What I Know Now
Trust the universe. Trust the universe. Trust the universe. Ommmmm.
A mantra is a phrase or sound repeated to aid concentration in meditation. Some of us may have them and not even realize we use them. I’ve adopted a few over the years to help ease my anxiety, re-focus my energy and come back to my moment. However, though they’ve proven themselves true time and again, I often doubt my mantras. I become fearful that I am using them as excuses. You see, I tend to over-rationalize difficult situations in an attempt to make sense of them. In my past, this has led to toxic relationships being drawn out for years and unhappy work environments being tolerated for too long. Life’s uncertainty leaves me anxious about how to make the distinction between what I can and can’t control.
The truth is, there is a balance that must be reached. While we must act with intention and take responsibility for those actions, we must also recognize that some circumstances in our life will be out of our control. That is a difficult thing for me to accept. And in order to make sense of it, I attempt to manipulate reasoning because I ache to understand the process. But what I’m realizing is that sometimes we won’t understand why until the reason is ready to present itself. So, we must practice the virtue of patience. With patience we can cherish our moments, good and bad, for the lessons they are, for the steps they take us toward our future. We’ll never be able to control all that life throws at us, but we will always be able to control how we react to it.
If you’re anything like me, this patience can be excruciating at times. It causes anxiety and fear of the unknown. It breeds self-doubt, causing us to forget all we’ve accomplished because we’re too busy looking ahead. Those emotions are real and they demand attention. Here are some ways I have found to stabilize them.
It’s as if we’re always chasing something. Chasing the school, the job, the relationship, the next job, the next relationship, the house, the family, the status, and the style. Never satisfied. Never enough.
The race isn’t going to stop. It’s okay to slow down every once in a while and enjoy the scenery. To look back at the long road we’ve come down to get to where we are. But we refuse to stop. Rather than give ourselves the time to take stock in our accomplishments, we look past them as we search for the next one.
And in a world like today, where we are all showcasing the best parts of our lives all over the Internet, it’s easy to feel like we’re slacking. Like we’re missing something, not trying hard enough, not as happy as everyone else.
And, in fear of never being able to keep up, we hide behind a word, a very tiny word that suddenly has gained a lot of clout, and four little letters that get tossed around left and right as an excuse for why we just can’t. Can’t attend the party, can’t meet for lunch, can’t start a family, can’t wash our hair. That word, is busy.
You’ll want to consider a few questions before you start dating again.
Now that you are divorced or otherwise single, what are you looking for?
You’ve probably been asked that question, or a variation of it, many times, and it’s not always easy to pin down an answer. Most of us can readily identify what we don’t want, but putting a finger on exactly what we’re looking for in a partner and/or a relationship is often a difficult task.
As a relationship expert, I’ve found that many of our wants come from things that we’ve experienced in past relationships, or from things we’ve not experienced but would like to. We hold on to pieces of past relationships that we perceive as “good,” and we tend to drag that baggage into new relationships.
But this type of behavior raises a very important question: Is this fair?
The answer is: not really. It is very important to enter into each new relationship with no preconceived ideas. Try to leave behind your past, and look at the new man in your life with fresh eyes and an open heart. But, that does not mean that you should walk in with heart in your hands, ready to commit.
Below are three questions that you should ask yourself as you’re preparing to start dating again.
I started “going out with” my first boyfriend at a very awkward 16.
This year marks the tenth anniversary of my being an active participant in the modern dating world. And, in honor of such a milestone, on my birthday I did something very nerdy and pretentious. I wrote a letter to my younger self–or more accurately my 16-year-old self.
When I was that very awkward 16, I was a theatre kid, and I felt things deeply; so deeply that for many years I could-not-would-not re-visit those feelings. It was just (sniff) too (sniff) painful. But now I’m 26 and I will say this: when you’re 16, and your boobs are sort of starting to come in, and the bass player of local teenage boy band Tony Flow is just hormonal enough to think you’re cute and call you his–you’ve got it made. And that’s the easiest dating will ever be.
Mistakes! We all make them. Our errors range in breadth and severity. For example: maybe you try to drag race in your friend’s mom’s minivan in rural Wisconsin and then get banned from driving in the state of Wisconsin forever. Or maybe you decide to drywall a hole you accidentally made in your own apartment, and end up with your feet stuck to your bedroom floor. Or maybe you drink three delicious, delicious margaritas and email your ex-boyfriend from a bathroom stall in Brooklyn (you know, the one who ripped out your heart years ago and stepped on it—the ex boyfriend, not the outer-borough bathroom) suggesting that it’d be a swell idea to CATCH UP OVER COFFEE AT A TIME THAT IS CONVENIENT FOR HIM? And then when you’ve realized what you’ve done, your friends remind you that you’ve been drinking, would probably mistake a bag of mulch for a man, and might regret this?
Unfortunately you see that he’s already emailed you back, so you chortle self-assuredly in your friends’ faces and put your stupid plan into motion because alcohol? And also because you’re a giant weird baby?
You know, those kinds of mistakes.
Nice to meet you! Giant baby.
Not saying you’ll find yourself in this position, because a mature adult like you would never do such a thing. I know I wouldn’t, not me, no sir.
But…in the utterly hypothetical event that you did wake up the next day to find yourself in this predicament, you might possibly find yourself en route to see a person who devastated you years ago and who you totally swore off for good.
