How do you make a relationship work? I have absolutely no idea. All I know is what not to do because boy do I have a lot of experience with that. I think if I had a daughter, that’s what I would tell her. You’re going to make mistakes and you’re going to fail and it’s okay. The only thing I hope for is that you find yourself in the process. Find your voice and acknowledge your desires and wants. You’re going to be an imperfect being who’s dating other imperfect beings and there will be mass chaos. Imagine a world where Love spreads like a contagion such as the Walking Dead and the only antidote is logical thinking or in this case: loping off people’s heads one at a time. I digress, but love really changes our perceptions and logic is something that can’t really affect love.

First off, try to work on yourself by accepting your past and building your self-esteem. Know what your goals in life are and gradually know what you want in a partner. Do not tie yourself to the idea that there is only one person out there for you and you have to make it work at all costs. Do not tie yourself to another person when you are both extremely young. Chances are that you’ll both be two completely different people in a few years and you may not be compatible. Discuss what you expect from each other instead of just running into the situation when it comes up. If a relationship isn’t working, communicate this and let them know the consequences. If the relationship does not progress, end it. You are only keeping the person from growing as a person when you stay with them. What are you willing to sacrifice to be with someone? Life is too short to spend on people who aren’t willing to change, and change does not come overnight. If you break up with them for one month and go back, chances are they didn’t learn their lesson and things will be exactly the same.

Support each other’s goals and have mutual goals. Take time out of the day to say that you appreciate things they do. Make sure they feel that they are a priority to you. Try new things together. Have inside jokes. Pretend. Have fun. Life can be miserable enough that you don’t need to miserable with your partner. If you are, it’s okay to part ways. If you truly do care for them, you can support their growth still by staying away. I see so many relationships that aren’t working and yet, they still stay like magically, it’ll all work out some day. In the history of the world, that’s worked out like never. And yet, we keep doing this to ourselves. And when we finally do break up, we’re bitter beings who are jaded and don’t give our all to the next relationship. You only cheat yourself when you’re jaded. If you listen to what you want out of a relationship and what your partner want, that’s a start.

 

I stayed in a stagnant relationship that wasn’t working because I pushed my wants and desire aside for the good of the relationship. I wanted it to work at all costs, even at my own happiness.  When I did this, I allowed my voice to be silenced at times.  Before that, I didn’t even know what I wanted from a partner or myself, so what did it really matter?  All of our lives, we are told to be mindful of others, but we are not taught to listen to ourselves because that is selfish.  When does selfish become selfless?  When you lose all traces of yourself for the betterment of something else?  And who is truly happy in such a relationship?  I can tell you that neither of us were happy because we simply existed for existence’s sake.  What I finally figured out was that my voice matters.  Not to anyone in particular, but to me, and if I didn’t honor it, I would never have control over my life.  When I exercised my desires, it was to the detriment of the relationship, but it was the first time in my life I felt powerful.  When you listen to your wishes, you start to value yourself and those around you will also take notice.

Especially as a woman, we are taught to do for others, but we are not taught to develop our own self-worth. If we never develop it, we are constantly trying to live up to someone else’s standards and failing.  As an Asian person, I was always taught to be deferential to my elders and males in particular, and as such, my voice was further dampened to leave way for those who were supposedly more important than me.  To object was to threaten the whole system, and yet, no one is happy who cannot express their true opinions.  This happens to those who are gay and cannot show their love, to minorities who cannot speak about social injustice, women who talk about the glass c ceiling, and those in the periphery who feel as if they have no voice.  Power is not merely the empowerment of people through laws, social norms and such, but it starts at the tiny, quiet, and small idea that you are worthy of your own opinion whether it is wrong or right.

You deserve to be heard. Perhaps not by the world, but by those around you.  If they refuse to listen, listen to yourself.  Know that your opinion is valuable and it is you who must value it the most.  Teach your children and especially your daughters that their voices are also valued treasures and something that they must develop and keep in tune.  The search for happiness can result in momentary pleasure, but the self-worth one feels through honoring their own voice lasts forever.  Just know that every voice starts out small, but it is the individual who allows it to grow.  If I had known that when I was younger, I may have left him years earlier, but it is not something I regret.  I developed my voice at my pace and all that matters is that I have it now.

 

 

 

 

A friend once asked me ‘but how do I let him go?’ after she broke up with her boyfriend.  I tried to answer her question, but was at a lost myself.  How do you let go?  Not just of romantic relationships, but things you’ve been holding on to in general? First off, let’s talk about break ups. In this digital age, we sometimes break up with each other via text because we want to extract and receive as minimal pain as possible and yet we would not want the same to happen to us, so why do we do that to someone else?  Don’t complain about someone breaking up with you over text if you’ve also done it.  Instead, we should treat the person like how we want to be treated, because if we do, we can hold our heads up high after the separation and feel we did the best we could.  The person may resent you anyways, but after a cooling off period, they will see that you treated them with respect and understand that.  Break up shouldn’t be about minimizing immediate pain, but minimizing long-term guilt and self-doubt.

