Relationships gone bad: The right way and wrong way to love. Don't make the mistakes I made. What not to do in relationships!!!

It has been almost 7 years, thats over half a decade.  Half a decade of secrecy and lies and sneaking around....all under the auspices of protecting the children, protecting the family, of doing the right thing by sacrificing love, life, happiness, joy and everything else that comes along with meeting the right one, falling in love, building a life together, committing, being intimate, living everyday with zest and passion and joy.   The stress that comes along with that lifestyle has made me physically ill.  Cancer, autoimmune disease, depression, jealousy, heartache, hopelessness all slowly appeared over the years and all in the name of sacrifice and love and doing what was necessary for my partner to be happy.  Is that really what love is?  The story books say its so.  Poems, short stories, movies, historical novels, all of the above and so many more state that love is about putting someone else's needs ahead of your own.  Is that right?  Is that true?  How many of you can honestly say that they have done such things and forsaken their happiness, their needs, their wants and found true love and happiness?

Well, I can't.  Sure, I did all of the above every single day for 7 years.  Maybe if it was acknowledge, noticed, appreciated and rewarded then maybe, just maybe, it could have had potential.  However, isn't that specifying that doing all of that for someone, entitles me to being appreciated, rewarded etc.?  And isn't that in and of itself, exactly the opposite of what the whole intention and chosen sacrifice is all about?

I did all of those things and sure as anything, as time went by, I was taken for granted, nothing was appreciated and I simply became someone who was guaranteed to be there for him no matter how poorly he treated me, how many times he blew me off, how over time I mattered less and less and then when I did raise the issues, it was I who was the cause of dissension and conflict.

The argument became what came first?  The chicken or the egg?  Who caused what and what caused who to react?  Sure as anything, distance and resentment slowly moved in and filled the space that once was filled with love and laughter and need.

If you give someone all of yourself.  If you offer yourself and your heart and your soul unconditionally, asking nothing in return, expecting nothing in return and make it your sole existence to put them first, because that is what is said that we are to do if we love someone, then how may I ask, can respect and interest, and value and challenge and excitement maintain its course?

I know for sure that I would get bored quickly and lose respect and ultimately whether intended or not, I would begin to take them for granted and slowly but surely, start to walk all over them and not even realize that I was doing it.

I would begin to resent if they argued, or fought back or suddenly appeared with demands or expectations and I for sure would never, after such love sick devotion ever question myself, my behaviour and simply presume that it was not I but of course, they that had changed.  Accountability and responsibility would not ever come to mind because by god, they had never had to own anything before because they were unconditionally loved and no matter what, they were accepted.

So whose fault is it when relationships like this fall apart?  There is definitely a past and when unconditional love and complete autonomy has been the norm then why wouldn't he be quick to blame and accuse me of being the one to change and become insecure and the culprit who ultimately ruined such a perfect thing that we had going.   Can you blame him?  I certainly can't.  I can't because I single handledly created this monster.  This monster that ultimately thinks of no one and nothing but himself and over time morphed into the most narcissistic and selfish, compassionless person alive.

But I, alone, had created him.  So be very careful to offer unconditional love to your partner.  Be careful never to not challenge or ask for what you need or want because I just lost the love of my life, the "one" because I loved him too much, I offered too readily and I expected so little.  I made him matter and I made myself inconsequential.

Love isn't about putting someone else's needs and wants above your own.  It is about compromise, respect, honesty, integrity, authenticity and valuing yourself and your partner.  It is about give and take and most importantly, it is about communication and standing up for what you believe in and what you need and knowing who you are and what you bring to the relationship, to life and believing that you are worthy of everything that he is.

Don't make the same mistakes I made.  Love is about sharing, and give and take and honour and respect.  Don't give those up for your partners.  If you do, your relationship is doomed from the moment you think his happiness, his needs and his wants are more important and meaningful than your own.

I lost the love of my life, but you don't have to.  Heed my words.  If you allow someone to walk all over you, disrespect you and minimize your self worth, you've already lost and best turn and walk away now.

Know who you are, what you want, what you need and what you are willing to compromise and know the same things about your partner.  Make sure you smile and laugh at yourself and life and always make sure your glass is at least half full.