In that case, here are a few conduct tips.
Hopefully fashion sense is one of the first things to change.
I have no idea how people under the age of 20 date with any amount of confidence. My assumption is that they’re blinded by untested optimism. That seems like the only suitable answer because, looking back, I realize how little I knew about myself as a teenager.
I’m Type-A personality with a few extra dashes of anxiety thrown in, but in my youth I just considered myself to be highly motivated and vigilant. This is partly because I didn’t realize other people didn’t worry about things the way I did. I thought everybody agonized over whether they’d included enough details in their page-long response to the question, “Describe the pathway of frog’s digestive system” in biology class. I thought it was natural to be concerned about making curfew before my date even picked me up for the evening. I didn’t recognize that my need for order and control verged on excessive.
Of course, I thought I understood who I was in high school; all teenagers do. Every teen is sure they know who they are and what they like and what they’ll always like. They hear people talk about change—circumstances change, people change, preferences change—and they understand that change is a possibility for some things but certainly not for all things. Significant, life-altering change happens to other people because they’re not prepared; those fools don’t see it coming. Teenagers think that acknowledging the existence and possibility of change is a safeguard against ever being caught off-guard.
Mike will tell you there are a few things more important than trust, but the list is pretty short (and for a good reason).
What it looks like to finally be happy. And windblown.
Freshman year of college wasn’t kind to me. I felt an incredible amount of pressure to live the idealized undergraduate life I’d seen in movies and television shows: excellent grades, tons of new friends, a wonderful boyfriend, a solid athletic career. I already had a sweet boyfriend and was a straight-A student. Those things were nice, but they weren’t new or exciting for me. I wanted the friends and athletic success even more.
After a few months on campus, my life resembled a constant cycle of worry and disappointment. I got along with my roommates but I didn’t have a lot of other friends. My track teammates were nice, but they were also faster, thinner, and more outgoing than me. Basically, college wasn’t what I wanted it to be, and that freaked me out. The new anxiety caused me to overeat and occasionally binge, and soon a twenty-pound weight-gain became another source of worry.
My boyfriend, who I’d been dating for two years before going to college, did his best to make me feel better. He told me not to worry about my social situation, and he encouraged me whenever I vowed to get my weight in check, but nothing felt right anymore. I felt like a pudgy failure. Two months before the end of spring semester, I told him we should see other people.
It gets better, or does it?
I recently became a substitute teacher. Like most things in my life post-graduation, I never planned on this happening. I liked school, and I still love learning, but I never imagined myself standing in front of a classroom with any amount of authority. Thankfully, I’ve learned that subbing doesn’t involve much more than taking attendance, handing out some papers and making sure the kids don’t do anything harmful or creepy on my watch.
When the kids are working quietly at their desks, I can’t help but to remember what I was like at their respective ages—and who I was crushing on all those years ago. I really liked one guy from my class in middle school; unfortunately, so did every other girl in my grade. But who could blame them? The guy was super-athletic, funny and wore trendy clothing—is anything more important than that when you’re ten-, eleven- or twelve-years old?
“What I Know Now” is created by Chrisina Vuleta, the founder of the excellent website 40:20Vision.com, where forty somethings share all the things “they wish they’d known then” with 20-somethings. May we all grow happily older AND wiser.
The other week I shared a story here about the importance of not losing yourself in a relationship. “Stay true to yourself” is a healthy relationship truism – but sometimes it’s hard to do in real life. What is the line between being true to “you” and being in a true partnership? After all, there is a natural desire to please the one that we love.
But we have to separate pleasing another with knowing our own boundaries. It’s one thing to support your partner’s dreams and to understand their weaknesses…it’s another for their weaknesses to chip away at our own strengths. 40-something women agree, if you twist yourself into a pretzel – bending to his needs and interests over yours – it can only end with a loss of respect on both sides. So how do you avoid getting the bends? It all starts with building a healthy mindset around dating …and not falling prey to the self-doubt traps. These five women shared with me what they learned about building a strong self of self while dating in their twenties.
The “What I Know Now” column is in partnership with Chrisina Vuleta, the founder of the excellent website 40:20Vision.com, where forty somethings share all things “they wish they’d known then” with 20-somethings. The following is a co-post appearing on both sites. May we all grow happily older AND wiser.
Hello, girls, gals, ladies, and friends:
I write this on the heels of my 31st birthday, squarely in the middle of my 20′s and my 40′s. From this vantage, I’m old enough to have fallen on my face, but I’m young enough that adult stability still feels new. At 31, I’ve learned what it takes to be who I want to be. I’ve also learned that nothing is constant or final no matter how old you get, how much money you make, or how wonderful the man is who loves you.
“What I Know Now” is created by Chrisina Vuleta, the founder of the excellent website 40:20Vision.com, where forty somethings share all things “they wish they’d known then” with 20-somethings. May we all grow happily older AND wiser.
This 40-something woman moved from a small, conservative hometown in the South to New York City in pursuit of the “Friends” and “Sex and the City” lifestyle. After quickly realizing that TV land’s Manhattan was far from reality, she put her nose to the grindstone and found success in the financial services industry. She survived 9 / 11 but not without an emotional breakdown that caused her to reflect on what she wanted in life. She then married her long-time boyfriend, moved out of the city and became a mom. At forty, she found herself living in the ‘burbs and asking herself…is this it? This is what she wishes she knew in her twenties: