I encountered the following post on the page of a family member on facebook the other day and I want to comment on it because even though I understand the sentiment of the idea, which I interpret as commitment is about being with someone who you are dedicated to regardless of the situation you experience with them, I have issues with the paragraph itself. There seems to be some serious contradictions within it due to word choices that I feel the need to point out and comment on. Instead of doing this on the family member's page and create this long comment, which probably would have taken two comments to fully express, I decided to do it here on my blog where I don't answer to anyone, but myself. Your comments are welcomed and appreciated even if you don't agree with me.
Here is the original post as I found it:
Commitment is not what everyone thinks it is. It's not waking up early every morning to make breakfast and eat together. It's not cuddling in bed together until both of you peacefully fall asleep. It's not a clean home and a homemade meal every day.
It's someone who steals all the covers. It's sometimes slammed doors, and a few harsh words, disagreeing, and the silent treatment until your hearts heal. Then...forgiveness!
It's coming home to the same person every day that you know he/she loves and cares about you, in spite of and because of who you are. It's laughing about the one time you accidentally did something stupid. It's about dirty laundry and unmade beds without finger pointing. It's about helping each other with the hard work of life! It's about swallowing the nagging words instead of saying them out loud.
It's about eating the cheapest and easiest meal you can make and sitting down together at 10 p.m. to eat because you both had a crazy day. It's when you have an emotional breakdown, and your love lies with you and holds you and tells you everything is going to be okay, and you believe them. It's when "Netflix and chill" literally means you watch Netflix and hang out. It's about still loving someone even though sometimes they make you absolutely insane.
Living with the person you love is not perfect, and sometimes it's hard, but it's amazing and comforting and one of the best things you'll ever experience.
The first issue I have is the mention of “... harsh words, disagreeing, and the silent treatment until your hearts heal”. If you are in a committed relationship, I do recognize that you will not always agree so while there will be disagreements and perhaps you may speak harsh words (I would hope that they weren’t cruel intentionally), I would disagree that Silent Treatments are beneficial in any way. Being silent can be beneficial in that it gives each party a chance to collect their thoughts and contemplate their feelings and reactions to the other person, but this is pointedly different than The Silent Treatment, which is purely a mechanism used to control another person. It is a passive-aggressive act where one individual refuses to communicate with their partner as a punishment, wielding power over him or her. It is noteworthy to recognize that individuals that society adamantly identifies as an abuser (narcissists especially) will frequently punish their victim by denying to speak or acknowledge them leaving their partner feeling isolated, incompetent, and worthless. How can punishing someone for something they said or did be viewed as working towards a compromise? Is holding a grudge and taking the stance of being the one who is “right” being loving? No, it isn’t. It’s an example of judgement rooted in separateness and fear, not in unity and love, which is where forgiveness can be found. Forgiveness can’t happen if someone is being given “The Silent Treatment”, so I don’t understand how accepting The Silent Treatment shows commitment. Do you?
My next point may be a situation where the author who wrote this post thought they were being clever or decided to use a cliché that everyone uses, but the issue I have with this is that most people use this phrase without truly understanding what is being said … they don’t understand what the words really mean. If my husband of ten years were to come home one night from work and walk through the door and say to me, “CricketSong, I love and care about you in spite of and because of who you are.” I wouldn’t feel “good:” about this, in fact, I probably would suggest that we sit down and have a heartfelt discussion about what he thought and felt about me. Spite is not an insignificant thing to feel for someone. Spite is ill will, annoyance, and hatred. These are pretty serious uncomfortable feelings to have for someone especially if that someone is the person you are committed to and ideally in a love relationship with. Right?
Perhaps this next point is a personal shadow of mine, but I don’t like to be made the butt of a joke whether by my husband or my children, or my family or friends and if you laugh at me because I “accidently” did something “stupid”, I’m probably already berating myself for it and if you started laughing at me, you would hurt my feelings. Maybe I’m over sensitive and like I said, this could be a shadow of mine in need of contemplation and work, but I would not laugh at you if you accidentally walked into a wall. I would be concerned about your well-being; did you hurt yourself? Are you okay? Laughing at someone’s misfortune is not something I believe defines commitment.
