Building the Bridge of Trust

If you're in a relationship and you feel like you're with the right person, turns out it's supposed to be an equal amount of giving and compromise from both of you. And turns out it's not supposed to be just on the little things like sharing your dessert or letting him sleep on the side of the bed that you like.

What I learned this week is that sometimes it means compromising outside of your comfort zone. Peter (I'm not calling him Mr.Parker anymore because I'm tired of it) exemplifies this very well, and in a hard conversation this week said, "I'm excited to change for this relationship." That shifted my perspective a lot. In a relationship, we should be able to trust that the person we are with has good intentions in their corrections of us. Yes, we should sometimes challenge their comments, but we should also be more open to change if we find that they are worth that change. And I very much think this relationship is worth that at the least. I'm looking to build something great, and I know that starts with a strong foundation of communication, and trust, and compromise, and sushi dates.

This theme had me thinking a lot about why I was so quick to assume that Peter had untrustworthy intentions. Why did I think that someone I know so well, once he became my boyfriend, would become someone who would hurt me or change on me? What has caused me to see love and pain as synonymous?

That night I laid in bed and to end the day, turned on one of my favorite Romantic Comedies that I hadn't watched in a while, "Love & Other Drugs." The basis of the movie is not quite as nauseating as most overly unrealistic Romance films, as the main characters are both flawed and real and raw. Which I like. It is humorous to see how both of them evolve over the course of the film as heartless emotionless fuck buddies to dramatic professors of love (in the rain, of course.) But it still contains the underlying theme that is seen in most Rom Coms: where the good girl who's just quirky and happens to be single meets a bad boy, or a complicated boy, or just a kind of shitty boy, and they fall in love.

Sad to say, I am always a sucker for those love stories where the great girl turns a shitty guy into a great guy. They have some frustrated conversations but in the end, that's all it takes to turn him into this great guy. And it all magically works out (???)

But what happens when we meet a great guy, and we're just constantly scared that he's not who he says he is? Why has society taught us that there's only shitty guys out there and the only way to be happy is to turn him into a great guy? What do we do when we actually meet a good guy before he's been fucked up by a girl or other factors? (lol)

And why have we only been taught that there are just great single women out there... girls are shitty too, Sex and the City!

Has society taught us that pain and complication is in fact synonymous with love and relationships?
Maybe sometimes the bridge of trust and vulnerability that leads to the strong beautiful relationship seems scarier than it actually is because society has caused us to only believe that the giant chasm under it is unavoidable. When in actuality, that may not be the case. Maybe you just need the right person to hold your hand, and the courage to put one foot in front of the other to cross.

I haven't quite figured this all out, but in the sense of application, I have decided to take a small leap of faith and trust that I know who Peter is, and to trust that he is who he says he is. Bridge of Trust, here I come.