BREAKING MY NEGATIVE MINDSET ON RELATIONSHIPS

Here I am again. It is 12:43am and the creative bug strikes again randomly as fuck. Oh, and it just happens to be on a topic that I have avoided for a long ass time. Relationships. I have a lot of good relationships generally speaking. When it comes to actually dating someone…shit. I have been in one relationship my entire life. I was 17–18 years old and I am now 33. It took me until this past month to look inward and find out why I had this negative outlook on relationships that I didn’t even realize I had.

In order for me to get to the bottom of this and figure out what was going on in my subconscious mind regarding relationships, I had to go way back. This whole mindset starts from the time I was 4 years old! When you start diving into personal development and psychology you will quickly learn most trauma starts from ages 2–7. Mine starting at 4 years of age was no shock to me. I remember two separate occasions at this age. My mom and dad got divorced at this time. The first memory is the last one I have at the house I was born in. I am in the living room sitting Indian style on the bare wood floors (can I say that still or will I get canceled? Fine “criss cross fuckin applesauce”) and my parents are in the master bedroom down the hall fighting with one another. I was just sitting there alone staring down the hall. I was so young I have no idea what the issues were but that is negative energy to be around that I picked up. The second memory that is strong was not that much later. I was probably 5 or 6. My dad picked me up from my mom’s house. It was his time to have me for that weekend. He is carrying me in his arms trying to get me in the truck. My mom is on the porch my dad is at the bottom step. I am basically in the middle of their bullshit. They are yelling at each other. I am once again taking on the negative energy.

“When you start diving into personal development and psychology you will quickly learn most trauma starts from ages 2–7.”

Divorces are not easy. I’m sure it is such a mess the majority of the time. Especially when kids are involved. The divorce was just the beginning for me. It was the first relationship I witnessed in my life even though I was a child. I have never really been around a relationship that is legit. My mom never remarried but has been with a guy basically since she was divorced. I am pretty sure they hate each other. My dad did get remarried but I never was apart of that so I don’t know if they hate each other or not. They are still together so that says something I suppose.

The next relationship that had a big impact on my life was one my sister had. She dated a guy who became like a big brother to me. They started dating when I was around 9. I would always hang out with my sister and him. He came over all the time. We would play football or we would go over to my best friends house up the road and jump on the trampoline. He did way more than that too. Everyone loved him. They even got engaged. It was to the point when he and my sister broke up after 5 years everyone was pissed! To this day I have no idea what went down but we all basically blamed my sister. I personally was just salty because all those fun times were officially over and so was another relationship I witnessed beginning to end.

The next big traumatic experience for me was my one and only girl friend. I started dating a girl in the spring of my junior year of high school until the summer I graduated. For the most part it was great. There were lots of good memories. Unfortunately it ended pretty bad. Back then I was an insecure little bitch boy. I didn’t know it at the time but a lot of the issues were my fault. I was super controlling. I remember always thinking this girl was going to cheat on me. I used that popular excuse some guys use. “ It’s not that I don’t trust you, it’s other guys I don’t trust!” No Max that was you being a scared little pussy who was afraid of basically everything. I unconsciously was responsible for abusing her mentally. It is still a hard pill to swallow knowing what I know now about the mind. Good people can still do bad things. I know that had an effect on her life even to this day. So It was no wonder why things ended the way they did. I was a mess for a long time. Like I’m talking into my early 20’s! It was a big reason I picked up alcohol at 19 that first year out of high school. Most people chalk it up to being just a high school thing. Guess what? Trauma is trauma no matter what age it is at. It counts. The subconscious is always recording shit.

“I unconsciously was responsible for abusing her mentally. It is still a hard pill to swallow knowing what I know now about the mind.”

One of my good friends parents used to have a crazy story. By crazy I mean one of those ones where the couple meets and gets married after 6 months. It is like some 90 day fiancé shit. They were married for like 25 years. No one ever thought these two would split up. One day during my first year of college news got out that they were getting a divorce. My friends dad decided he wasn’t in love anymore and bounced. That is the pg version. Some wild ass shit actually went down but I am not going into detail on here. Fast forward a few more years from here and we enter the bar scene. Bartenders see some shit. It depends where you work and I worked in place in Akron, Ohio called the valley. It was basically 6 bars in a circle of each other and they were all mostly small club type of bars. I would witness these females I worked with on one night talk about how they love this guy they are dating with all their heart. Then a random Tuesday night comes along and the bitch is drunk making out with a fellow bartender and grabbing his dick. It was like watching a live reality show. You ever see in crime shows where they have the red yarn spread all over the board trying to put clues together? You could do the same thing with a bar staff on who is eskimo brothers and sisters and I guarantee the board would end up being pretty damn entertaining to look at.

