It’s an odd question, asking someone if they are “Able”. It could be construed as an offensive question, but this is a safe space, so if that question raised your hackles, please take a breath and know this is coming from a place of helpfulness.
Smack dab in the middle of my six month dating hiatus, I met someone I was pretty interested in, for something more than friendship. This was not intentional and it did “technically” go against the whole purpose of casual dating, “no relationship” self imposed break I was on, but it happened and I felt the only thing I could do was to move forward. Considering that during these six months, I had focused on myself, acknowledging and learning about the same pattern I had been making in every single relationship, and tried to figure out why I kept doing this to myself, and got myself to a place that I had a pretty good idea why and what I had been doing wrong and what changes I planned to make, I grabbed this as an opportunity to put my new observations and potential new skills to the test.
Ok that’s an outright lie. I did not grab this opportunity, instead begrudgingly made the decision to be available, to be Willing to give this East Side Vagabond a chance to be something more than a friend.
I was Ready, I was Willing, and I was pretty sure I was Able. Or Able to try.
What does Able even mean?
In the case of dating, of relationships, Able means being able to be vulnerable. Truly vulnerable with yourself, with other people in your life, with the person you have decided to go on a date with. It’s practicing showing someone who you really are, not just the stuff you think makes you attractive or fun or what you think the other person wants to see.
More importantly, it’s being Able to accept yourself, Able to value yourself, Able to share that with whoever is in your life.
One of the biggest pitfalls of my past relationships was putting the very “best” version of me from the start and not wavering from that personae. I was the ultimate “pick me” girl. I focused on always being understanding, and chilled, and cool, and unbothered. Of always being undemanding, liking whatever the other person liked and agreeing with them about everything. I could do this for about four months, and then the resentment and anger would get too much and I would no longer be able to hold that facade. But by then I had gotten them to like “me” and could excuse the outbursts with a bad day or some other excuse. Then I would go back to being the ideal girlfriend until the pressure built again and the outbursts happened.
They never really got to know all of me. Which wasn’t really completely their fault, because hell, I didn’t even know all of me. I wasn’t able to show them the magnificence of the totality of me because I didn’t think I was really all that amazing. I had a short temper, I was very chatty, I didn’t look like the stereotypical all American girl, and I had opinions and thoughts and was (and still am) stubborn. All these things (I thought) would add up to me not being good enough for whoever I was dating, so instead, I twisted myself up in knots to be what I thought the guy I was interested in wanted.
I wasn’t Willing or Able to be vulnerable, to take that chance, that who I really was was more than enough for someone. And I repeated this over and over again from when I first started dating at fourteen years old to, well, honestly, about my late thirties. That’s a lot of time to spend hiding who I was, not knowing who I was, and trying to be someone else to be with someone(s). I could almost set a watch by the pattern I was repeating.
That’s the next Able. Was I Able to see the pattern and break the pattern? I would love to give you a resounding yes to this.
Do you want honesty or something that looks great on paper?
I’m going to give you honesty, because honesty is what all of this is about and is going to be about. So, no I was not able to see and break the pattern on the first go. I mean, considering that I did my hiatus when I was in my early twenties and it wasn’t until my late thirties that I was able to finally break the pattern, that should tell you something.
IT IS A WORK IN PROGRESS. And it will take practice and mistakes will be made. And that’s okay! That’s the point! It’s about learning and getting better.
Now for Mr. East Side, who I was interested in dating post hiatus. I was Able to show him the not so great things about me. Because I kept him as a friend, he got to see the stubborn part of me, the side of me that shared my thoughts, my opinions. I spoke up about things I liked or didn’t like, based on what I actually liked and didn’t like, not based on his likes and dislikes in the hopes of getting him to like me. I got to be more myself. And he liked me.
Fucking fantastic right?! Well yeah, it was all good until I realized because I liked him more than as a friend I could feel myself reverting back to my old patterns. I started to agree with him more, swallowing irritation more, or ignoring all together any feelings of irritation, frustration or downright anger. Things that inspired all those feelings were around things like how disgusting his apartment was, about how much I didn’t want to hang out only on the East Side, how he was so “against capitalism and the man keeping him down” which was a way of reasoning why he only worked part time at random jobs. I accepted all this, and individually they weren’t deal breakers but as a whole, it was a repeat of my normal pattern.