Value yourself.  Value your life.  Value your partner.  Love does not require hardship and sacrifice of your needs and your wants.  It requires a partnership, an understanding.  Most of all, it requires two people who respect and value themselves and know what they each bring to the relationship and don't ever forget that.

I am a psychologist, a chinese medicine practitioner, I am a mother, a partner, a daughter, a sister, a friend and a woman who has had to learn the hard way in love.  I hope you don't make the same mistakes I did.  It is unnecessary and heartbreaking.  Learn from my mistakes.  Your partner will appreciate you all the more for it.

Invaluable lessons learned from heartbreak by being extremely honest with myself

A letter to my lost lover:


To the love of my life, It was 11 years yesterday that my dad died.  I thought it was ten years.  How fast it goes.  You have it more right than I knew.  You live life on your own terms and I couldn't understand all of it.  I of course understood much of it, but there have been many choices you made that have baffled me, challenged me, taught me, scared me, hurt me and many other such feelings.  Yet you are true to yourself, always true to you and rarely veer off course from what it is that you want or need either in the past, present or future.  Is that right?  For you it is.  Is that wrong?  For others it may be. For me, often times it was.  Whose perspective is more important, more meaningful, more valid and who is it that gets to make that decision?  Its impossible to know.  


In the past I have definitely resented you for the course you have set for yourself, as it invariably changes with old friends or new, past favorites or new, ocean or desert, new investment interests or old, functional relationships or dysfunctional, kids at home or no longer, boating or golfing........the variables are constantly changing and thus so is your perspective and who am I to decide what is true or false, real or pretend?  Important or unimportant?  Our perspectives are different.  We are different.  Everyone is different.  So I have come to the conclusion that it is unfair of me to resent the bulk of your behaviours. 


For example, most recently you spending months away golfing while you've repeatedly told me that it is being with your kids that has prevented you from bieng with me, that it is waking up in your own bed and making them breakfast that you need and clearly one cannot exist with the other, that you like them around, waking up knowing they are there etc.  So I have felt a fool.  I have felt betrayed.  I have felt decieved and  manipulated and I have felt to be living the life of a victim.   Because essentially nothing you've done in months has had really anything at all to do with your kids, or your house or your bed or even your city and most people in it.  Im not wrong, because that is my perspective.  But does that mean you are wrong?  Or does it mean that you make life what you want it to be, that you know what you want and you go out and get it and that you make the very most of every minute of time that we have all been so graciously allotted.  


Does it mean you lied to me all these years or does it simply mean your needs and wants changed course?  What is the truth, the reality, your version or mine?  I don't think there is one, because it is different for everyone.  Everyday.   So I wont resent you anymore and I won't try to understand what it is that you are doing so far from loved ones months on end, hitting the same ball over and over and gleaning more satisfaction and pleasure from that repetitive act than clearly everything and everyone that constitutes the other part of your life.  How can I understand that?  I don't golf.  I havent gone away with friends for weeks and months so how could I possibly resent you for choices you make that I can and will, never know myself?  


I can only feel sadness that I went from being your golf, to being someone you can live without in your life.  One day it will be golfs turn when you become too old and golf becomes too hard and something or someone will rise up to take its place.  I envy you that.  God I wish I could do that.  God I wish that one thing could bring me such pleasure no matter how many times I repeated it.  I have never found that something.  I did however find the someone, that made anything and everything whether good or bad, fun or boring, pleasureable, and enjoyable and special.  So how are we any different?  


You found a something and I found a someone and your something and my someone fulfilled each of us in the very same way. I have minimized your golf as a game and maximized me as more valuable and important.  Who said?  Me?  Why is my perspective any more important than yours because they are different?  Does that make mine right and yours wrong?  Of course not.  It is simply a matter of individual preferences and choice and what is right for one person is wrong for the next person and that is something that people can agree on.  So I am sorry for resenting you, for resenting your choices and behaviors and for not understanding this.  If it is golf that makes you happy love, then by God you should play as much as you can because the first rule of love is that you just want the one you love to be happy and you do everything you can to help them be happy.  I thought I was doing that but I was wrong.  