It wasn’t until the age of 25 where I came close to getting into my second relationship ever. This girl started working at my bar. I never thought her and I would ever even hang out. She was D1 cheerleader, a blonde and a huge fuckin stoner. Don’t get me wrong. She’s pretty but she wasn’t on my radar initially. I generally like brunettes and I don’t smoke weed. She also had a reputation for being a dirty bird if you know what I mean. I was at a point in my life here where I told myself I was going with the flow. What ever happens happens. One night we hung out and one thing leg to another. I thought I was capable of doing what everyone does now days. Block out any feelings what so ever. Have sex with the hot girl and have no emotions at all. Easy. Nope. It wasn’t easy. Not for me. I caught feelings so damn hard. I couldn’t block them. Drunk one night stands make it easier to block everything, but that never worked for me either. This wasn’t that though. We were acting like a couple for a little bit. I gave her the benefit of the doubt. I heard what everyone would say behind her back and it didn’t match what I ever saw one on one. It didn’t feel very good when it ended and it ended pretty quick. Basically that reputation of hers came to bite me in the ass. She was fuckin around with another guy at the same time. How did that feel? It probably felt similar to when 50 cent got shot 9 times. I think I knew deep down it wasn’t going to workout but fuck I struggled getting over that. This is where I also decided to follow the golden rule. Don’t shit where you eat! She made the right choice though because I think she ended up marrying that guy. I ended up moving to Arizona. Both those things don’t happen if we went any farther. I am grateful now things went down the way they did even though I had to go through a little pain.

“I thought I was capable of doing what everyone does now days. Block out any feelings what so ever. Have sex with the hot girl and have no emotions at all. Easy. Nope. It wasn’t easy. Not for me.”

It wasn’t until a few years after moving to Arizona that I started really understanding energy and why I was incapable of being able to play this hook up culture game. Every single time I have tried to play in the past it made me feel like shit. It was always a loss for me. I felt nothing but emptiness. Here is why. I am an empath. I do not tell people that because most would not understand. Basically that means I am an energy person. Someones energy speaks to me when I meet them before they even say a word. I can tell if their energy is good or bad instantly. Most I encounter are bad. When I meet someone with good energy it sticks out. For the most part “bad” energy isn’t necessarily bad. It just means the person has a lot of blockages going on they haven’t healed. There is more to being an empath but for this topic just know I am actually very emotionally in tune. I feel everything. It is like a 6th sense. I have to be extremely careful who I would give my energy to in general but even more so romantically. That person has to be special or else I will be fucked for a while. When two people get together there is an energy exchange happening whether you are conscious of it or not. Most people are unaware of that and I don’t blame them because the social norm is to not feel anything at all. It is pretty simple to understand why there are so many emotionally unavailable single people out there right now.

So here I have been for most my life unconsciously focusing on all the negative failed relationships I have seen since I was that little boy sitting on those wood floors watching my parents fight. There are people I know in relationships now who kill it but unfortunately negativity spreads easier than positivity. The empath part of me I talked about in the last paragraph is actually a positive despite the potential pain it could cause me. All I needed to do was shift this negative mindset on relationships into a positive one. How do I do that? Well for starters I needed to understand that my future relationship can be however I want it to be. It doesn’t have to be like anyone elses. It can’t really. Everyone is different. I have also developed tools to help me listen, communicate, and get through any types of conflict. I have learned things that no one I mentioned above ever learned. The second mindset shift needed to be made was that I am better off alone. Don’t get me wrong, I love being alone. It is how I recharge when drained energetically. I do not need anyone however am I really better off alone though? Is this that little boy version of me talking? What if having a significant other actually makes me a better person and somehow is the catalyst for me reaching my highest potential? Now that is a positive question to ask myself. I may not need someone but why not want someone who adds value to your life to make it better and vice versa?

“Well for starters I needed to understand that my future relationship can be however I want it to be.”

This was just some of the things I reflected on over the last month or so. Being vulnerable is hard especially for men. I have been getting more and more comfortable with being vulnerable. I think I am at a point now where I am open and willing to see where things go if I met someone. It fuckin took me long enough right? If you take anything away from this blog it is this. If you have a belief that isn’t really serving you anymore that you want to change then you need to reflect back to how that belief was formed. The past is great for reflecting but do not get sucked into living there. The mind doesn’t care how long ago trauma was. Just by thinking in the past about something traumatic can put your present body in the same state physically you were during the time of that experience. You do have to be careful. Once you understand why something is happening then you can create solutions. Bad things may have happened to you but they shaped who you are. You can learn lessons from them and the present you will evolve into the best version of yourself.