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Did you Know?
Did you know that Marconni's little black boxes
(the first radios) were destroyed by customs officials because they believed
that they might be bombs?
Did you know that Galileo's telescope was condemned
by the Catholic church because it proved that the Earth revolved around
the Sun and was, therefore, not the center of the universe? |
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Did you know that Antoni van Leeuwenhoek
was branded as a heretic because his new invention, the microscope, proved
that an unseen world of tiny life existed all around us including the fact
that blood is made up of individual cells? |
Did you know that Madame Curie died of Lukemia due to
her being overexposed to radiation even though X-rays continue to save
millions of lives from every day?
So, what's the point?
Space does not allow to list all those who looked beyond
the experience, knowledge, and wisdom of their own age only to exceed it.
Yet, all of these would never have achieved anything of much significance
had it not been for the simple fact that each made a conscious decison
somewhere along the line to ask one simple question.... |
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Why?
Those who have found themselves single
again after a good number of years in an exclusive
relationship will never get past their loss nor the horror of the experience
until this question is both asked and answered.
Why did the marriage
end? Why did we allow ourselves to drift away from each other?
Why do we get involved in an affair instead
of confronting the problems within the relationship? Why are we still
bitter and angry? Why do we get so depressed? Why can't we
get on with our lives? Why am are we so unhappy?
As one who has had to find his own answers as to "Why?"
when his longterm marriage ended,
I can only tell you that there is indeed life after divorce or being widowed.
Those who have asked the same questions and refused to get involved in
another exclusive relationship until they have been answered eventually
find their way to new love. Those who
refused to face these same hard questions either remain bitterly single
or plunged into yet one more relationship that was marked to fail even
while it was getting started.
You either face your own demons or you let them control
you. There is little in between.
Some months ago, a lady friend spent the better part of
an evening telling me how horrible her ex-husband had treated her.
She went on and on about his lies, cheating, deceptions, abuse, bad habits,
and anything else she could dredge up to prove that she was absolutely
faultless regarding the failure of their marriage. She also expressed
her bitterness toward the men she has dated
since in that none of them were trustworthy or worth the investment of
her time. I sat there and was forced by good manners to listen to
her entire diatribe. It was only after another friend informed me
that this same woman has been divorced for over six years that I slapped
myself on the head for having wasted my time listening to someone who simply
refuses to move on.
By contrast, a very bitter middle-aged man recently
shared with me his absolute disdain for women. It seems that he has
been in a number of relationships but has never found anyone whom he really
respected. He was quite clear regarding his having fallen in love
with a number of them but was absolutely at a loss to explain how it was
that each relationship ended in failure. He went on to state that
he had no intention of ever getting involved again and regarded women as
being a way to relieve his sexual urges
and nothing more. As he related all of this to me, I tried very hard
to diplomatically state the other point of view which just happens to be
the one to which I hold. He backed off some but not much.
Neither of the two people above are ever going to
experience finding, enjoying, and reveling in true love. Both of
them refuse to ask the "Why?" question because that would mean doing some
introspective self-analysis that would expose their own misunderstandings
and misconceptions about primary relationships.
In refusing to go through the pain of admitting their own culpibility in
why their relationships failed, they are condemning themselves to a life
of bitterness and lonliness.
How sad. |
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Are You Willing?
The answers are sometimes not what we expect. My
own personal experience led me to seek out the help of a good professonal
counselor, reading some excellent books
on the subject, and making some self discoveries that have proven to be
life changing. Some people find out that their part in the failure
of a relationship may stem from some simple misunderstanding or early childhoood
misconception. Even more interesting, others find out that some physical
problem or medical reason was the root cause. Others might even come
to understand that the various factors that led to the demise of the relationship
need not be repeated again. Otherwise, once we've learned to swim
well, we tend not to fear plunging into the water again.
It's a matter of becoming willing to look at ourselves
and make those changes which will enable us to go forward without the old
baggage of the past.
Like Marconi, we need to turn up the volume on
the radios of our hearts and listen to those who are trained to help people
work through the aftermath of a longterm
relationship.
Like Galileo, we need to look through the telescope
of our lives and realize that there is a whole universe out there filled
with people who want to help us along the way. Some of them would
love to spend the rest of their lives with
us if we could but resolve the "Why?" question.
Like Van Leeuwenhoek, we need to look at ourselves
under the microscope to discern which microbes of misconception, unforgiveness,
misunderstanding, and confusion are continuing to plague our minds and
hearts.
Like Madame Curie, we need to examine our failures
under life's X-rays and be sure that we only look long enough to realize
that it is time to get past them, lest we become even sicker as the result
of being overexposed to the radiation of our own bitterness.
© all rights reserved - 12/30/2001---
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The mission of this not-for-profit website is to promote clear insights
and toleration regarding the many variations of primary relationships that
exist in our world. We ask for neither acceptance or approval but
hope that each visitor who reviews the pages of this site will leave them
with a better understanding of the numerous cultural, historical, preferential,
religious, sexual, and sociological approaches to coupling that have always
existed and will continue to exist as long as there are at least two human
beings living on this planet. If the effort put into creating and
maintaining this site results in others coming to the realization that
the basic human need to love and be loved takes on many forms which are
accepted by those who practice them, whether right or wrong as determined
by the personal belief system of others, then it will have served it's
purpose well. |
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