I was blinded by your life and kids and circumstance and insecurity and hurt and jealousy and I sacrificed so so so much of myself in all the wrong ways for all the wrong reasons and actually expected appreciation to be expressed.  Those weren't the acts of love, those were  the acts of someone who thought they knew what love was supposed to be and now I know that my choices weren't made from love, they were ultimately made for bargaining, manipulating, for trying to create the relationship that I wanted, that worked for me.  After all, you chose them, and I chose you and that ultimately was supposed to make you happy and appreciate me, which in turn, would help you to ultimately choose me.  Instead of that story playing out, the very behaviours that I alone chose of myself hurt me, weakened me, made me dislike and disrespect myself and in turn, you chose no one.  You chose a game - golf.  


I have learned that I must question and evaluate all of my decisions and actions and discern what is my motive, is it pure, is it honest, does it come from a place of understanding, compassion, integrity,  love and acceptance of what is, not what was or what could be.  Nobody will ever understand everything about other people but everyone sure can try.  The only way to do that is to be completely honest with oneself and look at our own individual behaviours and motives.  Ultimately everyone needs to take responsibility for ourselves and hope that that is good enough to invite others into our life who will inturn accept us whether they fully understand us or not.

Without this, I would never have figured that out, and I think this is the most valuable lesson I have ever learned about life, about people about myself so thank you.  It hasn't been easy to get here, but it will be invaluable for me and my life going forward.

I love you so much.  I apologize for every choice I made that was not in your best interest but rather in mine.  I apologize for not understanding this sooner and for not being the lover and friend that I should have been.  Love is a selfless act and I thought that is what I was doing, but it wasn't.  It was exactly the opposite.  I am sorry love.  I am a better person because of us and I thank you.   

My son's demonstrates courage few teenagers demonstrate and acknowledges he is depressed and needs help

It is ironic to think that when my 15 year old sons friend arrived on my doorstep yesterday with tears in her eyes very worried about him that I felt an enormous rush of relief.  Over the past year my typically hard working well adjusted, goal oriented high achieving son has disappeared and in his place left a very angry, disrespectful, uncaring, excuse filled young boy in his place.

The social media website Tumblr is a beehive of blogging and posting quotes and pictures that represent how a teenager is feeling at any given moment in time.

As my 3 kids have gotten older, I have monitored their social media sites such as Facebook less and less, never having found a single posting that would cause me alarm.

As my sons mood darkened and he became obviously depressed, I made the decision as a parent to violate his privacy and I went onto his Tumblr site, as he spends what seems like half the day on it, to investigate.  

What I found horrified and frightened me.  Every post, that scrolled down page after page after page was dark and brooding and overwhelmingly sad.  He posted that he hated his life, he pondered whether anyone would miss him if he were gone, he stated that life was sh.., he was sh.., every single post was heartbreaking to read.  Deciding I had little choice but to disclose my invasion of privacy I gently confronted him asking him if he felt depressed and overwhelmingly sad, had he had any thoughts of taking his ownCh life and he laughed at me.  He got angry with me and he ultimately denied the whole thing. He was so convincing that my husband and other children told me I was blowing things out of proportion and he was just fine.

But a mother knows.  And I knew, I had known for a long long time.  I set up an appointment with a family counsellor and my husband and son and I went and talked with him for hours.  The conclusion by the social worker was that my son displayed no signs of depression or anger, in fact, that he presented himself as much older and more mature than an average 15 year old boy.  I was stuck.

Until yesterday afternoon, when his close friend arrived on my porch in tears very concerned about my son and his whereabouts.  She said he had posted once again on Tumblr that he was coming home to kill himself, to walk in front of a bus.  Thankfully, he was with his team at the gym working out.

We put her car in the garage and had her stay out of sight until he had come in through the door and I asked him to sit down.  When I told him that his friend was here and was very worried about him he simply looked at me.  I walked to him and took his face in my hands and said love, you are depressed, your friend is a true friend but you cannot deny this anymore.  We need to get you help.  He broke down and held tight to me for a very long time and finally he whispered, okay mom.  I will get help.  I was trying to do it alone but I can't.

