Relationships: I've Been Hurt Before

Hi! I hope you're okay.

I was having a chat with a friend the other night about this subject, and I thought I'd come to write a post about it because the subject fascinates me.

Over the past year or so I have made some serious changes. I decided to start focusing on making myself a better person in every aspect of life. Which needed to include relationships. Now let me tell you, I have had incredibly poor luck when it comes to the guys I've dated. The majority have been extremely narcissistic, secretive and downright shitty. I have experienced mental, emotional and physical abuse. I've been cheated on multiple times by multiple people. It has been a ride. Maybe one day, I'll write some in depth posts on how I managed to move forward from those situations individually.

For now though, I want to focus on the famous line "I've been hurt before" and why I think you're just hurting yourself and halting your own personal progress with that simple statement.

My first relationship was intense. After a while things went wrong. I'm talking, monumentally wrong. The pain and abandonment I felt during the relationship stuck with me wherever I went. I carried it around like it was a backpack filled with rocks, and from there every time that I got hurt, it felt like more rocks were added to the bag. I let that pain affect my life and change how I thought about people. Especially guys. From there as I’m sure you can imagine, dating was hard. I entered every relationship with my guard up, trying to anticipate when they would hurt me because, I've been hurt before. Needless to say, all of my relationships from there turned out almost identical to the first one. The followed the same old pattern.

January 2017 marked a turning point for me. I hit a personal rock bottom and the only way was up. I noticed that new relationships were always going wrong or starting on the wrong foot because I was constantly entering them with a defensive attitude. I convinced myself that I couldn't trust anyone, that guys were all the same and that the best way to avoid being hurt again was to put up walls and seem disinterested. I think that's quite a common thing. People get hurt and as a defence mechanism they take on this 'fuck the world I'm not getting hurt again' cold attitude. Which is all fun and games until you meet someone that you really like, and all you can worry about is them hurting you or you not being able to trust them.

I've adopted a new way of looking at dating. It can apply to all aspects of life, not just romantically. I imagine that life is a video game. Most characters you meet in a video game come with their own individual bar of health. They start at 100% health and then for one reason or another it goes down. It can also be worked on to be rebuilt again. I decided I was going to visualise this mechanic with people I meet. Each new person should be coming into your life with 100% trust in their trust bar. Just because some people hurt you and aren’t worthy of your trust, doesn't mean that no one is worthy of your trust from that moment on. It doesn't make sense and it isn’t fair to the people you’re meeting.

I know that some people may say that trusting everyone 100% is a naive but I truly believe that thinking this way has helped me to be more open as I move through life. Instead of putting up walls and acting cold, I take chances. I actually talk to people. Open up to them.  At the end of the day, along the same lines of that famous quote: everyone in this world has the ability to hurt us so easily. You've just got to find the ones that you don't mind hurting a little bit for.

It’s okay to be scared of love and to be scared to start again. Just try and be a light in a world full of darkness and take some chances.


6 comments

  1. Great post! I think we've all been hurt at some point or other, and I like the idea that everyone who comes into your life has a full trust bar; I'll be taking that away with me. Thanks for sharing.

    Emma x

    emmarollason.wordpress.com

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    1. Aw thank you so much Emma! Such a sweet comment, I’m glad you’re taking the “trust bar” with you haha! I’ve found it quite useful x

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  2. I love this blog post babe, it's so well-written, honest and completely shows that it's okay to be weary after being treated so badly. However, I am so sorry to hear that you've had no luck with relationships, please know you're not alone though! I'm sending you so much love babe. Thank you for sharing 🌸💜✨

    With love, Alisha Valerie. x
    www.alishavalerie.com | www.twitter.com/alishavalerie

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    1. Alisha! That is such a lovely comment, thank you. I can’t say how much I appreciate you taking the time to read! Thanks again sweetheart x

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  3. We have all been hurt in one point in time in our lives or the other. We just have to learn to put ourselves together, learn from our mistakes and always stay positive in all times for the best. Thanks.


    https://rawlingsunday.wordpress.com/2018/01/28/4-ways-to-budget-your-money/

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    1. So true! Things change for the better when you make an effort to keep positivity at the center of your world. Thank you for your comment! x

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