This brings me to the issue of repressing emotions. Everything we experience in the physical realm begins in the astral realm as a thought, which is then fueled by intention and feelings. When we repress our emotions and do not express them in the physical realm, they are still present within us on the astral realm. The more we focus on them, the momentum builds as they await manifestation so if we do not willingly manifest them through words or actions, they will manifest themselves within our bodies through dis-ease, illness or other health conditions. Ulcers are an recognized example of repressed anxiety. So when this passage suggests that we “…swallowing the nagging words instead of saying them out loud” it is clearly encouraging the repression of emotions. This is unhealthy and I would suggest that if one of the individuals involved in a committed relationship is truly holding back “nagging words” perhaps they have more issues with their partner than they recognize and a serious evaluation of the relationship is in order.
We all experience life from a unique perspective because we all have different life experiences. We each possess a history that is exclusively ours even if we were raised by the same parents, in the same house, with the same rules, morals, and ethics. We experience things differently because we are different personalities, different energetic vibrations manifested in different physical forms. Our perspectives are based on our past, present, and future (because time and space are illusions) life experiences. So if you believe something to be truth from your perspective then no one else can make you believe that it is not. People can share their perspective with you, but they cannot force you to believe something you refuse to believe. No one can make you experience something you are not aligned with energetically whether you are conscious of this or not. Sometimes we experience things we didn’t realize we wanted for ourselves (a pleasant surprise) or something we were energetically focused on unconsciously (trauma – fear of being hurt). The point is no one can make you believe something; either you believe it or you don’t. No amount of cajoling, sweet-talking, or persuasion will make you believe that everything is going to be okay, unless you believe it to be so. You can certainly not believe someone when they tell you that everything will be okay but claim to trust their words, but I propose that if you don’t believe them, are you really trusting their words?
If someone really annoys you to a point where you say that they make you absolutely insane, then do you really want to be in a committed relationship with that person? Perhaps this is just an exaggeration of the author to make a point, but it just stood out to me because of all the other issues I came across in the post and seemed like yet another point that illustrated to me that this individual really had no grasp of what commitment was and just added some fluffy words in an attempt to be slightly poetic.
I believe that living with the person you love is perfect. It is perfect as it is. Perfect is a state of being, it is a condition that we place on things and situations. If you believe that living with the person you love is perfect then it will be perfect … it will be perfect as it is meant to be. As I already stated we are each unique individuals with our own perspectives so if you believe that living with the person you love is perfect then it is perfect just as it is, and not because it does or does not have any or all of the things mentioned here in this blog post or in the original facebook post I read, or because it does or does not have the characteristics of your friends living arrangements or your parents or your cousins. Your relationship is perfect because you deemed it so.
Living with the person you love (or don’t love) is difficult because human beings are complicated and interactions with them can be challenging. Relationships, regardless of the type, are complex and are influenced by not only the individuals involved in the relationship, but by the other individuals who surround those people, including society at large. Each human being has life experiences that have influenced them, created them, and shaped them into the person they are so when we choose to interact with them we also experience their life through them. Whether these interactions are amazingly comforting or amazingly perplexing, are subjective to those involved, but one thing is certain they will transform you.
My next point may be a situation where the author who wrote this post thought they were being clever or decided to use a cliché that everyone uses, but the issue I have with this is that most people use this phrase without truly understanding what is being said … they don’t understand what the words really mean. If my husband of ten years were to come home one night from work and walk through the door and say to me, “CricketSong, I love and care about you in spite of and because of who you are.” I wouldn’t feel “good:” about this, in fact, I probably would suggest that we sit down and have a heartfelt discussion about what he thought and felt about me. Spite is not an insignificant thing to feel for someone. Spite is ill will, annoyance, and hatred. These are pretty serious uncomfortable feelings to have for someone especially if that someone is the person you are committed to and ideally in a love relationship with. Right?