I always thought the word "duck" would be the happiest word I would hear from his lips - his first word.  But the immediate sense of pride with my boy having the courage and strength to admit to himself that he was depressed and needed help was overwhelming.  A huge sense of relief flooded my body and he has told me it  did his as well.   Once it was out in the open he began opening up and finally letting me, his mom, back in.  This morning he got up and went to school and carried on his bravery when he went straight to the counselling office and spoke with the therapist for an hour and a half.  He is helping himself and we are all here to support him.

Teenage years are some of the most difficult in this journey of life.  Mothers, follow your instinct with your children.  A mother does know.  And welcome your children's friends into your lives for I will forever be grateful to my friends son.  She brought him back to us, and he back to himself.  They are never too old as teenagers to occasionally monitor these social media sites.  You can learn a lot and it isn't snooping.  He will be mad at me for a long time for invading his privacy but this one has a happy ending.  He is still here, he will be ok and our family will be okay because of it.

Be grateful for friends.  You never know when you will need one, or your child will.  Be grateful for moments of joy because life is hard there is no doubt about it but if you appreciate those moments that make you smile and your heart patter, you're succeeding.

Cheers to friends and cheers to teenage courage.  I couldn't be more proud of my son.  Be careful with the social media sites.  They do deserve monitoring.  And go with your instincts.  It just might save a life today.

Its Time Has Come and Gone

Well
Its been 6 years exactly
From beginning to end
I take a last look around
Breathe a sigh of regret
With heartache
And sorrow
I turn off the lights
Close the door
And just to be certain
Twist the lock in the deadbolt
And  throw down the key
Poems are wriitten and sent
Messages blocked from sending and receiving
Oct 2 is the very first day
Of no contact at all
Did I ever anticipate
That this day would come
When we started at the loft
No I didn't. Not at all.
Now its just one enormous dart
To the left of my chest
Impaled first hard and then deep
Because he turned out to be
An unbeliievably cowardly creep
Where once there was love
Now there is shell shock
Who is this person
I don't even know him
Self centered and ego
A coward and fear based
Shows no one remorse
He's defensive and lost
Drinking and running
He won't look in the mirror
And admit what he's done
He just makes excuses
And throws mistakes in my face
Even tho they were years past
Thankfully I'm free of that part at last
Unfortunately he'll continue to do it
He will run run and run
He tells himself he's a good guy
But everyone he does buy
Because money and power
Is all he really respects
What kind of life will he have
A lonely and empty one I expect
Deaf mute and silent
Lacking integrity and all lies
Couldn't even speak to explain
What is what
After more than half a decade
And with my chosen sacriifice and patience
He uttered never a word
To explain to me or apologize
For breaking my heart and abandoning me
That's the worst of it really
Hell what did I ever see
I can't even look in his eyes
I've lost most of the love
But its the habit I fear
Of not talking to him daily
While we pretend to act so gaily
But it shouldn't take long
To get used to good feelings
No rejection or excuses
No pain and constant hiding
No more of my lack of value and expendability
Cause now there's my value and hope
And I can be filled with light and laughter
Good friends and maybe even a lover
A new chapter begun today
Unknown but whatever
Nothing could match
The badness of our past weather
So it is with hope and belief
Of better to come
What life will bring me
I will definitely welcome
Goodbye to you my love
Goodbye to the past
Tommorrows a new day
Its finally time for me - J

If You're Happy And You Know It Clap Your Hands!

I don’t know the exact number of books that I have read about the ever elusive, constantly sought after, concept of happiness but I can say that it is one heck of a lot!   Have any of them provided the key to happiness, finally explaining to me how to seek it and achieve it and maintain it?  I wish I could say a resounding YES, but I can’t because there isn’t a simple end all be all answer to that question though many of the self help books would have us believe that and then we all wonder why we can rarely achieve happiness let alone hold onto it for it very long.

I have however come to realize that happiness is not something that resides in the external world, the material world, that once achieved will bring us everlasting peace and tranquility not does it stem from another person and the expectation that this is the person that will make me happy.