If you tell them ahead of time exactly what you intend to do if they do not change, reiterate these things when the time comes and there will be no surprises. Oftentimes, we carry what we feel and never let our partner know until it is too late.  If you can tell them, you will have something to stand on when you are separating from them.  And now comes the hard part-letting go.  Another of my friend asked ‘did you really break up with them if you never let them go?’  Even if you intend to reunite with them, if you don’t give them a substantial amount of time to see their errors and change, you’ll be walking into the same relationship again.  De ja vu all over again.  But letting go is sometimes harder than leaving.  You can physically leave, but you can’t cut off your feelings for them.  So what do we do?  We suppress these feelings and they come out in toxic ways such as overdrinking or over-sexualization.  These things can be fine, but not if you are doing them to punish yourself.  First off, just stay away.

Second, learn to love who you are by yourself. Love single you and relish in all that you are.  Think about what happened in the relationship and what you sacrificed.  Beware of rose-colored glasses as once you break up with them, for you only think of the good things that happened.  Keep a list of all the bad things that happened and once you start to romanticize the past again, break out this list and remind yourself of why you broke up.  Oh, yeah, that bastard made me walk two miles home one time!  Yeah, I kinda forgot about them when I was busy reminiscing about our happy times.  Talk through your feelings because it is healthy.  One thing I realized is that I was holding out for the person he could be one day when I realized I wasn’t with that person.  I was with the person he was today, not one day, and I deserved better than that.  Oftentimes, we live in the what-ifs of our relationships and don’t realize that these things are intangible.  Lasso yourself back to reality with coming to terms with who your partner really is.  They may change into the person you wanted  them to, but it is only because they left you and were forced to change.  You will have missed out on that person, but if you stayed, that wasn’t the person they were going to be.  Is that something you deserve?

Thirdly, as with any trauma that you hold on to, admit what you’re feeling. Tell the world that it hurt like a bitch and you never really fully recovered.  It’s okay to admit that you need help and it shattered you.  We are taught to be so strong all the time that we never think that we should admit to being weak, so we just hold it in and let it consume us from the inside.  Once you acknowledge the trauma and the hurt you went through, give yourself time to grieve.  Unfortunately, when someone close to us dies or we break up with them, we can never have closure, so we have this wound that continues to fester.  Write a letter to them expressing your feelings and how you were affected and then leave it somewhere.  You won’t believe what this can do for you emotionally.  The hardest part can be acknowledging the pain, but once you do and talk about it, you can really look back and see what you had to accomplish to reach where you are today.  When you see that, be proud of who you are and what you’ve done.  Know that you shouldn’t beat yourself up for taking longer than others to resolve these issues.  It doesn’t matter how long it took you to learn the lesson as long as the lesson is learned.  This is your journey and you are the one who can choose how you feel about it.

 

 

I remember watching Rihanna being interviewed back in 2009 by Diane Sawyer about Chris Brown beating her so severely that her face was swollen and bruised. It was an image of a broken woman.  A defeated woman.  A woman who couldn’t stand up for herself, and the public did not see her in this light.  And so, they asked how a strong woman as she could possible LET the abuse happen.  Because physical abuse only happens to the weak.  That was a question that always perturbed and stayed with me long after the story died down.  Perhaps it was because I also saw myself as extremely emotionally strong, so how could I let someone emotionally abuse me?  It was precisely because I thought I was strong that I didn’t see it as abuse.  I always defended myself after he accused me of something minor.  I verbally fought back and told him he was wrong when he tried to say I was wrong.  I gave him ultimatums to change, so I didn’t think I was weak.  I thought I was so strong that I COULD make the relationship work.  I was wrong.

Sometimes, being so strong can be your downfall, because you refuse to ask for help and to see yourself as a victim. He was slowly trying to break me down to make himself feel better because he didn’t like himself, and I knew this, but I held on the guilt of leaving a man who loved me and whom I loved.  It was not a healthy relationship, but the  guilt and emotional abuse clouded my judgment, so I made up excuses for what we had.  What we had was dysfunctional and I realize now that it was because I didn’t value my own happiness over the relationship.  I was a strong person, but I was sacrificing my personal happiness.  One day, I just made the decision to move.  I did feel defeated, weak, and broken, but it was not because of who I had become, but because I had fought so hard for this relationship.  Ultimately, it was a good thing, because those who are the strongest sometimes need to admit that they can also be weak and need help.  We hold on to all these things because we want to appear strong, right, or simply because we are stubborn.  This is not strength.   Strength is knowing you are strong enough to ask for help.

When I told him that I was going to break up with him if he didn’t change, it was because I thought it would make our relationship better. I eventually figured out that the only way they change is when they no longer have you and are forced to, but I also told him that that is how many relationships end: one party knows all along that they are going to break up, while the other is completely blindsided.  I told him it was because we are essentially cocoons of feelings onto ourselves, and we guard our true feelings from the one we are with because we don’t want to hurt them, but when we do, we end up hurting ourselves and even them in the long run.  People silently hold in all their emotional turmoil and gut feelings because this is a natural reaction they have to everything.  They feel something isn’t right, but for various reasons, keep them to themselves.  Because I was able to relay these feelings to my ex, the break up was much easier for me because I told him I had always been honest with him and was only following up on what I told him would happen.  He said he honestly thought I would never leave him.  He wasn’t a bad man, just a kid who I didn’t know I was enabling from growing up.