Perhaps this next point is a personal shadow of mine, but I don’t like to be made the butt of a joke whether by my husband or my children, or my family or friends and if you laugh at me because I “accidently” did something “stupid”, I’m probably already berating myself for it and if you started laughing at me, you would hurt my feelings. Maybe I’m over sensitive and like I said, this could be a shadow of mine in need of contemplation and work, but I would not laugh at you if you accidentally walked into a wall. I would be concerned about your well-being; did you hurt yourself? Are you okay? Laughing at someone’s misfortune is not something I believe defines commitment.
This brings me to the issue of repressing emotions. Everything we experience in the physical realm begins in the astral realm as a thought, which is then fueled by intention and feelings. When we repress our emotions and do not express them in the physical realm, they are still present within us on the astral realm. The more we focus on them, the momentum builds as they await manifestation so if we do not willingly manifest them through words or actions, they will manifest themselves within our bodies through dis-ease, illness or other health conditions. Ulcers are an recognized example of repressed anxiety. So when this passage suggests that we “…swallowing the nagging words instead of saying them out loud” it is clearly encouraging the repression of emotions. This is unhealthy and I would suggest that if one of the individuals involved in a committed relationship is truly holding back “nagging words” perhaps they have more issues with their partner than they recognize and a serious evaluation of the relationship is in order.
We all experience life from a unique perspective because we all have different life experiences. We each possess a history that is exclusively ours even if we were raised by the same parents, in the same house, with the same rules, morals, and ethics. We experience things differently because we are different personalities, different energetic vibrations manifested in different physical forms. Our perspectives are based on our past, present, and future (because time and space are illusions) life experiences. So if you believe something to be truth from your perspective then no one else can make you believe that it is not. People can share their perspective with you, but they cannot force you to believe something you refuse to believe. No one can make you experience something you are not aligned with energetically whether you are conscious of this or not. Sometimes we experience things we didn’t realize we wanted for ourselves (a pleasant surprise) or something we were energetically focused on unconsciously (trauma – fear of being hurt). The point is no one can make you believe something; either you believe it or you don’t. No amount of cajoling, sweet-talking, or persuasion will make you believe that everything is going to be okay, unless you believe it to be so. You can certainly not believe someone when they tell you that everything will be okay but claim to trust their words, but I propose that if you don’t believe them, are you really trusting their words?
If someone really annoys you to a point where you say that they make you absolutely insane, then do you really want to be in a committed relationship with that person? Perhaps this is just an exaggeration of the author to make a point, but it just stood out to me because of all the other issues I came across in the post and seemed like yet another point that illustrated to me that this individual really had no grasp of what commitment was and just added some fluffy words in an attempt to be slightly poetic.
I believe that living with the person you love is perfect. It is perfect as it is. Perfect is a state of being, it is a condition that we place on things and situations. If you believe that living with the person you love is perfect then it will be perfect … it will be perfect as it is meant to be. As I already stated we are each unique individuals with our own perspectives so if you believe that living with the person you love is perfect then it is perfect just as it is, and not because it does or does not have any or all of the things mentioned here in this blog post or in the original facebook post I read, or because it does or does not have the characteristics of your friends living arrangements or your parents or your cousins. Your relationship is perfect because you deemed it so.
Living with the person you love (or don’t love) is difficult because human beings are complicated and interactions with them can be challenging. Relationships, regardless of the type, are complex and are influenced by not only the individuals involved in the relationship, but by the other individuals who surround those people, including society at large. Each human being has life experiences that have influenced them, created them, and shaped them into the person they are so when we choose to interact with them we also experience their life through them. Whether these interactions are amazingly comforting or amazingly perplexing, are subjective to those involved, but one thing is certain they will transform you.
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