Happiness to me has come to represent a few things, but almost all of these things dwell within me.   I am one of those people that have always put others ahead of myself, thinking that by doing so, they will love me and appreciate me and in return I will be happy.  I have always linked happiness with having fun thus if I wasn’t having fun then I couldn’t very well be happy now could I?  I am also one of the millions of women on this planet that felt if I didn’t look thin, toned, strong, have nice teeth and good hair that I couldn’t be happy  What is the common denominator with all of the above?  They are all external variations of feeling good which does not equate to happiness.

There are so many theories about how to achieve happiness and maintain it.  Eckhart Tolle and living in the now is a key philosophy and if one can achieve that and maintain it constantly and forever my hats are off to you because it certainly does work.  I just haven’t been able to stop myself from remembering and also from hoping, two things which can’t exist in the NOW, for more than minutes at any given time.

Happiness to me has become incredibly personal.   I have found that if I set boundaries for myself about what is good for me and what is not, how people can treat me and how they cannot, what I expect of myself and what I do not, if I maintain my honesty and integrity and take responsibility for my actions and words, if I show kindness and compassion and refrain from making judgements about myself or others, if I listen instead of preach, if I lead by example instead of follow, if I value myself and respect myself that I have found balance.  If I pay it forward and if I feel gratitude.  If I learn from my mistakes and therefore grow.  If I take the path of courage instead of fear and if I recognize my mistakes. And if I can say I am sorry.   If I work hard and am proud of myself.   If I lose my way and recognize that path but also recognize I am human and make corrections instead of condemning myself. 

If I laugh more than I cry and I give more than I take. If I am positive rather than negative and hopeful rather than skeptical.  If I forgive or am forgiving.    If I take the time to stop and breath the air and look around me and appreciate life’s beauty. If I feel the sun on my face and the wind in my hair.   

If I open my mind to the energy of the Universe and believe we are all connected and envision a pure white light enveloping me, protecting me and wrapping me in love from head to toe, and enveloping each of my children and every other person alive, then there is no need to doubt or question or fear.  If I allow myself to love.  To love myself.  Then I am happy.

And the wonderous thing about all of this, is that it is all within me.  It is all within you.  And all it takes is the decision to start right now.  

I am 44 years old and for the first time in my life, I am not relying on anyone else to make me happy or to believe in me.  I am doing it all by myself.   And I am happy.

What does it mean to play amateur sport in Canada as an elite level teenager

It used to be that kids could take up a sport, or two or three or five and play the games and have fun doing so.   There was no pressure to isolate one sport and play and train specifically for that sport.  It is common knowledge that an athlete, a true athlete can play a variety of sports and excel at all of them.  Cross training was heralded as the way to make an athlete an even better athlete.  Kids had fun in sport.  The Long Term Athletes Development Plan (The World of Sport Examined, P. Beashel et al.) has recognized this as a key ingredient for young athletes, that keeping the FUN in FUNdamentals is more likely to ensure a sustainability of athletes beyond the typical burnout, dropout age found in all sports.

Today, kids as young as 11 are being forced to choose between sports, forced to choose one sport and stick with it and train sport specific.   That would be fine if organized amateur sport played on a level playing field.  But it doesn’t.

Take minor hockey for example, for a boy to have dreams of making it in the big league, they as well as their peers have to decide relatively young how committed they are to their chosen sport.  Once the decision is made, it isn’t enough to simply go to practices, play games, off ice train, eat and sleep.  They have to sacrifice being a child and live and breath hockey, from early morning hockey schools, to after school gyms to practicing stick handling and shooting as much and as often as they can in their “spare” time.   Everyone does it, so it is considered normal.  As the book Outliers states, in order to be exceptional, 10,000 hours are required.  For many, the FUN slowly transitions into work, into unwelcome but necessary sacrifices and this is the norm rather than the exception.

So where is the payoff for these kids?  It is in trying out for and making their teams, meeting their goals, receiving the rewards.  One would assume that if you are one of the best that you would make the best team, that if you are better than others that you would be chosen over the less skilled based on abilities.   However, in minor hockey for example, it is readily apparent that this is simply just not the case.

