4/26/2013
I woke up this
morning feeling less than wonderful or blessed today.
I’m not sure what
it is. Could be a number of things. Going through my hormonal cycle and dealing
with the stomach pains, mood swings, and so on probably is what causing it,
(come on, common sense should tell you what that means).
But here’s the
catch to it. For the past few days, (since the fight with my boyfriend), I’ve
been doing good as far as my behavior and actions around him. I haven’t been
focused on what he’s doing with his phone, I’ve been keeping a cool demeanor
when he tells me things, I’ve been putting into practice of “assuming the most
innocent” possibility when it comes to things that before I usually wouldn’t
like him doing, and I’ve been good at controlling my emotions around him.
Listen to this:
this morning I woke up at 6:30 AM. I’ve been doing that a lot lately with me
being unemployed. I hate not working; it disturbs me more than anything else.
What’s worse is I hate having to depend on my boyfriend and my mother for
money. This eats a lot at my ego and makes me feel horrible. My mother, who
would usually get on me about looking for a job and so on, hasn’t been lately.
She sees what I’m doing and how I’m applying, and the fact I’ve been staying on
top of the house when it comes to cleaning and so forth makes her proud.
I’ve been trying
really hard to get a job. And I don’t think I do enough at times. I’ve gotten
down to a schedule to where I spend a certain amount of time applying, a
certain amount of time cleaning, and then a certain amount of time outside the
house.
Today, it’s
different. I’m torn and struggling.
When I got up this
morning, I actually spent a good five minutes looking for my boyfriend’s phone.
Why? Well, giving an obvious excuse would be to say that he tends to leave his
phone on the floor and I didn’t want to step on it stumbling through the dark
room and be blamed for breaking it. The real reason? I wanted to open it, see
if anyone’s texted him or called him or to go through his messages and see what
kinds of conversations he’s been having and so on….
Disturbing? Very
much so. This violates the privacy I’ve been promising to give him and the
practices I’ve been preaching about myself. Did I find his phone? Not really.
But he did get up at some point in the night to use the bathroom, so I’m
figuring most likely, he has the phone in his pocket or he put it somewhere so
to not let it get stepped on.
Why am I concerned
or obsessed over his phone? To get right down to it, my boyfriend needs to have
contact with certain people to know how things are going in his hometown of El
Centro. One of the people that he has contact with is one of his ex-girlfriends,
who will remain unnamed, that he dated before me. Now, I could go into rambling
and talking about how this girl makes me feel insecure, I can’t trust him with
her, blah blah blah, but that’s not healthy, really. All of that, in honesty,
is speculation and assumption, and that destroys a relationship fast. It’s what’s
been poisoning my relationship for almost a year now.
Here’s the facts:
so as not to blast my boyfriend’s privacy online, his ex-girlfriend, for
reasons I will not disclose, is still very much close to his family and it
seems that the two of them have a mutual and calm friendship between them. That’s
the facts. Those are at least the important facts that I can share from my
boyfriend’s point of view. Anything else beyond that doesn’t matter. Now,
because she is very close to his family, he doesn’t want to give her ammunition
to go back to his family or run around his hometown saying negative things
about him, ( I can understand that, especially if he’s had experience with it
concerning ex-girlfriends before). So he doesn’t wave our relationship in front
of her.
So, what does my
boyfriend do to respect our relationship? For one, when he’s with me, he doesn’t
answer her calls or reply to her messages. This is true. Now, before I would
get on his case a lot about her messaging him and calling him like crazy. He,
however, pointed something out to me that made a lot of sense. He said this to
me:
“Liz, do you think
I’m telepathically telling her to call me and message me when I’m with you? Do
you think that she, being two hours away, knows everything that I’m doing
during the day or who I’m with? Do you think I control her or ask her to do
this or tell her specifically what times of the day I’m with you to piss you
off?”
He has a point. My
boyfriend doesn’t have control over her and to be fair, he spent three days in
his hometown without me and I didn’t know what he was doing during the day when
I called or texted him. But he always got back to me and I assured myself that
regardless of him responding or not, he still got and obviously read the texts
I sent him. Same thing with my friends or my family.
