Your Daily Polyamory Blog for Navigating Life, Relationships, and More
“If you can’t love yourself, you can’t love anyone else” is something that other people basically never stop saying. Only people with high self-esteem (positive self-regard) can truly engage in healthy, long-lasting relationships, people claim. The rest of the world is out of luck. Doomed to failed relationships and/or a life alone.
And like anything that gets said over and over again, » Read more
“Look with your eyes, not with your hands.”
I can’t remember how many times I heard that growing up. Particularly as I walked through stores with my mother.
The warning was warranted of course. Stores were inevitably crammed full of things I found fascinating. And like most small children, I felt an urge to reach out and touch things that captivated my interest. » Read more
“No matter what, you gotta find a way to love yourself,” she says. “Because self-love’s where it’s at. That’s where the real good stuff is.”
And yet every time I talk to her, she confesses that she’s unhappy with other people, in spite of nailing the self-love stuff. “I know I’m the shit,” » Read more
There’s nothing quite like an emotional hangover.
There’s nothing quite like waking up the morning after I poured my heart out, only to have it met with silence. Because it overwhelmed you.
I get it. It overwhelms me. If I could get away from my heart, I would.
But it’s always there. » Read more
I’ve always been a person who feels things very deeply. Sensitive is one word for it — if a very general one.
Sensitive is one of those words that’s great since it’s top of mind and most people have heard it before. Have some kind of personal definition as to what it means. » Read more
Life might be a great deal simpler if I were one of those people who feel like I’m owed good things. If I were a person who thinks I’m special by default and therefore should be granted kindness, comfort, and care.
But I’m not. And instead, I find it all too easy to feel guilty when good things happen to me. » Read more
I’m sitting in a pew, attending mass at the church I attended growing up.
It’s been 7 years since I went to a service here, on another visit to my hometown, but surprisingly little has changed since then.
Actually, surprisingly little has changed from 30 years ago, when I was a small child doing my best to remain quiet and tolerate the unending boredom, » Read more
“What you do,” he said, “is just lie there with your thoughts. Don’t judge them. Just let them happen. Let yourself feel everything you’re feeling. Think everything you’re thinking. Without distraction.”
He didn’t call it mindfulness then. I wouldn’t learn that word until much later. From someone else.
Instead, my first fraught dance with my own mind wouldn’t have a name. » Read more
I look at my phone. Sigh involuntarily. Because it’s one of those series of texts.
I miss you, she says. Everyone else bores me.
She proceeds to insult or tear down every other person in her life, pointing out what she perceives to be their flaws. » Read more
As I’ve written many times, I’m a recovering people pleaser.
On confident days, I find myself venturing the idea that I am a recovered people pleaser. But then I decide that’s how they get you. You get complacent and assume you are forever changed, and then you’re slipping back into the old ways. » Read more
