Installment #2     Calling All Crabby Old Women

 

Under Any Condition? Nope.

How often do you hear a gushing newly-betrothed or newly-married person on TV say, “He/she completes me.”

Oh, please. Pass the anti-emetics. Honey, if you ain’t complete, you should not be offering yourself up to someone else. What part of you needs completing? If your partner isn’t complete, run. Run like hell. You wouldn’t take your car off the assembly line and say, “I’ll just finish that myself, thanks.” You’d be heading for a big wreck for sure. Why accept someone who is incomplete? This doesn’t mean you need to find or be a perfect person, but if a person is not fully baked in truly important areas, step back and reassess.

You can bet the next thing gushed will be, “He/she loves me unconditionally.” Well, good grief, why? If you and your bud don’t care enough about yourselves to have conditions on your relationship, why not? Does this mean you will accept any treatment? Does unconditional love include abuse? Disrespect? Refusal to takes steps to change and improve things? Of course, you won’t ever find someone or be someone without any warts. But, some warts aren’t warts; they are malignant and do not have to be tolerated unconditionally.

Relationships have conditions, rules, boundaries. On a good day, they are mutually agreed upon. If that doesn't work out, you still can be a loving person and step out of the path of weapons that are not born of love. You do not have to pass those very unloving tests of loyalty. Sometimes, taking leave of the relationship may actually preserve the love.

I shudder to think how many people suffer because they have swallowed those trite lines that were dreamed up by an inexperienced, clueless script writer on his or her first job at the Lifetime channel. New wedding vows:

I got warts, you got warts. After careful examination, I find you to be pretty much intact. I will continue to work on improving myself as best I can. Since we both promise to work on things together, let’s have a go at it.

Cue the romantic music.

And that’s why I won’t be applying for a job at the Lifetime channel.