Guarding your heart...

One thing that I have accepted as a universal truth is that nobody wants to be hurt. We may be one of those people that love the idea of someone being in love or we could be one of the folks that thinks the very idea of love or being in love with someone is a completely assinine or illogical concept. Here’s what I do know. There is almost NOTHING worse than that feeling when “love” goes horribly wrong. Maybe you have been lucky, maybe you have never known that feeling (and kudos to you) but the rest of us remember that time, that place, that person that caused us to question what we thought we knew, that incident that was so disappointing where you can’t even began to see how it is fair that you went through it. The pain that comes when things go wrong, holy shit it hurts. Dammit that shit hurts…
So what happens next?
How do we respond?
I think people do a number of things. I think when you have a bad relationship or maybe even just a bad experience there is a reaction. Some people chalk it up to “they weren’t meant for me,” they recover and then in the appropriate time (or in some cases way too early) they want to jump back in to the deep end and are ready to experience their ideal relationship (everyone doesn’t look forward to getting married and having kids people, there are other situations that people look forward to, i.e. moving in together, having a kid and not be married, having a partner, whatever).
The people that cause me concern are the ones (and I am DEFINITELY including myself in this category) are the people that have an adverse reaction to love gone wrong. What exactly are you supposed to do when you are with someone that puts you through some crazy shit and you move on (or try to) to someone else? People give these cliche ridden answers that they got on Oprah or some book they read but you know what? I think all that mess is some crap. You explain to someone that believes in, or loves, or even really cares about someone else why they should have to feel like crap because someone wanted to be an idiot or a selfish bastard. Truth be told I have been on BOTH sides of this equation so I think I am more than qualified to say that. So after all that you are left with questions that require hard answers…
1. Someone is married to someone else that doesn’t love them the same way and wants out…(yeah it might be easy to judge them in your head but do YOU have to go explain to your parents and loved ones that you chose badly and that you are going to leave this person, who gets custody, where you are going to live, so on and so forth and you see how something that seemed as simple as “I don’t want this anymore” Just became complicated as crap)?
2. Someone gets into the next relationship after the last one ends on a bad note. You have this new person you are with and they seem nice, but you just are still a little pissed at how things went last time and they are on DEFCON 5 alert for the first signs or hint that this new person could bring drama to the table…(yeah it is super easy to say get over your ex, or maybe you should wait until you are ready, or just don’t be so paranoid, and just like my last example that is great advice when it is not your situation we are talking about or if the new person has a lot of potential as someone you could be with or hell, maybe they just put the damn thing down in bed, but my whole point is that it isn’t as simple as a simple piece of advice)…
Anyway I could list scenarios all day but it seems to me that guarding your heart is a lot more complicated than anybody really gives it credit for. I have friends who I really care for that are dealing with a “guarded heart” in one way or the other and I find myself sad sometimes when we speak because more often than not I have been where they are (emotionally) and there is nothing simple about it. There isn’t a specific way to deal with the issues that come up. The only thing that lends me encouragement is that I know that it’s possible to work your way through almost anything because I have had to do it. I think the human heart is capable of working through a great number of emotions and feelings but at some point there has to be a choice of whether or not we want to let it. I think everyone makes a decision as to what they want to do…but I just think if we aren’t careful we can find out one day that maybe we didn’t have to suffer quite as much, hurts as long as we did, maybe there was potential to move on and experience all that we could have missed, but we spent so much time with our heart guarded that we never found out…