so in love with. The fairytale that we’re going to meet someone, they’ll probably be “ain’t shit” for sometime, we’ll persuade them to change their ways, and then everything will be happily ever after. We’ll choose this fairytale over reality any day. So when we meet someone, we automatically decide that’s how things will go. And it’s great when you meet someone and everything is so happy at the beginning. When we’ve finally met someone and things are going smoothly, we forget that life comes in waves. We forget that there’s going to be ups and downs through it all. It’s the “honeymoon” stage that we hear about that. It’s that time where there is no wrong and it’s happiness all the time. We get so caught up in it that we think it’s going to last forever. It happens all the time. The couples on social media who have been together for two months and just can’t stop talking about each other. 6 months in and we’re swearing up and down that we’re going to be together forever. We’re posting pictures on every social media account every chance we get, we’re calling each other our “everything”, we have the late night conversations where we plan our whole lives together. We damn near forget that we’re individuals. Everything has to become about the other person so fast. You can’t figure someone out completely in a matter of months or weeks. These are still the growing stages. During this time, we should still be figuring out if we see this being something long-term. Forever is really a LONG time. There’s no way you can know for sure if you’re going to be with someone forever after a couple of months. It’s not wrong to have the thought. It’s not wrong to hope for it. But you don’t have to invest 150% of yourself into someone just yet. We’re still growing and maturing. Be with someone that understands that just like you do. A relationship is truly a growth process. It’s not about acting more grown than we really are. That’s not what it’s for. It’s for us to learn about each other as we grow and to build up to that level. We’re so quick to act married. We’re so quick to want to spend every minute and every second of our time with someone. We don’t even realize how draining that is. We spend too much time planning for the future instead of making sure the present is the way it should be.

We sold ourselves a dream that we can’t let go of. Our generation is so fascinated and confused about love at the same time. Everybody wants that one love story they can tell everybody. The feeling of being a hero feels so good that we’ll take all the negative emotions that come with it. It’s not part of our responsibility to show our worth to other people. You can’t forget about yourself worrying about someone else. We don’t have to make people believe in our dream. You can’t convince someone to buy the dream that you sold yourself. Hold on to your dream but stay aware of the reality as well.