Category: relationships

  • Torturous love

    Torturous love

    And so it is…love and torture have always been stablemates.

    Sometimes, without warning, someone enters your life and challenges every assumption that you ever made about what’s possible.

    What you thought you deserved was limited to what you were capable of achieving up to that point, and maybe just a quiet desire to acquire some peace beyond it.

    Until they see in you what you thought was your own delusions, and you see in them what you thought were only your dreams.

    Once you connect with that truth, nothing can convince you that anything less is what you must settle for.

    Settling becomes a vulgar thought, and fulfilment becomes incomplete without them.

    When that happens, the distance between love and torture grows, and you find yourself stretched between the two, with only shards of sanity to prevent you from being torn apart.

    Those shards will tear at your dreams and taunt your delusions until their embrace is secured.

    Until then, life becomes a dyslexic dance with insanity, and love remains elusive.

    (From the archives)

  • ‘Sorry’ isn’t the hardest part

    ‘Sorry’ isn’t the hardest part

    The only thing worse than an insincere apology is the apology that is offered with a demand that it be accepted.

    The most important part of an apology is not that it is made, but that it is authentic.

    Not just sincere. Authentic.

    If an apology is limited to a text message, or a few words uttered, but has no meaningful effort behind it to remedy the offence or harm that was caused, then it isn’t an apology. It’s manipulation.

    When we demand that our apology result in a change in attitude from the one that was offended because the apology is supposed to put the offence behind us, it’s not an apology, it’s manipulation.

    When we apologise but take offence or become defensive when the impact of our behaviour needs to be discussed by the one we offended, then we didn’t apologise, we were just ‘doing the right thing’. That’s manipulation.

    When we are sincere in regretting the harm or offence that we caused, an apology will be the smallest action that we take to make up for what we did.

    If we’re sincere, an apology will only mark the first step in our effort to regain the trust and confidence, or the good standing that we had with someone, because they are important to us, and not just because they didn’t deserve what we did, or we feel self-righteous in owning up to being wrong.

    On the flip-side, needing someone to admit fault and repeatedly apologise for something that they’ve already shown remorse for is not accepting their apology. Nor is it sincere reciprocation of their efforts to remedy the breach in the relationship.

    It’s revenge aimed at inflicting the same harm or offence that we felt from their behaviour.

    Whether justified or not, it reflects what we value more. The relationship that we have with them, and how much we value who they are, or being seen as the victim of their mistake.

    Be authentic. If not, you’re simply manipulating your way through life.

    It always starts with you.

  • Whose pedestal is it?

    Whose pedestal is it?

    When we see people for what we need them to be, rather than who they are, we elevate their position in our lives through no fault of their own.

    When they fail to meet the expectations that we created because of that unrealistic perspective that we had of them, we feel betrayed and then blame them for hurting us.

    This is yet another sign of a deficient self-worth.

    Our need to be associated with something or someone of a favourable standing often leads to us exaggerating the good or the virtue in them, or it.

    This is because when we believe that we’re not enough to earn the respect or social standing that we desire, then we find ways to appear more than who we are through associating with what others will respect or admire.

    The irony is that our efforts to place others on pedestals is because we want company for placing ourselves on those pedestals so that we don’t appear arrogant or vain in claiming such standing for ourselves.

    A healthy self-worth means that praise or support will be authentic, rather than opportunistic or insincere.

    Sometimes we justify the insincerity by convincing ourselves that we just want others to feel good.

    But when we shower praises on one who we believe isn’t truly praiseworthy, we’re doing it to feel good about being seen as generous and kind in spirit, and not because we want them to feel good.

    We also deny them the opportunity to be better by instilling a false sense of confidence about who they are or what they’ve achieved.

    Thus, the pedestals are built and destroyed the moment the lack of authenticity in our motives are exposed, or when they reveal, in an undeniable way, that they are not who we held them up to be.

    Sincerity on our part, in such moments, will be reflected in how we understand and support them to be who we believe they’re capable of being, rather than judging them for letting us down.

    It always starts with you.

  • Raging for love

    Raging for love

    Nothing destroys more than ingratitude, and ingratitude for the self is expressed through self-loathing.

    But self-loathing is disguised in many ways, the most common of which is anger.

    Anger is a defence mechanism that distracts attention away from what we feel inadequate about.

    It demands that we be taken seriously when we have no reason to believe that who we are is worthy of being taken seriously.

    But more than this, anger is a profession that in that moment, we believe that we are not good enough for one whose validation we desperately need.

    Hence it being the most common confirmation of self-loathing when all our defence and coping mechanisms are claiming otherwise.

    It also happens when our internal conversation is focused on comparing ourselves to those we think are better than us, or those whose validation we need.

    And then we get married to feel complete, only to hold our partners accountable for how we feel about ourselves.

