DON’T GO BACK TO WHAT YOU HAVE BEEN DELIVERED FROM
I had a discussion with a person I was involved with and there were a few “ah ha” moments that enlightened me on his behavior. Although, we are somewhat friends with boundaries (I should do a blog post titled Friends with Boundaries), we have had two huge discussions about our past unofficial relationship. It’s almost like a balloon being blown up slowly to its capacity and then you let it go and it flies around the room and lands “splat” on the floor. We exhale and it’s like, “Well, don’t know how we got started on that but, you enjoy the rest of your evening.” I think it’s unresolved issues that are aired out in these sessions.
The other day I asked him if he thinks about the conversations after they are over. He said yes. So, do I. It’s like pieces of a puzzle and some things make sense after the session and others are still a mystery. A mystery I have no desire to solve. I pondered the conversation and then I started getting messages from EVERYWHERE about “NOT GOING BACK” to situations or relationships that you have been delivered from. Message received.
DON’T GO FORWARD
I am reading a book titled, “Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents” and as I was reading the chapter that describes the characteristics of the parent, I realized not only do I pick relationships where the person is emotionally unavailable but, I also have picked some associations where this occurs. I also, have remained in some circles that I now realize embody the characteristics of the emotionally unavailable parent. When this was brought to my consciousness, I was dumbfounded. I am still shocked today. However, the thought is, “STOP. DON’T GO FORWARD.” Yet, I attempted one last time to connect and saw nothing except a sarcastic response. What am I afraid of I ask myself and do I really want to know the answer? Why am I still hanging around? The truth is I already know the answer and I need to accept the truth.
With these two things occurring in a week, I realize that just because you know the truth, make a declaration, things don’t always end immediately and things may end immediately and linger. A train doesn’t suddenly stop. Breaks are applied miles before its destination. Some relationships come to a halt months after they end. None of this makes me feel really good but, it does make me aware. I have hope that something much better is ahead.
According to Psychology Today, about 80% of people have experienced heartbreaks as it relates to relationships or dating. The main causes of heartbreaks were break ups, infidelity, and rejection. People with a strong attachmentstyle (as opposed to those with a low attachment style i.e. anxious or high avoidance attachment)- tended to view their heartbreak experience as leading to some form of character rather than a deficiency within themselves. In other words, they framed their experience as one that helped them to grow and become stronger or as useful lessons about themselves, relationships, and life. A heartbreak is not indicative of bad luck or personal flaws or failure because heartbreaks are common. In research, 4 of 5 people said they have had heartbreak. -Psychology Today, The Most Common Causes of Heartbreak by Jessica Schrader
Let’s take a look at the “Attachment Styles” so that you can HONESTLY identify your style and understand it.
What it looks like: A lucky 60 percent of us have a secure attachment style. For these people, it’s a walk in the park to show emotion and affection in a relationship while simultaneously maintaining a sense of autonomy and independence, i.e. not letting the relationship become all-consuming.
They’re generally able to work through and move forward from conflict with ease. Secure folks aren’t the type to read through their partner’s phones or freak out when they don’t receive a text.
How it forms in childhood: A secure attachment style forms when caregivers quickly and sensitively give a child the support they need while still giving them space to develop their own autonomy. When parents recognize and attend to their child’s needs on a consistent basis, the child trusts they are there for them.
What it looks like: Those with an anxious-preoccupied attachment style may have doubts about the relationship’s strength, feel unreasonably jealous, or harbor constant fears that their partner is going to leave.
The anxious-preoccupied tend to overanalyze their relationship. They may obsess over their partner’s social media, thinking there’s hidden meaning to a post when in fact nothing is wrong. To keep worry at bay, they may over-communicate, texting all day long or needing to know where their partner is at all times.
How it forms in childhood: You may have an anxious-preoccupied attachment style if your caregivers were inconsistent and unpredictable with their attentiveness. With this style, caregivers tend to be overprotective and/or excessively hold and touch the child.
Often anxious-preoccupied children imitate this overbearing behavior in their own relationships.
What it looks like: A person with a dismissive-avoidant attachment style may see themselves as independent and refrain from asking for help. They might deny themselves emotional intimacy because they don’t want to be perceived as needy, and they may reject such openness from others.
This is the type who has a seemingly endless string of semi-serious partners to whom she refuses to fully commit. Or maybe it’s the ex who wasn’t comfortable expressing vulnerability with you.
