I’ve encountered a lot of people recently who have gotten into situationships instead of relationships. A situationship occurs when you get into a psudo-relationship with someone else because you’re going through a hard time in your life or you’re facing a lot of situational stress. The bottom line is that you aren’t thinking clearly. Many people in these situations are emotionally vulnerable and they easily settle for someone who appears good for them because they are tired of being alone. However, when they discover that they’ve made the wrong choice, they still don’t do anything differently. I personally think that some of the most dysfunctional relationships are born out of desperation. People want the ideal relationship but never actually take the time to think through their actions. We are friends with people we don’t like. We marry people we don’t like. We even have children with people we don’t like. This does nothing but add to the confusion and chaos in our lives. We (including myself) have to come to a point where we stop doing permanent things with temporary people and expecting everything to work out. It’s important to realize that it is so much easier to slip into a situationship than it is to take the time to grow and build a genuine relationship. Remember that situationships are just that. Situational. They have a very low likelihood of ever succeeding because you’ll realize that you don’t need or even want a situationship any more after the situation has passed. They’re a temporary fix to a long term problem. Stop settling for people you never even wanted in the first place. You’ll never get back the time you wasted.
Tag Archives: friendship
Letting People In
I totally agree with this picture. While I don’t think that you have to be standoffish and mean, I think that less is more when it comes to letting people get super close to you. I know that everyone is human and we all make mistakes and that we can’t expect perfection from our friends but it’s still ok to be cautious before spilling your guts to someone you call a friend but have only known a short time. Someone once said that you should never trust anyone who only has new friends because that’s an indication of the quality of their prior relationships and friendships. Sometimes doing more groundwork on the front end of a friendship or a relationship can save you a lot of heartache and hurt down the road. One thing that I’ve noticed is that I’m somewhat of an extremist when it comes to putting the words in this picture into practice. For instance, every person in my life that I consider close and feel that they know me well I’ve known for three years or more. This was not a conscious decision, it was just something that happened and can probably be blamed in some way on my upbringing. But I digress. My point is that it’s good to screen people and to let them prove that they can be trusted before you open the floodgates of your heart and let them 100% into your life.
Disposable People
Some people are disposable. And I don’t mean that in the literal way. So many times we mistake people who are our fans for friends. A fan is someone who hangs around you because they like what you’re doing. They don’t want get to know the real you and they function in the capacity of a seat filler in your life. If your life was a movie, they’d be an extra on the set. Fans like what you do but not necessarily who you are. They’ll smile in your face but if you actually ever needed them in the capacity of a genuine friend, they wouldn’t be there. Fans talk the most but rarely take the time to quietly listen. Fans are disposable. They’ll cycle in and out your life without warning. You can gain and lose fans at the drop of a hat but friends will stick with you. That’s why you don’t want to make a friend out of a fan. Fans won’t be around when you hit rock bottom because they never cared about you in the first place. They just thought it was cool to hang around you and be nosy. Bottom line. Fans are disposable, friends aren’t.
My Heart Condition (Cardiomegaly)
I think I may suffer from Cardiomegaly. Not in the physical sense, but definitely emotionally. For those of you who may not have wikipedia nearby, Cardiomegaly is when the heart is enlarged and it can be caused by a variety of different things including tumors, anemia, and cocaine use. I think my heart may actually be too big and that realization is coming to me slowly but pretty surely. I’m the kind of person who will go above and beyond the call of duty for someone that is close to me. While I’ve gotten better with sticking to boundaries, I still will bend over backwards to help someone I consider part of my family (immediate, close, or adopted). Now this is actually a good thing. I can be counted on and I’m loyal to a fault. HOWEVER, the bad part about this is that if I legitimately care about someone. I’ll still be inconvenienced and sacrifice enormously despite the fact that they 1. Don’t care about me back 2. Don’t know that I’m actually being inconvenienced and 3. Have not given me ANY indication that they’re about to care about me. As a therapist, one of the things that I talk about all the time with my clients is the importance of sticking to your boundaries and being with people that appreciate you. I first noticed this enlarged heart condition when I was a little kid and I could empathize with people and cry when someone started crying just because I was sad that they were sad. To this day, I still occasionally do that. It’s a good thing to care about people and to be genuinely interested in their welfare. But it’s another thing to care to the point that it’s at your own personal expense and the other person remains oblivious to your caring. This has happened to me more times than I would care to count. But, it’s something that I am actually aware of and despite the fact that caring too much continually screws me over, I’ve gotten used to it. It’s painful and involves a lot of emotions but it’s who I am. It’s uncomfortable and almost always inconvenient but it’s familiar. So many people talk about how they want their hearts to soften but I could probably benefit from a little hardening. As someone told me this week, “caring a lot about other people can be both a blessing and a curse.” And who knows, maybe caring too much will one day work in my favor instead of working against me.
Alisha's Angle 