    And then we have children to fill that void that just doesn’t seem to fill up, and we become ever more threatened with fears of inadequacy when we don’t know how to be enough as parents.

    Thus, innocent lives get destroyed, all because we didn’t learn to be grateful for who we are, while trying to make up for it by raging at those who have nothing to do with how we feel about ourselves.

    It always starts with you.

  • Keep up, if you can

    Keep up, if you can

    Like they say, love is not two people looking at each other, it’s two people looking in the same direction.

    What happens when the one is looking ahead, while the other is looking behind?

    One common failing in relationships is that while one partner views growth as the amazing things that they can achieve together, the other sees it as a statement of their partner not being happy with what they have.

    One focuses on protecting what they have while the other focuses on improving it.

    One focuses on reaching their full potential, while the other is still waiting to feel validated for what they’ve achieved. And so it goes…

    And when these differences of perspective are not understood, it’s easy to assume that the conflict of priorities is a rejection of who we are or what’s important to us.

    There is no easy fix to this because at the root of it is the fact that the one who is invested in growth has a healthier self-worth than the one who is invested in staying where they are.

    Self-worth is based on how much gratitude we have for who we are.

    And gratitude is something that we cannot instil in another. We can point out all the reasons why someone should be grateful, but the choice to be grateful is always theirs to make.

    Self-pity or self-loathing, which is simply the opposite of self-worth, is what gets in the way of healthy emotional bonds in a relationship.

    Understanding and accepting your ability to influence your partner in this regard could be the difference between courting insanity and choosing peace.

    Choose carefully.

    Own Your Life

  • I see me in you

    I see me in you

    We judge others the way we judge ourselves.

    The less aware we are of our self-judgement, the more rigid we will be in insisting on the accuracy of our assumptions about others.

    The more compassionate and understanding we are in our efforts to improve ourselves, the more space we’ll allow for others to recover from the mistakes that they make towards us.

    Mindfulness and self-worth dss at the core of every experience of our life.

    Just because we’re lacking in mindfulness, or that our self-worth isn’t where it needs to be, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t impact our experiences.

    Our experiences and the quality of our life is directly proportional to these two things.

    The more mindful we are, the healthier our self-worth, few in turn, the better our quality of life even if things are not going our way.

    That’s why someone with little can have a huge heart, while someone with excess can be miserly.

    Awareness of where we’re at is important of we hope to see things for what they are, rather than what we assume them to be.

    Start with your own point of reference, but then look critically at the evidence to test if you’re assumptions are true or not.

    If you don’t, you’re only serving your insecurities, rather than seeking true understanding.

    It always starts with you.

    Own Your Life.

  • Internal struggle, outward joy

    Internal struggle, outward joy

    The martyr within, breathes life into the angel without.

    A rare few live their lives outwardly, as they feel inwardly about themselves.

    The need to hide our shame from the world is born from feeling ashamed of who we are, and not because of what others think of us.

    The opinions of others only matter in two ways.

    It hits a tender spot because it threatens to expose what we already judge harshly about ourselves.

    Or it offers us perspective in our efforts to be better than we were the day before.

    Most focus on the judgement because their relationship with themselves is so harsh.

    That’s why so much effort is put into presenting ourselves to the world in a way that will gain favour or distract attention away from how we feel about ourselves, because we carry too much shame within about who we are.

    Understanding where that harsh self-judgement comes from is the beginning of the journey towards reclaiming ourselves, and our joy in life.

    When last did you feel the way you looked when you showed up in the spaces of others?

    If you can’t recall, we need to talk.

    Own Your Life.

    It always starts with you.

  • Dishonesty, the destroyer

    Dishonesty, the destroyer

    The profundity of the verse from the Qur’an that says that if you are grateful, Allah will increase you, resonates strongly through every theme of life.

    It is through gratitude that good is created, harm is kept at bay, and we are connected to what feeds our soul.

    Therefore, what destroys good must be the opposite of gratitude.

    It’s easy to call it ingratitude, but not so easy to identify it as that.

    Ingratitude is not just the absence of gratitude, it’s the presence of everything that denies it.

    It is the desire for that which undermines the good that we have, or pursuing that which we haven’t earned.

    It is the betrayal of what we stand for, to feed the fear of losing something that was never real.

    It the compromise of the authenticity of who we are, so that we may be accepted by another, because we can’t bear the thought of being alone with only our self-respect to keep us company.

    Dishonesty is a denial of the self, long before it is a betrayal of trust.

    That’s why it breathes destruction wherever it shows up, because it first destroys the self which then destroys the world around us because we grow desperate for others to make us feel whole.

    All that because we were ungrateful for who we are.

    Dishonesty is the enemy of dignity, and without dignity, the world will be at war with your soul.

    “If you are grateful, I will surely increase you.” (Qur’an 14:7)