How it forms in childhood: When caregivers dismiss the emotional needs of a child, or treat them in a detached, aloof way, the child might eventually stop communicating their emotional needs altogether, as they believe it has no effect. This helps explain why dismissive-avoidant styles often have trouble expressing emotion and affection to their partners.
What it looks like: People with a fearful-avoidant style often crave a close relationship but feel unworthy of love or afraid of losing the intimacy once they have it. Because of their insecurities around love, they tend to avoid intimacy and suppress feelings that do arise.
The fearful avoidant might feel intense feelings of love for a new partner but right when things start to get serious they start to panic and search for reasons the relationship could never work.
How it’s formed in childhood: If your caregivers subjected you to abuse, neglect or rejection, or if they were volatile or unpredictable, causing you fear as a young child, you may have a fearful-avoidant attachment style.
What it looks like: Similar to the fearful avoidant style, people with a disorganized attachment style want and crave love but experience severe stress and fear in relationships. They’re often overcome with low self-esteem and talk themselves into believing that no one will love them.
If they are in a relationship, they may rely heavily on their partner to ease their stress or anxiety. Yet, they may never feel at ease in a relationship because of a lack of trust and a fear of abandonment.
How it forms in childhood: A disorganized attachment style is often rooted in unresolved trauma. This may be trauma you experienced as a child or it could be inherited from a parent who faced severe emotional hardship in their own life.
You may also have a disorganized attachment style if your caregiver had a personality disorder and was therefore unpredictable in their parenting strategies.
I want to hear from you! What is your attachment style? There is no shame here. Mine is Anxious Preoccupied. I therefore desire a Secure Attachment but, I’ve been getting most of the other stuff and no wonder it’s been a train wreck in the past! Mostly fearful-avoidant is what I seem to attract.
What does it mean to be at home? Home is a place of refuge. It is a place of peace. It is a place where you are nurtured and sustained. It is a place to which you belong and have a right to be. In this place you are nourished and your needs are provided for. It is the place where you keep your intimate things. It is the place where you love and make love, the place where you play and grow and study. It is the place where you care and you serve. It is your base, so to speak, within the world. No matter what you do or where you go, you are always coming back to this base to become grounded in your humaneness again. Well, this is also what it means to have a spiritual home, except that a spiritual home cannot be contained within four walls. Your spiritual home is Wherever You Are. – The Sacred Yes, by Reverend Deborah L. Johnson
When it comes to your childhood, were you at home? When it comes to fitting into your family, environment or community are you at home? With those in your circle, are you at home? In your relationship, are you at home? When you’re at your job, does it feel at home? I know you would think that a job is not supposed to make you feel at home but a toxic work environment or being out of alignment with your purpose can make you ill. Are you home anywhere in your life?
When I am writing, I feel at home. I feel at home when I am creating things like crocheted items or painting. When I am in my own home, my own sanctuary, because I am not married or in a relationship that is cankerous, I feel at home. Most of the time because I desire a good, healthy relationship, I sometimes long for home. However, I seem to always find my way back to my real home. It’s a home within self. It is God.
Don’t panic super saved people. It’s just a sculpture of a giraffe in the background.
After reading the article (posted and broken into two parts) from my previous two blogs, the word resilient is what comes to mind. However, for others who are supposed to be geniuses, I can’t see how they don’t understand the need for Black people or any minority to CONFIRM and AFFIRM themselves after hundreds of years of degradation. It takes years, possibly hundreds more, to undo the damage and heal as a group of people while simultaneously fighting off more destructive behavior, prejudice, systematic injustices, violence in the community and violence from without. To say the least, it’s a lot.
If people were so intelligent and so superior, they would understand psychology or seek to understand the psychology of abuse, slavery, suppression, oppression and the effects it has on a group of people. Maybe, because they are so smart, they should know it. But they don’t. “Get over it” is one of the most unintelligent things uttered to people of color or minorities. The empathy and sympathy, the “never forget” for those with lighter pigmentation is overwhelmingly evident. So, if anyone is going to love themselves, if any race or culture or minority group, it has to come from within. It cannot be expected from without. It cannot even be expected from those that are of the same religion or denomination as you if they are of a different race. You can look at how many Christians excused and upheld the prejudices, racism, biases of a particular political leader. Some even stayed silent.