Keeping my ego,
emotions and jealousy out of this, I’m trying very hard to program in my head
this sense of apathy towards him and his phone. The other day he was on the
phone with her and I could hear the entirety of the conversation. I kept
telling myself, “I don’t care that he’s talking to her because I’ve got more
important things to worry about.” I did, too. I was cooking dinner, applying
for jobs, looking for meet-up groups and so on. I kept myself mentally busy. At
the same time, I think my boyfriend intentionally left the bedroom door open
and was talking loudly for a reason. In a way, it provided me comfort to at
least hear his side of the conversation. That gave me security.
And afterwards? He
pulled me into the room with him and started venting to me about the
conversation. I listened to him, and while I didn’t like some of things he was
telling me, this is what went through my head: I may not like what he tells me, but that doesn’t mean I should get mad
at him that he is telling me.
That’s what
changed in my boyfriend’s perspective. I kept a calm demeanor, appearing unbiased
and while I gave my opinion on things that he told me, I didn’t get upset.
Later on in the night, just to reaffirm that I want this to continue, I thanked
and showed him appreciation for being completely honest with me. I told him
that I might not like some of the things he tells me, I promised to keep calm
and not get upset at him. He also thanked me, joking around and said, “thank
you for not getting mad and not ruining my night.” We had a nice night after
that, and a pretty good couple of days, too.
On top of all
that, that night I had another of my insecure dreams where I’m confronting his
ex-girlfriend. I would usually have these dreams and it would concern him
cheating on me with her, kissing her in front of me, choosing her over me and
so on. My insecurities provoking my fears. Not this time. This was the second
dream I’ve had where confronting her turned on its head. The first one was more
about my ego and the sense that I was winning
him from her. Not this one, it was much different.
In the dream, I
was talking to his ex-girlfriend’s sister and mother at a picnic table. They
were telling me how his ex-girlfriend would wear dresses with roses and
carnations to attract him because he was fond of it when the two were dating. They
bragged and boasted about her and their old relationship to me. She even came
up to me in a floral gown and said to me, “See? He sees roses and he
automatically comes running back home to me.” My boyfriend wasn’t anywhere near
her, though, but instead, off playing with his cousins, nieces and nephews. It
was a family get-together. Instead of getting upset and butt hurt over my
dream-encounter with her, I just told her, “Look, I’m here to enjoy myself and
have fun. So is he.” And I walked away. My dream ended there, but I felt a
sense of pride in myself that I felt enough confidence in my dream to confront
my fears.
I still remember
the dream clearly. But more so than that, I remember the feeling of confidence
that I had and security in myself. Today, I might not be feeling much of it,
but that doesn’t mean that I’m not still that person I want to be.
My boyfriend is a
good guy. He does what he feels is right to try and make everyone happy. He’s
no different from any other guy who just wants his day to go by as smoothly,
comfortably, and as easy-going as possible. He recognizes he’s not always going
to have those days, but he wants those stressful moments at home to be as few
and limited as possible, and having a girlfriend that is confident and trusts
him is a way to make sure of that.
Right now my
boyfriend is still asleep. It’s 8:25 AM. I’m going to let him sleep since he
has his graveyard shift tonight literally twelve hours from now. When he wakes
up I’ll give him a hug and a kiss, tell him good morning, ask him if he’s
hungry for breakfast, and tell him he’s an amazing boyfriend and he makes me
very happy just being next to me at night.
So I end this blog
with a message:
Confidence is hard
to practice and put into discipline. It takes baby steps. It takes multiple
techniques. My favorite is the “I Like Myself Game” (which I’ll go over another
time). It improves the self-esteem, makes you happy, great to be around, and
changes your perspective on the world. Think of it in many ways as the “Law of
Attraction,” you change how you see yourself and the world, the world will change
how it sees you. Like a diet or habit, it takes time. There will be days you
are high, days that you are low. But confidence and a good self-esteem doesn’t
go away one day out of nowhere. It’s still with you and stays with you. You don’t
change. It’s what makes you smile when you wake up, what makes people gravitate
to you and makes you glow. And it affects your relationship. It can change it.
Trust me on this one.
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