No one explains to us how we should cope with potentially traumatic situations, so we just don’t do anything about it. Perhaps we think the pain will eventually go away.  Or if we don’t think about it, it won’t be an issue.  We don’t know how to process our internal emotions and it eventually comes out in ways we don’t expect.  It is okay to realize that this is a natural reaction, but it is not the most healthy way to deal with it.  But we are a culture that focuses on success and happiness, so we try to fit this role by stuffing away our traumas to appear successful.  We don’t talk about our innermost feelings and thoughts even with those that we are closest with.  Thus, when we are in relationships, we have the most to lose, so we shield our partners from what we are really feeling to try to maintain the relationship.  In doing so, we lose out on a more meaningful and profound relationship with a partner we can understand with.  And that is how relationships can fall apart over seemingly nothing.

We are trying to find ourselves all the time and in the process, we find out our preferences, our dislikes, our longings, our hopes, and our dreams. It may take you a lifetime, but you will get there.  Sometimes, you may be 40 and finally realize you wanted to travel the world and divorce your spouse and children.  You can be in a marriage for years and finally come to the conclusion that you cannot deny your sexual orientation even though you are in a hetero relationship.  You may even come to find your voice and realize you are worth more than a  person who beats and berates you.  The journey in life is not to find a spouse, but to ultimately find who you are and your voice.  You deserve to be heard and the ones you are with deserve to know, even if it means the dissolution of that very relationship.  Relationships may end, but growth never does.  A few years after I left him, he actually thanked me because I was instrumental in helping him become the man he is today.  He was no longer my man, but he was a man he could finally be proud of, and I could be proud of that as well from a distance.

 

 

I happened to catch a reunion episode of Married at First Sight, where people with actual degrees match couples based off of a myriad of personal factors.  They are astounded as to why the matches didn’t work out.  I can tell you why.  These matchmakers are making very good matches, but they don’t take into consideration the individual.  Some of these participants may claim they want to be married, but if you delve deeper, you will find they actually are not even prepared for the idea of marriage.  This is the first barrier.  The second is the baggage the person carries.  If they are not okay with themselves, they will bring their issues into the relationship.  That’s where your problem is.  You expect that these people actually do want to be married and are emotionally secure beings, but for the most part, many of us are not.

You can try to make the best matches you can, but they’ll never work if the individual doesn’t come to terms with their past.  It boggles my mind that these experts don’t understand this.  They try to treat the couple, but in reality, they need to treat the individual first.  I find it irresponsible in this day and age that they don’t realize this, but of course, mentally unstable participants make for the best television.  But deep down, I hope the matchmakers really do wish these matches will work out and that they are doing the best they can.  If they are, they must know it’s clearly not working.  We are our flaws and childhoods, our mistakes and the bad things that happened to us, what we couldn’t control and how we attempt to control it now.  We are what we don’t speak of, for we try to project happy appearances at all times to seem successful, and in doing so, we neglect our traumas.

I’m not cut from the cloth of Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret.  I don’t believe that you can visualize what you want and it will come to you.  Attraction is about something unspoken and visceral.  You can feel it.  It seizes you and makes your heart palpitate.  Some confuse it for love, but it is merely a physical attribute.  Some also infer other attributes to a person who is attractive, which can be false.  For me, I strip down attraction to what it really is: the ability to engage someone based off your initial first impression.  What separates someone who is successful in this field to someone who is not?  I can tell you it’s not just their physical appearance. Although this plays a major role in determining a person’s attractiveness, a person who is not as attractive can become more successful if they are confident.

Let’s go through that quintessential moment where you first lock eye with someone. Within a few seconds, you are each sizing each other up and determining if you find this person attractive.  Deeper than that, you can feel how a person thinks about themselves by how they carry themselves and how confident they are.  Confidence is sexy because it means the person values themselves and many people want a prize.  They want someone that everyone else wants: someone who is hard to attain because they are valuable.  You can gage how valuable they are by how they value themselves.  If a person holds themselves to higher standards, it shows in every facet of who they are: their speak, their gestures, their walk, their mannerisms.  A person who is confident conveys it in their appearance, how they treat others, and how they allow themselves to be treated because they value who they are and others can see it as well in the span of a few seconds.

Confidence is the only defining factor that separates those who have a highly charged first impression from those who are also attractive but lacking confidence.  You can take twins, where one is more confident than the other and people will be naturally drawn to the confident one.  When you are confident, you will also attract people who are more confident as well.  This is the moment of attraction: when you lock eyes with someone and you don’t look away because you are so sure of who you are that you make them feel this as well.  This is attraction.  Attraction is not merely wanting something, but building who you are internally until it manifests externally so that others can sense who you are. This is true charisma.  The ability to believe wholly in yourself.  That is what people are attracted to