I don’t concern myself with other cultures or minority groups as they love on themselves and foster love in their communities. I only ask them to extend their love to all of humanity. That is the real challenge. If hearing other races or groups talk or shout about their love for each other makes you feel uncomfortable then the problem is not them, it’s you. For they are trying to undo the narrative by a surplus race that they are somehow unlovable and lack value as human beings. You don’t get to decide the course of healing African Americans take or any other minority group. You don’t get to control that. Imagine the abuser telling you when to heal and how to heal. I don’t think so. Yet, there is room for assistance. There is always room for forgiveness and collective healing.
Continuing the article written by Koritha Mitchell, I suggest you read yesterday’s article as well. You know sometimes it’s good to just read and understand instead of telling an entire culture/people/race what to think, how to feel, and what they should do. I think this type of approach comes from a feeling of authority and slave master mentality. The invalidation of our thoughts, religion, feelings, emotions, experiences, perspectives and knowledge is alive and well today. I do think at times it’s subconsciously done. Yet, still problematic. Instead, I think some should learn to simply listen, assist and work with other cultures, races, and communities. “Seek ye first to understand and then to be understood”- Steven Covey. Clearly, there is not enough seeking of understanding, let alone any seeking of truth.
Article beings here:
Those who care about Black families and communities sometimes hesitate to celebrate Black marriage. Praising traditional marriage can contribute to the overall devaluation of queer intimacies. It can also align with the routine vilification of all households that do not fit the heteronormative nuclear family mold, with its male breadwinner and financially dependent wife and children. As important, highlighting Black marriage can easily feel like another attack on single Black women in a society with self-help franchises and religious cultures based on scolding Black women for not properly preparing themselves to be “blessed” with a mate.
And yet, the hesitation to celebrate traditional Black marriage, of which there has never been a shortage, also amounts to erasing the degree to which African Americans do, in fact, choose each other.
Ever notice how examples that contradict dominant assumptions fail to gain traction? Many understood that it mattered for Barack Obama’s credibility among African Americans that Michelle Obama was brown-skinned, but the couple’s prominence has done little to change the impression that Black people rarely choose each other. American culture is built on presumptions of Black pathology even though, as Coates puts it, such characterizations should ring false “in a country whose existence was predicated on the torture of Black fathers, on the rape of Black mothers, on the sale of Black children.”
It is no accident that Americans of every background struggle to recognize how thoroughly the Obamas represent, in Coates’s words, “Black people’s everyday, extraordinary Americanness.” That is, African Americans often embody exactly what the nation says it respects. Their doing so is common, but it is also exceptional because they must reach every goal while the nation robs them of every public resource, including safety. Against the odds, African Americans create and nurture life-affirming and community-sustaining bonds of affection—bonds that are distorted, diminished, or ignored.
Keeping African Americans in their “proper” place also involves excluding traditional Black households from the nation’s family portrait. The quintessential American family is always assumed to be white and middle class, no matter how often white people prove to be less than committed to that model. And this is the case even as the United States provides white people with resources like safety—not having to fear that police officers or civilians will kill their loved ones without consequence.
Marriage relies on and bolsters economic standing, and the United States has always deprived African Americans of the financial resources to support their unions. Despite these formidable obstacles, marriage has not been rare among Black people, but it has been ignored. As Hunter shows, in the early 1900s, African American sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois and other elites insisted that traditional home life would dramatically improve Black people’s social, political, and economic prospects, but “somehow they missed the fact that most Black families conformed to the very behaviors they wanted to indoctrinate,” given that “by 1900, marriage was nearly universal for adult African Americans still living in a mostly agricultural society.”
Then and now, American culture ensures that few would ever suspect Black people’s consistent, stable history with marriage.
In this context, it is worth noticing that representations of Black family life have not changed with Michelle Obama’s prominence as not only a mother but also the wife of an affectionate husband. Indeed, her success in these roles has been simultaneously ignored and attacked. Attacks came in the form of asserting that she hurt the feminist movement by calling herself “Mom-in-Chief.” Meanwhile, her becoming first lady—woman of the nation’s house—was ignored in that it did not inspire popular culture representations of African American stay-at-home moms. Instead, The Help became a runaway hit, suggesting that Americans did not want to be reminded that Black women are homemakers, but they would relish seeing Black women pretending to be 1960s maids in 2009 (when the book was published) and in 2011 (when the movie was released).
