Mantus

I think I wrote this in 1997. I believe it was posted on TFP 2.0 (not sure). Yet claustin8605’s post made me think that perhaps I should re-post it. So here is some vintage Mantus thinking.

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Taking your loved one for granted.

I went though hell just to understand such a basic concept. The worst 6 months of my life. I wish to pass on my lesson so others wont have to go through what I went though.

We expects a lot from your significant other. The two of you have been together for a while and had disagreements every now and then. Those disagreements sometimes turned into fights. Yet in the end you stayed together. After a while you got used to being able to get angry with your partner without experiencing any major consequence. You forgot that they have limits. The resilience and bond of the relationship is taken for granted. We get comfortable with arguing, insulting, and not working things out because so far as we can tell, such things have don’t have any consequences, the next day they are still there. It becomes a habit.

Sooner or later everything spills over the brim. The degradation is slow and it never ends because of any specific argument. It ends when one of you looks back and realizes that over the past several months or even years there has been nothing but pain in the relationship. Then it’s over. What’s even more unfortunate is that most people walk away from such a disaster without realizing what happened. And if they ever get back together, because the lesson has never been learned, it all starts over again.

Think about your friends. Notice how we don’t argue with them constantly? If we did we would not be friend for long. We consider our friend’s feelings; we respect them and care about how we are viewed in their eyes. Yet we see so many couples doing the exact opposite to each other.

This same situation applies to family members as well. We think we can abuse them all we want because after all, they are family. Yet ten years down the line you will never hear from them accept at weddings and funerals.

This is was my lesson and because I care for the girl I knew what had to be done. I sat down with her and told her all of the above. I told her that we have lost respect for one another. I told her that we take each other’s feelings for granted.

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Thankfully she understood. Peace ensued. The relationship ended two years later but we are still friends. I see so many people make this mistake over and over again. The very same girl had the such problems with her mother. Sometimes I snap at my parents. It’s common, because it’s so easy and the consequences aren’t obvious until it’s too late. I hope this strikes chord for some.

Mods, I know this post can also go into the Living forum, please move it if you feel it belongs there.

Cheers.

Meier_Link

That is very true. I don't fight or argue with anyone on a regular basis except my girlfriend. Other things that I would probably let slide if done by someone else I jump on my girlfriend about. I think it's reciprical, probably a reaction to the fact that I was jumped on about something insignificant. It turns into a passive aggressive war. Sometimes, if she doesn't call me when she says she was going to, or show up when she's supposed to, I leave the house and turn off my phone. Yet the next day everything's supposed to be just fine. Things just seem to build up over time until there's a constant bitterness. I notice the same thing in other peoples relationships.

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life is a sexually transmitted disease

st33lr4t

good post.

i just finished those exact 6 months your talking about. slowly but surely lines get crossed and it becomes a daily bitternss battle. we used to fight one day and the next day it would roll off my back and i would be fine. she on the other hand couldnt 'forget' as quickly as i did...she would let it linger for days. eventually she had enough and we ended. we were friends for probably 4yrs before we hooked up...its been like 2 months since we split and about a month since we've spoken. last time we spoke the first words that came out of her mouth were "bitch bitch bitch".

so please dont take your SO for granted.

Cynthetiq

nice. thanks for the reminder...

and don't forget to say,"I love you."

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Acetylene

I liked that. I'm glad you were paying attention. I'm even more glad you got out of it because

When you take someone for granted it's also because you can't imagine things being any other way. And when you allow someone to take you for granted it's because you can't imagine ever saying goodbye. And sometimes we stay trapped in a private hell for years until the rancor carries one of us to an early grave. I used to wake up paralyzed with fear, from nightmares of feeling that dull, numbing pain for years until I prayed for death... until one day I realized there was really no reason I couldn't tell him to bugger off and ask out the hot guy from gym class!

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There's no justice. There's just us.

fenge

Wow. Great post. I thought that this sorta thing was kind of unique.

I just went through the same six months. She was totally infatuated with me for the first year of our relationship... and I just started taking it for granted, and now she's gone.

Sucks, but I'm just glad she finally ended it and woke me up to the fact that we just didn't enjoy being together anymore.

Oh well. Thanks for the thread, makes me feel a little less alone!

fallenangel

You've succeeding in writing the cliffnotes version of a feeling i've been trying to pinpoint through hours of agonizing thought. Thanks. Again, i appreciate these, they're just the 'bitter' warm fuzzy feelings.

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all I wanna do is - give the best of me to you

blizzak

wow...amazing how well you basically said "this is how the world is"
sadly this is true
hopefully your post will influence some people in the ways that they act; I know it will for me

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little_tippler

How true, this is exactly what's been happening to me and my bf, we're trying to work it out at the moment. But the bigger question is, what can you do to reverse the process?

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Whether we write or speak or do but look
We are ever unapparent. What we are
Cannot be transfused into word or book.
Our soul from us is infinitely far.
However much we give our thoughts the will
To be our soul and gesture it abroad,
Our hearts are incommunicable still.
In what we show ourselves we are ignored.
The abyss from soul to soul cannot be bridged
By any skill of thought or trick of seeming.
Unto our very selves we are abridged
When we would utter to our thought our being.
We are our dreams of ourselves, souls by gleams,
And each to each other dreams of others' dreams.

Fernando Pessoa, 1918

saut

I'm sort of going through the same thing with my girlfriend. We don't *fight* exactly, but there are lots of cold silences. This only happens, however, when we talk on the phone late at night. When we're actually together everything is peachey. Beats the hell out of me.

WarriorBuddha

Wow. Really a thought provoking thread. I've been having some of the problems mentioned, but not to the extent explained in your story. Seeing this I guess I better start working on things before they get too bad. Thanks for the post man. You might have just saved me.

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analog

Been there, had that problem, and neither of us had relationship experience enough to realise what it was at the time... totally my fault, in the end, for various reasons... but yeah, it hurts. Been a year and a half since the break-up. She had to move on to maintain... I still hurt, I am still in the same place. I have not moved on to anything.

doncalypso

I guess I can say at times I have taken my girlfriend for granted... However since we sometimes give each other space to breathe and have time to ourselves the times we spend apart help us appreciate each other more.

This summer I've been gone for a whole month (I went back home in Haiti while she stayed here in the US and went home too) so right now we miss each other greatly and can't wait to be back in each other's arms. On top of that I've also bought lots of books on relationships (Men Are From Mars & Women Are From Venus, Mars & Venus in the Bedroom, etc) in order to educate myself as to how take better care of my girlfriend and be a better boyfriend.

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Doncalypso... the one and only Haitian Sensation