Once again I was smiling and saying “sure, no problem” and “that sounds fun” and “I love it” when it indeed was a problem (that his flat was beyond a hovel, that never had any toilet paper, where I thought I was going to fall through the floor in certain places, where I was paying for most of the drinks and food when we hung out or went out because he worked part time at best and spent his money on “other things”), when it didn’t sound like fun (when he wanted to only go to the dark, dank, dingy, smoky bars that I was certain watered down their alcohol, the bathrooms were properly hazardous and hadn’t been cleaned in years), and I did not love (his “vintage” bowling shirts and his used bowling shoes that he stole from the bowling alley, or his taste in music, or spending all our time on the East Side with people that were so disenfranchised and cynical, hipsters before hipsters were even a thing), but he loved it so I pretended I didn’t mind and “honestly had so much fun” so that I could see him and so that he could see we had things in common. Oh the familiar comforting pattern of fear of losing him, of losing myself, of not being confident that if I spoke up and stood up for myself, or disagreed with something, that they would leave me, it was like a warm dysfunctional hug that made me realize I really liked him.
Which was like a giant two by four to my face. I was back in my cesspool of co-dependency and I was once again not Able to put into practice what I had learned about myself. But even with this realization, I was too far gone to go back. I might have started with the focus on how I felt, what I liked, what I wanted, but I had slowly slid back into my old patterns of stifling and submerging myself, of soaking myself in the other person’s life. I changed to fit him (again). It mattered more that he liked me (again). I changed, to fit myself into the girl he wanted, or the girl I thought he wanted (again). I forgot that he liked me as I was when we were friends, but because I was emotionally invested, I had to make sure that he didn’t stop liking “me” (again).
Did I know this was happening? Ummm sort of? I knew that I was in familiar territory, because it was second nature and “easy”. But I was not Able (or Willing) to change my tried and true pattern. And I couldn’t really get angry with the guy for not seeing me or making me resentful for all the ways I was twisting myself up in knots to be with him. That was entirely on me. I was the one doing all the bending, the twisting, the accommodating, and then being resentful that he didn’t do the same for me or tell me that he didn’t need me to do this, that he liked me, just as I was. He didn’t even know what was going on! And to be fair, I wouldn’t have believed him. At most he would know I was irritated because there was no toilet paper in his apartment (again), and he would get a roll for my next sleepover (just the one…you read that right. My standards were not high.)
I was the one settling. I was the one accepting the bare minimum. I was the one shoveling all my love and energy and getting the absolute bottom of the barrel and saying that was ok. When it wasn’t. And while I may have recognized it, I was not Able to really look at myself and take any real accountability because if I did, I couldn’t blame other people for my unhappiness, my lackluster relationship, for always dating Mr. Wrong.
What did we learn here in this relationship with a barely functioning alcoholic who was more often than not, unemployed, and giving me the absolute minimum?
I was not quite Ready, even if I was Willing (to a degree), but I was definitely not Able. And again, that was ok. I also learned that the slide back into patterns familiar was a gentle, almost imperceptible slide and it was easy. Which taught me that if it was easy, I needed to take a moment and assess what the actual fuck was going on. I learned that while I was happy to support my future partner, I was not going to be bailing them out and filling the gaps.
Needless to say, the dysfunctional pattern proved true. We broke up after nearly two years of a whole lot of things that shouldn’t have worked but did because I changed to make it work. I wasn’t Able to leave him for almost two years. I wasn’t Able to choose me over him, not for almost two years. But, when I was Ready, I left him. I was Willing to choose myself, or to make the effort to do so. I was barely Able to like myself more than him, and I learned something that was more important.
I learned this entire process, all of it, every step, was not about perfection and getting it right every time. It was about recognizing when I stumbled, when I was reverting back, why I was going back to the pattern, and being able to pivot, to get back to where I wanted to be, to pivot away from what wasn’t working.
This is why it’s important to understand, to be aware of all three parts. If I’ve learned anything, and I’ve learned (and continue to learn) so much with every mistake, with every success and every failure, but one of the most important things I’ve learned is that it’s more challenging to do any thing, any shift, any change without being Ready, Willing and Able.
At any point in your life, when you are looking to improve, to change, to shift, to grow, all three need to be practiced. You won’t be successful every single time, and that’s ok. You will stumble, you will settle, you will refuse to try because it won’t be worth it. I can promise you that it will be worth it and it’s a constant work in progress. It’s gonna suck and feel hard and uncomfortable but it’s incredibly powerful to know what you’re capable of, if you are Ready, Willing and Able.
If you’re feeling Ready, Willing and Able, or hell, even one of them or even WANT to learn about how to do this, stay tuned! I’ll be sharing more insights, foibles, and other mistakes, I mean data points, that I’ve made to get where I am.
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