That was not enough, though. In 2016, 63 million Americans voted to move the United States “From Mom-in-Chief to Predator-in-Chief.” The message was clear: African American marriages and traditional families may exist, but they will be excluded from the nation’s portrait of itself. Black women are acceptable as house slaves and housekeepers, but not as homemakers. That has always been the American way. Meanwhile, and nonetheless, Black people keep loving each other.
Koritha Mitchell
Koritha Mitchell is author of the award-winning book Living with Lynching and the new book From Slave Cabins to the White House: Homemade Citizenship in African American Culture. She is also an associate professor of English at Ohio State University and a Society of Senior Ford Fellows (SSFF) board member. Follow her on Twitter @ProfKori.
Before you ask a silly question like, “What does it matter?” or “Isn’t love color blind?” Read. Read why we shout “black love” to each other and why we have been trying for years to undo the damage done to the unity of black love and black families. I mean after all, it’s American and World History. America and the World by enlarge has a culture of negativity, lies, and unnecessary fears surrounding people of African descent. Here is a Part 1 of an article written by Koritha Mitchell.
For instance, when Black men publicly explain why they find Black women unattractive, the reasoning is not ignored but gains traction as a story. Especially for those who extol the virtues of Asian American or “exotic” women, African American women are “not feminine or submissive enough.” The men making such declarations do not constitute a majority, but their insistence upon offering unsolicited negative assessments must be seen for what it is: the American way. It aligns with the contours of mainstream American culture, which is invested in the erasure of Black people choosing each other.
This erasure has roots in slavery. Knowing their captives were human and maintained human agency, enslavers tried to brutalize it out of them. Although United States law did not recognize sexual violence against Black women as rape, they were forced to have sex with enslavers or with other captives. This practice did not simply enrich white people because children inherited the mother’s slave status; it also attempted to make the bondswoman’s feelings irrelevant. Nevertheless, the historical record is full of testimony from Black women who enraged white “masters” because they loved partners of their choice.
Not surprisingly, then, many African Americans celebrated Emancipation by reassembling their families and making their marriages legal. As Black people invested in the legal protections of marriage, white Americans disregarded those bonds by asserting that Black men were rapists obsessed with white women. These claims worked to obliterate the image of Black men happily paired with Black women; it was a form of discursive violence that emerges as a response to African Americans’ success at loving each other against the odds. Even if historians haven’t found much archival evidence, queer intimacies and domesticities no doubt existed and attracted violence. In those cases, people were punished for the victory of knowing that their right to belong did not rely on sexual conformity. In all instances, discursive violence was accompanied by physical aggression. As historian Hannah Rosen documents, even while declaring that Black coupling was nonexistent and that white women were in danger, mobs “ku-kluxed” black homes, often raping the wives of accomplished Black men. White terrorists destroyed Black domestic and intimate success while insisting it never existed.
Several decades after Emancipation, distorting Black love was no less meaningful in shaping American culture. Between 1890 and 1940, Progressive Era reforms lifted European immigrants out of poverty with education and employment opportunity, but African Americans were treated as irredeemable. As Khalil Muhammad has shown, Black Americans’ financial struggles were criminalized rather than addressed with community investment.
Denying Black people’s right to public resources that typically accompany citizenship required casting them out of the nation’s family portrait. As a result, African American mothers were said to produce natural criminals. Crime became “Black,” so its existence among whites was deemed an aberration. The pathologizing of Black families in the 1965 Moynihan Report may be better known, but its depiction of Black women as matriarchs who damage Black men and boys was a continuation of earlier assertions, including those of Black sociologists like E. Franklin Frazier. If Black love existed, it was pathological—not empowering. It did not create households that functioned as safe havens but rather as dens of delinquency and dysfunction.
All of these portrayals erased the truth about the love that had sustained African Americans through the horrors of slavery and beyond. As Tera Hunter’s Bound in Wedlock makes clear, African American men and women went to extraordinary lengths for family, including returning to bondage after securing freedom in order to be with loved ones. The refusal to highlight how routinely Black people choose each other advances assumptions about a lack that, if true, would have already obliterated the race.
Most representations of African Americans throughout American history have downplayed bonds of affection, and have purposefully avoided presenting them as defining characteristics of their families and communities. Whether the loveless impression emerges in mainstream depictions or in casual remarks about not dating Black women, it fits the pattern of erasure too neatly to be incidental. Not surprisingly, then, the tendency to denigrate Black women has a parallel. As Ta-Nehisi Coates puts it, “the crude communal myth about Black men is that we are in some manner unavailable to Black women—either jailed, dead, gay, or married to white women.”
