Towards the beginning is a chapter of the stumbling blocks. There are certain mindsets that get in the way of our ability to form deeper connections. So this is the chapter on what not to do, I suppose.
Some of them are really obvious like egotism or the noise of anxiety in our heads. Others I hadn't truly considered but several really resonate with me.
One of them is Naive Realism. This describes the innocent way I used to look at the world believing others saw the same reality I did. This is what initially made it so hard to understand how my ex-husband could be as cruel as he was.
It was also what made me excuse so many of his behaviors over the years as I kept trying to see him through my lens. I would never do some of the things he did so struggled to believe someone else would do those things. The version I hung onto of him for so long was the version that smoothed away all those behaviors of his I couldn't explain or understand. I probably never truly saw him because I didn't want to. I was afraid that unless I smoothed the edges, I wouldn't like him. And I was right in that fear. As he was, without any willingness to put in the work on himself, I wouldn't have liked him or stayed with him, if I truly saw him.
And then when it all ended, I still struggled to reconcile that version I had created of him with the man who could so carelessly toss me aside and who didn't even care what happened to me.
The other way not to see a person that has really stood out to me and been a topic of discussion this week is the Static Mindset. This is when we hold onto an image we formed in our minds of a person from the past despite their evolution. That initial image we formed may even have been accurate at one point but it no longer matches the person in front of us. You can't have a deep relationship in the present if you are holding onto who they were in the past.
I remember how frustrated I felt in the arguments we had that last summer that he didn't even seem to know who I was. He was reacting to who he perceived me to have been almost two decades earlier. He couldn't see me as I was in that present moment. That was one of the most painful parts of the breakup. I have never felt so unseen. He was rejecting a person that didn't even exist anymore.
As I type that it is sitting so heavy with me. Sometimes as I write these blogs, I don't know what is going to come out and what is going to hit me hard. I process by writing.
I have felt unseen so many times in my life going back to my earliest childhood memories. But my ex-husband's perception of me as he discarded me was the worst by far. I don't know if I fully realized that until now.
My question to the walking group this weekend was "Can you be your authentic self and still fit in?" It's relevant to this blog post because my focus has shifted to finding places where I can be authentic and be seen and to let go of the places where I don't fit in. My emotions as I process those feelings of being unseen are from the past, not the present.
I feel some grief that I let my own naivety get in the way of fully seeing him and making better choices. And I feel some grief at spending more than two decades of my life with a man whose ego kept him stuck on a prior, likely imagined, version of me that never allowed him to really see me. But I also feel so much joy at the connections I have been making since the separation where I am finally starting to feel seen.
Even my relationship with my parents has evolved in a way where I feel far more seen than I ever have.
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