Saw this comic yesterday and it cut straight through me like a damn knife. Kimchi Cuddles has a tendency to do that quite a lot….in the best possible way. Highly highly recommend giving them a follow on social media. I’m in no way associated with them or benefit from this plug. I just really love their comics and believe they deserve as much exposure as possible.
Anyway, so the reason I’m posting. It’s a common epidemic these days that people, especially millennials such as myself, like to play this game called “don’t share my true feelings with people…EVER”. Instead just passive aggressively post shit on social media or chat endlessly with your friends about how you feel without EVER telling the person you care about. It’s the most ridiculous game ever and everyone always loses.
If you are the girl who spews feelings too soon, you lose. If you are the girl who holds it all inside, you also lose. There never seems to ever be a balance between saying feelings too early or too late because it fluctuates so greatly from person to person – especially those playing this dumb little game.
So what then? We are stuck in this limbo state where you’re terrified to tell someone how you really feel so you slowly ooze out subtle passive aggressive hints. Maybe you post a few deep quotes on your instagram feed hoping he’ll notice. You might even chat with him about how adorable your friends are that are sooooo in love just hoping he’ll pick up on the subtle hints in the words you are speaking. Or if you’re like me, you might send them countless memes and eventually whisper…I love you, don’t you mind (also tattooed on my body & the image for this post in case ya haven’t noticed).
It gets worse if that partner says they, “don’t believe in love or marriage or soulmates” but you do! What then? Are you to never tell them how you feel? Does their dismissal of these things negate their existence in YOUR life?
The answer: do you boo! You need to find someone who believes in the same things that you do. That includes love! Trying to change someone’s mind or open someone up is a waste of your valuable fucking time. Stop doing it! Just stop. A person is only going to change because THEY want to. Also if THEY change for YOU, trust that they are going to eventually resent you for it and the relationship will crumble anyway.
So why not tell someone how you feel early and often? Better to find out now that the person you love isn’t capable of returning the same feelings back to you – whether that’s right away or months or heaven forbid, years from now. Rip that bandaid off early.
Let’s be more like Gigi from “He’s Just Not That Into You”.
Of course, she’s an extreme example here but at least she’s wearing her heart on her sleeve and actively trying to find love. There’s another really great scene where Justin Long’s character gives her a speech about how if a guy wants you in his life, he will make it happen. Ok fine, I’ll include it here:
This one hits close to home for me because I’ve been the girl tip toeing around a partner’s feelings so afraid to express how I truly felt about them for fear of them running the other way. I gave them so much time and space it might’ve even looked like I didn’t care at all when in reality I would have done practically anything for them (I say practically because some wise ass is gonna be like, “would you murder for them?” – no dumbass, I’m not going to commit a crime for them). I’ve even reserved my love from a partner because my fear of loss was so great that if I JUST didn’t express the love then I couldn’t get hurt by it. Wrong!
I’ve been so afraid, in the past, to fully expose the extent of my soul to someone I loved that I’ve said almost nothing at all. Suffered in silence waiting for them to make the first move often times.
I’ve settled for them saying the bare minimum to me, holding on to every word like its the fucking cure for cancer. Reading into the subtext of texts that really have no deeper meaning.
– from my brain (yes I quoted myself, deal with it)
But maybe the problem isn’t me or them. Maybe the problem then, is what Kimchi Cuddle’s comic strip is saying. I’ve fallen in love with people who don’t have the same capacity to love as me. Maybe I’m loving people who only have a puddle size amount of love to offer when I’ve got a whole damn ocean inside of me. It’s not their fault! It’s not my fault either! We’re just incompatible.
I have been known to date “emotionally unavailable” or “emotionally wounded” people which is really just a fancy term for “I don’t want to or can’t love YOU”. This is usually because they’ve suffered some type of major blow to their ego in the last relationship or just don’t want to be in a relationship with ME.
Why do I say that…well, because no matter how many times I’ve been “emotionally unavailable”, when the right person comes along suddenly that term gets blown away like a dandelion in the wind never to be heard of again. The phrase mysteriously vanishes from my freaking vocabulary because I was, in fact, ABLE to love, just didn’t want to love the person I was feeding that bullshit to. Cold stuff when you boil it down.
I know what you’re thinking….savage! But, it’s honest. You can argue with me all you want on this one but if you’re really honest with yourself, much of our excuses for not loving one person over another is absolutely a choice you make based on the information you have about those humans at the time. Don’t feed me that crap of “you can’t help who you fall in love with”…yes you can, you do it all the time. You’re not falling in love with some hideous chud (thank you Clerks 2 for this reference) begging for change on the corner now are you? It’s not as random as you’d like to romanticize it to be. Love starts with a choice, although it doesn’t always end with one.
I know I’ve had people choose to not love me based on all kinds of criteria. I know for a fact people have chosen not to continue romantic relationships with me for the following reasons: my alcoholism, polyamory, kinks and even geographic location (this is a very fucking LA thing, but it’s a real thing, ask someone on the west side trying to date someone on the east side).
But I have a choice here. I have the choice to actually share my feelings instead of holding them inside. I have the choice to expose the ocean that is flowing within me and if someone is not ready to take a swim, then it’s time to move on to find someone who is. I’ve spent a lot of my dating life putting my partners on life rafts in my ocean of love but sometimes not giving them the paddle or the compass they need to be able to navigate it.
That choice could lead to hurt, but I’ll never sit around wondering why. Why didn’t they call? Why did they break up with me? Why didn’t I tell them when I had the chance? Why, why, why, why, why?
I’m trying to get better at that. I’m trying to get better at expressing love early and often. I’m trying to get better at finding matches who are more compatible with me and my ocean of love. I’m trying to get better at dating.
I don’t want to be the girl who says, “I love you, don’t you mind” anymore.
A special Thank you to Kimchi Cuddles. I needed to read this one.
The next time I read a blog, I hope that it doesn’t fail me just as much as this particular one. After all, I know it was my choice to read, nonetheless I really believed you would have something interesting to talk about. All I hear is a bunch of whining about something you could possibly fix if you were not too busy searching for attention.
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That is some inspirational stuff. Never knew that opinions could be this varied. I wish I had your insight.
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