Koritha Mitchell is author of the award-winning book Living with Lynching and the new book From Slave Cabins to the White House: Homemade Citizenship in African American Culture. She is also an associate professor of English at Ohio State University and a Society of Senior Ford Fellows (SSFF) board member. Follow her on Twitter @ProfKori.
Especially in the early stages of a relationship, it can be difficult to tell the difference between love and lust. Both are associated with physical attraction and an intoxicating rush of feel-good chemicals, coupled with an often-overwhelming desire to be closer to another person, but only one is long-lasting: love.
Love is something that is cultivated between two people and grows over time, through getting to know him or her and experiencing life’s many ups and downs together. It involves commitment, time, mutual trust, and acceptance.
Lust, on the other hand, has to do with the sex-driven sensations that draw people toward one another initially and is fueled primarily by the urge to procreate. Characterized by sex hormones and idealistic infatuation, lust blurs our ability to see a person for who he or she truly is, and consequently, it may or may not lead to a long-term relationship. – Good Therapy https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/psychpedia/love
I wholeheartedly agree with this article. It also mentions that some people believe it’s a mix of both in order to sustain the relationship. I think that is true and the key word is a mix and not a balance. I think you need more love to sustain a relationship and added to that love is lust or physical attraction. However, relying on the lust to be thought of as sex only will eventually fail you. Why? We all age. We won’t have the same bodies we had at 20. Things change. Some people have families and they are working and raising children. Illnesses may happen and that can get in the way of the frequency of what once was.
So, if you build it or accept it as, let’s say 70% lust and 30% love you’ll find out years later you’re missing something. However, the signs probably were already there. Being in a space where a person values the physical connection more than they value you creates a space of confusion. They love you and care about you but not as deeply as you desire.
What sayeth ye? Do you have a different perspective from the article or do you agree?
A mix of emotions, behaviors, and beliefs associated with strong feelings of affection, protectiveness, warmth, and respect for another person.
Love can also be used to apply to non-human animals, to principles, and to religious beliefs. For example, a person might say he or she loves his or her dog, loves freedom, or loves God.
WHAT IS LOVE?
Love has been a favored topic of philosophers, poets, writers, and scientists for generations, and different people and groups have often fought about its definition.
While most people agree that love implies strong feelings of affection, there are many disagreements about its precise meaning, and one person’s “I love you” might mean something quite different than another’s.
Some possible definitions of love include:
A willingness to prioritize another’s well-being or happiness above your own.
Extreme feelings of attachment, affection, and need.
Dramatic, sudden feelings of attraction and respect.
A fleeting emotion of care, affection, and like.
A choice to commit to helping, respecting, and caring for another, such as in marriage or when having a child.
Some combination of the above emotions.
There has been much debate about whether love is a choice, is something that is permanent or fleeting, and whether the love between family members and spouses is biologically programmed or culturally indoctrinated. Love may vary from person to person and culture to culture. Each of the debates about love may be accurate at some time and someplace. For example, in some instances, love may be a choice while in others it may feel uncontrollable.
I decided to give up asking for a mate and looking for a mate. I am not happy about this but, I have a feeling God is delighted. I feel God was waiting on this decision so that we can move on. While God and all of heaven may be rejoicing, I am not. I made this decision Thursday and my mood has not been good to say the least. However, I was informed that God does not need my feelings to be in tune right now, he needs my ears. He needs me to listen. He does not need my feelings. He needs my obedience.
Ever since Thursday, the day I made the decision, God has been speaking to me in various ways. As I sat on the porch and that night, I heard, “I am here” over and over. I saw the numbers, 3333, 33, and 333 Thursday night and Friday. I listened to a prayer Friday morning and I know God was speaking to me via that prayer and certain scripture. I know God was speaking to me as I read. I know God was speaking to me as I listened to a sermon. My mood was dry. I was in a funk. I was feeling afraid, angry, and confused.
But God was not concerned with my feelings. Oh, God cares about my feelings but, was not alarmed or concerned. God didn’t need my feelings to line up with what was being said. God just needed to know I was listening. God is requesting my obedience to what I am hearing. God knows my feelings will subside and different feelings will arise.
God reminded me that this is evolution. For the most part, it will not be easy and it will not feel good but it has its rewards. In the end, I will want for nothing.
3 Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.
4 But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.
James 1:3-4, The Holy Bible (that word perfect in this text means mature, whole)
Nikki's Confetti Life 