Relationships – Old vs New
There is a point in life when finding a partner, marriage, buying a house, and living your life according to your view of an ideal life is your only goal.
Is life and love this simple?
I remember when I was younger, all of my thoughts were just that – especially finding a partner, which was everything to me! I was lost in the pursuit of that dream, the pursuit of ‘that someone’, that perfect person who was going to make me whole and give my life meaning.
Until I found her.
In the first couple of years, we were enjoying ourselves because we were young, having fun and kind of lost in each other. Fast forward 3 years - Things were going great and everything seemed to be rosy because we were starting our careers, we had moved into our new town house, we had decided to get married, we had a baby and life was going through the stages I thought it was meant to at that age. We had a great relationship, at least I thought we did.
Relationships can be the answer to loneliness and bring happiness because they have the ability to soar, inspire, and be your reason for being. However, they can also be absolutely frustrating, difficult, and just wrong! Trying to match up with someone who fits your mould, who loves you for who you are and for what you do is not always the outcome when you think you have met the right one.
I found this out the hard way.
I have this analogy
· In your 20s, you are invincible
· In your 30s, this is your time to panic
· In your 40s and beyond, this is the time to let go and say “I DON’T GIVE A FLYING FUCK”
The relationships in your youth are the hardest because they are the building blocks for the rest of your life. These early relationships are the ones where you learn your first real life lessons after leaving home. This is the time to work hard and build a good foundation, this is the time that you need to get through, to get to the good stuff.
In my 20s I thought, everything is going perfectly, I can’t lose because I thought I was invincible. But my motto at this stage was - I’ll do it tomorrow. This was until I was reaching the end of my 20s and I had a rude shock when I was told, by my wife, that we needed to separate. My ego took over and instead of trying to work things out I took her words as the death knell to our marriage. And, with that I was single again.
My 30s, WOW, what a rollercoaster! It was major panic and major overcompensation. I got married very fast, Wife number 2. This was a very busy time in my/our life filled with Panic and excess! We had to travel, travel, travel, buy a house, have 2 more kids, buy investment properties, and just accumulate crap. I mean shit that we just did not need at all. Fight! Fight! Fight! When you’re told that ‘you’re not good enough’ again and again, it strips you of your self-worth and joy… and sadly the love you once felt for the other person. Eventually, after nearly a decade together the marriage ended and so did my 30s.
My 40s brought a new lease on life. I lost the need to accumulate useless crap and realised I didn’t need a woman to complete me. This is when I started to meditate and found myself spiritually resulting in a realisation that what my ex-wife and I had been focussing on was for just for the appearance and keeping up with the Jones’s. In the end all I was left with was an ex-wife, an ex-house, and a lot of debt.
I decided to pursue my passion and follow my dreams. Funnily enough, after I stopped looking for ‘the one’, I stumbled across someone who turned out to be the love of my life. I love her and she loves me unconditionally and this helped me realise the issues I had in my marriages was that we always had conditions. With her love and support I was able to quit my job and chase my dream.
This is where I talk about the new relationship, the time when you love your partner for the person that they are, not what they can do for you or what you can get out of them. The new relationship is based on who you want to be and who you want to have in your life, not what looks good on Facebook or Instagram. This is the relationship you appreciate because you have both grown from the lessons of past loves.
Once you’ve reached this point in life, you really do find out what you need, value, and actually care about. This is when you just need to be comfortable, content and stop chasing everything and anything and become grateful for what you already have. Sometimes our greatest lessons’ from past relationships is that once you have been in a bad one you truly can understand what a great one is, and usually the great relationship is the one you least expected.
Relationships are meant to be joyful and beautiful, and I’m happy to say that I am with the girl that I am supposed to be with, she is my unexpected true love (as infuriating as it is at times, hey we can’t all be perfect – This is the real world after all).
