Dating, my 14 months as a trainee Court Martial Arts instructor, involved a lot of learning and failure along the way, as I tried to make myself ready to fight for the national Martial Arts competition. In the end, there was only one lift I could see myself flying in a competition, and that was the snatch. In my mind, that was the ideal place to start. I started out strong, learning how to clean and dress martial arts uniforms, and was learning pretty good safe (eshould also be the case) and had the physique for competition.
One weekend, I was sparring with another trainee and he was trying to show off his throwing technique. Naturally, since it was the end of the day and I was in his company, he was going to show off what he learned that day. Being someone who had always been an athlete, I was all too eager to learn from him and asked for a few pointers.
“Well aren’t you the trained soldier in this unit?” I obnoxiously shot back.
Now, what was amazing was that not a single athletic female had served in Special Forces. Not one! So what that said about the Ladies of the spat HEAD was a bit of a stretch for me, yes, but I politely listened to his complaints about the training, gave a small chuckle and quietly moved on, knowing full well how ridiculous he sounded.
Now, I was still learning and addictions were a big part of my life, so I wasn’t yet ready to compromise my ideals, but I knew that I would never hear from him again, so long as I was involved in the armed forces. But that doesn’t mean that I was going to turn all of my frustrations and attentions onto the Ladies…
Sadly, we women were not even aware that we were a subject of martial instruction, let alone that our male counterparts treated us like that. I found that to be pretty normal. It wasn’t until I was out of the military and into a new relationship that I began to see just how widespread dating failures were.
After a few years of dating someone just to “have a date”, I had decided that enough was enough, and now it was time to branch out and experience some personal growth. So instead of going through the traditional mechanism of having a one-on-one relationship, which was so frustrating and full of expectations (racial, age, relationship status, communication patterns, spiritual awareness, goals, and other stuff that makes a partner intriguing to someone like me), I decided that despite my miserable dating past, I would make myself go out and meet someone by choice.
Now, if you’ll excuse theLanguage of the World’s technical sophistication, and the “ab ental” techniques used to communicate with the opposite sex, I made the choice to go out and have a pure momentary, no strings attached, online romance. Now, in an online romance, the language and the whole experience is totally platonic – and of course, theNINGS ARE REAL! It is not uncommon at all for people to claim that I have been their partner for many years, and many people have a much easier time getting to the “riches” which online love involves, often without even having to leave their own homes.
Now, it’s a simple fact that when you’ve waited a long time to find someone with the qualities that you want, and you finally find someone who happens to be the exact person that you’ve been looking for, it can be difficult to get over that previous relationship.
But I think that the most important factor here is this: To be able to function well, almost exclusively, without all the outside or “interesting” influences, requires that we be able to keep our own vision. And Public Display of Affection maybe dead on arrival. If a relationship fails, for whatever reason, it’s important that despair drive us out of that relationship. It’s not sympathy or tears, although they are a nice addition, but we all know that these do not fill the core of true happiness.
And if you are the one that did something wrong? When we hesitate because we want to win back or convince our partner that it was all a setup, when we find ourselves at home watching reruns or reading a book, while a ball game streak into the wee hours and football techniques distract us, we have killed the relationship.
Be honest and be brave, if your partner, upon seeing the changes in you, has gotten alarmed, there with honesty, gone into a room, or retire to his or her room (at his or her own risk of course!) leave your ex at home and take this opportunity to find out if ever you the two of you could ever get together again. Do so with dignity. Ladies, if your man is cheating on you, the shame could last a lifetime.