How many times have I witnessed boys being passed over for kids that are taller, regardless that their talent is superior.  The ideology that you can’t teach a child to grow but you can teach them how to skate is fundamental in high level hockey.  Does it matter that these boys being passed over skate faster, never lose battles in the corner, make hits just as hard as the taller ones, make smarter plays?  Or what about the kids whose parents are influential in a  multitude of ways in minor hockey, and thus have influence in swaying decisions in one direction or another for their children?  How often have I witnessed a boy score a goal only to have the credit be given to a boy who wasn’t even on the ice when the goal was scored?  Where has the accountability gone?

The politics behind the scenes, and the goal to be the biggest and not necessarily the best , the decisions completely out of the hands of these youth, decisions not based on skill level or integrity seriously impact these boys heart and soul, motivation and self esteem at an already difficult time in their young lives.

Shouldn’t it always be about how good you are, how hard you work, your integrity and character?  Shouldn’t the best in evaluations make the best teams?  Is there something flawed in my reasoning?  To me, it should always be about how good you are versus everyone else and that that should dictate which team you ultimately play for?

What message does it send our youth?  Work hard, sacrifice, train, put your heart and soul into everything you do, be the best in your sport but expect to fail?

In Canada, we put our children in the hands of volunteer coaches, managers, assistant coaches whether they are qualified for the job or not (Coaching Young Performers, M. Hagger).  We put our children into the hands of perfect strangers, who have their own vision of what they want their team to look like and we trust them to coach our children, chaperone our children, be a role model for our children yet these people only do this part time, without pay and often there aren’t enough volunteers so it resorts to taking whoever is willing to spend time on and off ice.   These volunteers make life altering decisions for our children, can take a childs hopes and dreams and crush them, or give them a false sense of security.  

What about those boys that make the top teams based on politics or size and not on abilities?  Is that not also doing them a dis-service, setting them up with a false sense of security only to be crushed at a later time further down the road when they stop growing, when their skills improve but remain consistent with the level of their abilities all along?  Of course there is the anomaly, Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team and we all know what happened to Michael Jordan.  The difference is that Michael Jordan was cut based on his skill level at the time, not from political pressure, not from physical characteristics, but from his level of ability at the time of his basketball evaluations.

If a boy can’t go on the ice and play to the best of his ability, play better than the majority out there and be confidant that he will be placed exactly where his skills demonstrate he belongs, then how do expect our burnout and dropout rates to ever slow down?  How do we keep these players choosing to continue to work so hard and to sacrifice so much when we reward them with failure?

This isn’t the NHL where you build a team based on criteria of how you want your team to look and make trades based on that criteria.  This is amateur sport and shouldn’t the best player be placed on the best team and funnel downward until every hockey player is playing on a team of the same abilities?  Shouldn’t the top teams consist of the top players in amateur sport?  

No wonder attrition rates are so high in high level amateur sport!  No matter how good you are, ultimately it may make little difference.   There are too many other variables that come into play and none of them have our children’s best interest at heart.

Life isn’t fair.  Life is hard.  Life is filled with disappointments.  But don’t we try to impart to our children that if you work hard, if you really really really work hard and set yourself above your peers, that you will be rewarded.   Is it really necessary to teach our kids, in what is supposed to be a game, that no matter how good you are at what you are doing, no matter if you are one of the best, that it doesn’t matter, that ultimately a volunteer will decide that abilities don’t matter, and that size does, or that external influences take precedence over abilities, that life is completely out of their control and theres not a darned thing they can do about it?  Do they really need to be taught these lessons at the ripe age of 15 or 16?

Amateur sport is failing all of us.  Most importantly it is failing our children. Is this how you pictured the sport your son or daughter chose?  Has amateur sport lost all of its integrity, its sense of fairness? Are these the lessons you want your children to learn so young?   We need to see some serious changes in amateur sport or soon, professional sport will be being played by the mediocre because the kids who deserved it were passed over back in their youth.

We always hear the adage, “politics in sport” but never has it been more true than in amateur sport in Canada.  Shame on us for watching it happen day after day and doing and saying nothing.   These are our children.  They deserve a lot better.