A Mother Breaks Me Down With Love

I was in walking distance from home after spending the day studying at the campus library on an absolutely beautiful Saturday afternoon last weekend when I witnessed something truly special. It gave me a tremendous feeling of hope for humanity, and I’d like to share it with you.

A mother was walking down the sidewalk with her son. She was in her 30’s. She walked in a straight line, and she was silent as she watched her son zig-zag around her sporadically. Her son seemed to be about two years old. He was stable enough on his feet that he had no problem running, but he was still a bit wobbly and uncoordinated. I’m a fairly fast walker and I normally would have just walked around them (they were in front of me, walking in the same direction), but something compelled me to slow down and be a witness to what was about to happen. In fact, a very clear voice in my head actually said to me “Watch this. See the love that she has for him.”

Almost as soon as this thought came to me, the little boy (who had been picking up speed the more he ran around his mom) fell down on the unforgiving cement sidewalk. His hands and forearms took the majority of the impact, but he also hit his face on the ground and it shocked him for the first moment. He was silent. One second, two seconds, and then the tears. This poor little guy, who had been playful and filled with joy seconds ago, was bawling his eyes out.

His mom’s instinct? She dropped her purse on the ground, scooped up her son, sat down on the nearby park bench, and immediately started kissing the tears on his chubby face. And while this instantaneous response was great, this isn’t what made me think to give her the mental award of “World’s Greatest Mom.” Nope, it gets much better. So here we are, it’s a winter day but it's also 60 degrees, mom is sitting on the bench with her crying two-year-old son in her lap, and I’m standing within a distant ear shot as I slowly approach the situation.

Entering the scene now is "old man." An older man (presumably in his late 70’s) walks towards the mom and her crying son from the opposite direction. He likely saw just as much of what has happened as I did, but from the other side of the sidewalk. The first words out of his mouth? “Oh, come now, boys don’t cry…” And without skipping a beat, the boy’s mother replied “Yes, boys do cry. And my boy cries. Baby, you can cry for as long as you need to. You can let it all out.” She wasn’t rude to the old man. She wasn’t aggressive. She wasn’t outwardly angry. She was firm, resolute and assertive. Her response to the man carried the tone of “Thank you for your opinion sir, but no. That is not the worldview my son is going to adopt. We have no use for that belief.”

Her first two sentences were boundaries, and her latter two sentences were a verbal hug for her son. It was one of the most loving things I have ever seen. This mother’s fierce display of love and protection instantly got to me. I knew I wanted to say something to her, and how much I appreciated her response. It took everything I had to not start crying in a fashion that would have been too similar to what her son was doing. (The concepts of protecting innocence and allowing of experiences have a lot of overlap with some of my core values. So a situation like this in any movie would make me bawl my eyes out, and here I was witnessing it in person. This was potent stuff.)

The man didn’t slow down, or respond to her rebuttal. He hadn’t seemed to really hear her words and he simply went on his merry little way. After being stopped dead in my tracks by the beauty of what this mother had just done, I took a few deep breaths (partially because I had to breathe away my own impending tears but mainly because I wanted to allow them to have a few moments of sitting and being with each other) and went over to her. “I just wanted to let you know that I saw what you just did, and said, and I wanted to thank you from the bottom of my heart. Every boy in the world would benefit from having a mother like you. Thank you for standing up to that guy and honoring your son.” She paused, smiled, and replied, “It’s the easiest thing in the world to protect this little guy.”

And that was it. I continued walking home, and she sat with her son on the park bench and let him cry for as long as he needed to cry. Faith in humanity restored.

For the record, I don’t blame the older gentleman for having the beliefs that he does. I don’t fault him for being raised in a generation where “Boys don’t cry” was the default response to any male emotion. I really don’t. He was raised with one version of social conditioning, and that isn’t his fault. I am just so proud of the mother’s reaction. She couldn’t have handled it all any better than she did. And I feel so hopeful that, with mothers like her in the world, we are headed for an increasingly beautiful, accepting, and loving future. 

I hope that this story touched you as much as the moment itself touched me. If you found this blog inspiring, and want more emotionally encouraging mothers and fathers out there to know how valued they are, consider sharing this article with them to let them know that their way of being in this world is having a massively positive effect.

The more emotionally accepting we all are, the more the entire world benefits...

relationshiplessons.net 

Men, Here's a Valentine's Day Gift You Should Give

If I can be honest, there is so much garbage out there when it comes to relationship advice. I think it’s because most people want the quick fix, and there are no quick fixes when it comes to relationships. There is a popular line of thinking out there that the way to a woman’s heart is to buy her things, “the more expensive the better.”

While its brilliant marketing by the jewelry companies, there is one gift I’ve found that trumps any kind of material good every single time. Every time I give this gift, she falls more and more in love with me. It’s a gift in fact that works every time, no matter how many times I give her this same gift. What is this gift you ask? What is the thing that I can give her every time that’s more precious than anything material? Presence... 

That’s right; the best gift you can give your partner is your unwavering, commanding presence. But what really is presence? It’s a word that’s often tossed around a lot these days, but what does it really mean? Presence for me means being able to generate attention to something, without anything else getting in the way and disrupting my ability to do so. In other words, I’m focused on one thing and only one thing. My mind is quiet, without thoughts, and every action is in service to the object of my attention. Nothing can distract me from what I am focused on. There’s something specifically that happens to a woman when the man she loves is able to be fully present with her in the moment.

Now this might seem crazy for a lot of men out there – especially given what we are brought up to believe by the media and socialization, that the way to her heart is through “things” and that we need to constantly prove our love to them in buying them what we think they want. Maybe because of what we are indoctrinated with at a young age, is why women love a man who is able to be present in the moment with them. Many single women I know have talked about how they yearn for a man who can be present with them on dates.

