... people can only be who they are. Expecting them to be who we want them to be, or to operate beyond their level of understanding and development, is an exercise in frustration for us and is unfair to them. We’d best accept folks as they are, or let them grow on without us.
-- Susan Taylor

We expect a lot from our partners. We expect them to think like us, to think rationally and sensitively. We expect them to put themselves in our shoes and instinctively know how we’re feeling. We expect them to always be tuned in and available to us whenever we need them.

However, half the time we’re never really sure what we ourselves are thinking, our own perceptions of what is sound and logical are often flawed, we haven’t even attempted to walk in anybody else’s shoes, and most of the time, we aren’t even available to ourselves. But, we expect our honey-loves to be everything we need them to be at all times. Some of us even spend our lives trying to change them into the storybook King or Queen we just know they are dying to be.

In the throes of an everyday relationship, it’s easy to forget that the other person is not your invention that can simply be erased or torn down and put back together in a more suitable form. The person you love is not clay, at least not your clay, to resculpt into another being that is more manageable, amenable, and acceptable. No, this person that you’ve invited into your life to love you already has definite and well-established ideas about how to live and love. That’s not to say that people can’t or don’t change with a little help. But that’s just a nudge, not a twist of the arm or the deployment of manipulative and clever tactics.

At the prelude of every day we love and live with our honeys, we must remember that we and they come from different places of experience, perspective, and awareness. On any given day and time, honey just doesn’t look like you want him or her to look, or honey is not acting the way you think honey should. In that case, your only responsibility is to love them through the differences, talking with them, listening to them, and sharing honestly with one another so that the two of you can find middle ground that makes you sweeter together.

That’s hard work. But it’s much less energy that battling at a game of tug-of-war that can only end in hurt feelings and resentment. Imagine the rewards of letting your honey just Be.

Sadiqqa © 2007