When it comes to relationships and marriage, a lot of things can get in the way of us men being present. I know I’ve certainly been guilty of thinking that other things are more important than the attention I give – things like building my craft so that we can have a secure future, or focused on the doings of day-to-day life. Things that by their very nature are important to me, and should be, but oftentimes can get in the way of me taking the time to really sit down and be with anyone.

The things you are dealing with in your life are in fact all important things that need to get handled, but often times I’ve done these things and thought of myself as a good man because “I took care of business.” This is the trap that we as men can fall into that we think makes us good partners. The truth is, that’s only half the equation. All of those things are important and do need to get done, but the other half of it is how much attention can you give your partner and for how long?

A study about why women cheat (check it out here) reveals that most women cheat because they want more sexual passion in their relationship. Presence is one of the big elements that helps create sexual passion inside any relationship. When you are present in your relationship, you are connected with your partner. When you are connected with your partner, you will be present to the love and passion you have for each other. One of the extra benefits of taking on being present is that your partner is less likely to look elsewhere for passion.

So the next time that you are busy handling everything that comes on your plate with regards to life, stop and ask yourself: How much time have I spent being present with my partner? If you answer that question is not enough, carve some time out of your schedule to sit and connect. I promise you it will be well worth your time…

relationshiplessons.net 

What A Breakup Will Eventually Teach You

It’s probably the biggest nightmare of any relationship, but sometimes it’s inevitable. Sometimes “life” happens, and the relationship crashes. Breakups are traumatic. It’s true that if you initiate the breakup, you may feel less pain or handle the pain better than the person you’re breaking up with, but it’s hardly easy either way. And breakups are no trivial matter. I probably should've known better, but I was naïve in my relationship lifetime. I learned some invaluable lessons though, and I share the lessons I learned from them here with you today.

A breakup won’t kill me... For days after my first breakup, my heart literally ached. I felt sick, and I lost my appetite. Worse yet, my blood pressure soared. Waking up every morning was torture. I could understand why some people end their lives after a failed relationship. The seconds, the minutes, the hours, and the days all passed slowly. At the end of every day, simply staying alive to see the next day seemed impossible. At the time, I did not want to stay alive, but I’m here writing this so I know that the heartbreak associated with a breakup could not kill me. If heartbreaks could kill, I would have died three more times after my first breakup.

A relationship cannot thrive on love alone… But if it could, some relationships would last forever. Yeah, they do have that much love. More often than we’d like to admit, money or lack of it contributes to the demise of many relationships. I know because it contributed to mine, and I know my relationship wasn’t the first or the last under heaven ending because of money issues. I learned it’s not just about money either. Personal experience has likely taught you several factors that can make or break relationships. So you just don’t need to take my word for it.

Switching to “just friends” after a breakup is unrealistic, at least for a while… We’re friends now, and we do talk, but during the first few weeks and months after the breakup, it was a terrible idea. I couldn’t even stand the mention of her name without getting a pull in my chest. Since she left me, I felt I could still talk her into giving our relationship another chance, but the worse the reality was the more we talked. Because each time we talked, her words gave me little to no hope. I always felt heartbroken all over again. That in my opinion delayed my healing process. Now I know better than trying to play the “just friends” card, at least until after some time has passed. Staying “just friends” immediately after a breakup may work for you, but it never really worked for me.

Love is hard work... A wrong perception of love is common today. People feel that once they’re in love, they’ll always be in love with little or no effort on their parts. That’s a lie. Nobody stays in love without working to stay in love. When you truly love someone, you make a conscious effort to stay in love with the person. You won’t always feel a strong attachment to the other person. You won’t always find the other person very romantic (some people call it being passed the “honeymoon” phase). Showing her love won’t always come naturally, but you have to anyway. Staying in love is like keeping in good physical shape. It requires constant work. Sadly, I believed I had or could show enough love to cover for both of us. I was wrong, but that was my next lesson.

Love takes two people... I loved her enough. I stopped at nothing to show it, but my love could not conceal her inadequacy. The more I tried, the more I realized the futility in trying. Relationships surviving on the efforts of one person can hardly last, that’s why there are two people in a relationship. I learned that the hard way. I just couldn’t do enough for both of us. I had my part to play, more importantly, she had hers to play too. She had to do at least some of her part. These words are true:

“The chains of marriage are so heavy that it takes two to bear them, and sometimes three.” – Alexandre Dumas

When you carry the chains of a relationship alone for too long, you’re sure to crash under its weight.

Nobody graduates from self-improvement... I felt I was romantic enough by sending her handwritten love letters, by calling her every day, or by sending her text messages during the day. For her, romantic meant affording dates at exotic restaurants, it meant buying her presents on the regular. In short, romantic meant financial competence. While my personality wasn’t particularly unbearable to her, my financial condition was. It had to get better, and she wasn’t patient enough to watch it improve. Not that I was trying to improve it then anyway. My life wasn’t perfect (still isn't), and that was a painful reminder.

Relationships are not always fair. Some men date women for selfish reasons. Maybe because she’s beautiful, maybe because she’s rich, maybe because she’s popular. They soon get disillusioned when they realize those aren’t recipes for successful relationships. Some men see women as sex objects. And they have to feign love just to get her between the sheets. When they realize he’s just a “sex” guy, they leave feeling downhearted and used. Are any of the above scenarios fair? No, they’re not. But do they happen? Of course they do. One thing is sure: when only one person is pulling the weight of two in any relationship, it’s not fair. But such is life too, and I wish I learned it sooner...

relationshiplessons.net