Two L Words.

Loving and Lying

I'm a bit on the bruised side emotionally. The past three days have been filled with changes in my views of people that I have not quite sorted out yet. These people that I speak of are those that I consider(ed) close to me. Over the past few years I have come to realize that when making a decision I have to consider my heart and my boundaries. Mixed emotions plague my mind this morning. A portion of my soul, my instinctual portion is telling me that again I'm being taught by something greater than myself. The main theme to this lesson is honesty. Dishonesty has constructed a superhighway through my life over the past few months, but to counter that I have become armored with new understandings of dishonesty and lying. I speak not only of the dishonesty of others and generic lying, but I also speak of dishonest matters of one's heart.

My childhood life had taught me that in order to be love I must act in accordance with the expectations of others in order to gain approval and approval equates to love. This theory is lethal to well being. In fact I do not need to be accepted or approved of to be loved. I do not need to meet the expectations of others in order to find love. I state this, however I know the difficulties of putting this into practice. A great portion of my life has been spent engaged in activities that one might find impressive, and socially acceptable, and hopefully those achievements would lead me to love that I so longed for. In fact this is not at all the case.

Love came to me because I was open to it, it has stood by me in the forms of friends, a husband and a new family. Those that love me do not require ridiculous actions of me, in order to love me. They do not require me to meet their expectations and they are not disappointed when things don't go as they have planned because those that truly love me understand wholeheartedly that I'm human and I'm flawed. Those that truly love me understand that relationships are fluid and do not require a point system to sustain them. Relationships are built on unconditional love not expectations and standards. It has taken me a long time to understand this.

Prior to the past few months I believed that fulfillment of expectations I had of others, and that they had of me was how love was demonstrated. Again, I could not have been more wrong. I have spent the past few years expecting love to manifest itself within these forms that I had created in my mind. I expected people to act or behave a certain way contingent upon the feelings that they were trying to express to me, or the relationship that we had. It has been a very sad time and thus far a difficult life at times due to the fact I was working against the natural laws of love.

As of late I have learned to release the expectations I have of others and of myself. In doing this I have found a happier person. I have put into practice the behavior of letting go. I let go of attempting to create a reality or to craft my fantasies into reality. I have realized that by living such a thought out constructed life I was cheating myself out of the spontaneity and natural occurrences that lay before me. I was denying myself the pleasures of actually living life. I have started viewing family and friends as their own entities, allowing for their feelings and emotions to be considered. I have ceased the demanding of attention, occurrences, meetings, events, in order to prove love. I have started relying on spontaneous gestures. I have stopped holding people accountable to some unrealistic time line or behavior pattern that I have deemed "the way it should be."

You see, in fact, people are just fine the way they are. There is no "way" that anyone "should be" or "should act". If you are too truly love a person you allow them to receive and give love just as they would and not to your standards or requirements. Demanding the action of another in order to prove love is not only not healthy, it is extremely sick.

I have made the difficult choice of not allowing people into the depths of my life if they are to make such requirements. I have been practicing this for the past four years unknowingly.

A few years back a person I considered a "best friend" almost as if she were a sister to me begin to pour judgement into our relationship. She began to disagree to disagree. She wanted more of me than I had to give her and she not only demanded what she wanted but she required that I change who I'm in order to sustain the relationship. That did not work and surprisingly it was easy for me to let this relationship go. I do believe this event was one of the first chances I had to practice my new understanding of love.

The cessation of the relationship was not the success point. The success came when I found myself able to love and forgive her despite the fact that the relationship had been severed and their was no longer any contact. My health was restored the moment I was able to understand that I loved her for who she is and that I could allow her to find her place in the universe sincerely wishing her no harm and hoping the best for her. Forgiveness was the moment I became enriched and I begin to feel alive again. Situations similar to this have been occurring in my life and gradually it has been easier to recognize and understand dysfunction. Once the dysfunction has been recognized it has been easier to decrease the intensity of the relationship or if necessary dissolve the relationship completely.

You see the balance of all of this is assisted by the boundaries. Boundaries can only come from knowing oneself. One can only come to know oneself by being with and only with oneself for a great deal of time. I must admit there were times over the past 7 years where I had to distance myself from Erik in order to re construct myself and to learn about me. Being in a relationship and attempting to come to know oneself is quite difficult unless the person you are in are relationship with is nearly a saint! Thank you Erik. Of course it can also be done in therapy in order to salvage the relationship, or a combination of distance and therapy. Either way knowing oneself so that one can create honest healthy boundaries is vital to sustaining healthy relationships.

There is a great balance of love. The balance has two components that are constantly in need of evaluation. The two components are what I have discussed in the beginning, they are: acceptance and rejection.

Loving is acceptance in that it asks of us to accept others for who they are without standards or requirements. It asks of us to acknowledge differences, allow for individuality, and to exercise patience and tolerance. Love through acceptance asks of us to forgive, learn and grow together. Acceptance requires us to take COMPLETE responsibility for ourselves and to be accountable for all of our actions.

On the contrary love does not ask us to accept to the point where our boundaries are being violated. The moment our boundaries are violated, we have rejected love. Understand that only we can allow the violation of our boundaries, we have total control over who is or is not in our lives and the extent of our relationships with them. We are not helpless creatures. When our boundaries and ourselves no longer allow us to be patient, to tolerate, to understand we must reject those that are in violation of our boundaries. If we choose to accept rather than reject those that violate our boundaries then we have also chosen to allow ourselves to be disrespected thus we have stopped loving ourselves. Once we resort to rejection of oneself by allowing violation, we have lost love completely.

The destruction of love can also resort from dishonesty. When a person is not able to be honest with themselves about what they actually want or need, how can they convey that want or need to another person? A person who does not know what they want or need simply cannot convey to another person their wants or needs, thus leaving no boundaries. No boundaries will eventually result in lack of acceptance, violations, and rejection. Dishonesty is the soil which blossoms relationships without boundaries.

Another dead end for relationships is created when a person is honest with themselves but dishonest with their partner. Dishonesty does not allow for communication. When one partner is left in a pool of lies, or a place void of communication then they cannot set appropriate boundaries. Without communication boundaries can only be created on assumption, which is a disaster in and of itself. Without honesty only false boundaries can be created, which truly begin to build a destructive foundation.

Most people go through life with one of these discussed problems navigating their ships at some point. In understanding the discussed components of love we can know for certain that these ships are destined for very stormy seas or even a deadly ship wreck.


My life currently has been a reordering process. The world around me including the relationships that I'm a part of have been changing. Lately if feels as if the building blocks are being arranged to reveal the way things should currently be.
I have come to find out over the past few days that my life was partially being navigated by problems, and not by my heart. It has become truly necessary that I redirect my course and set sail for calmer waters. In just the past twenty four hours the reconstruction and re mapping of my life has changed my feelings in regards to several situations that I previously feared. I'm no longer afraid of where I should be or where I'm going.

From this point forward I pray for discernment. I pray for the ability to distinguish between toxic problem directed persons and those that are guided by honest true motives of the heart. I hope that from today on I will be able to form my family in peace, to continue to grow with healthy individuals that surround me. I'm CHOOSING to live a life where those that are around me respect who I'm. Those who will be worthy of my quality time will be those who do not judge me or require specific actions of me to demonstrate love. I'm looking forward to spending my days with honest people who love me for my smile, my silence, and my being, not for my accomplishments. I'm looking forward to being around those that appreciate the small simple things in life such as the ocean waves, the sunsets, food, arts, and spontaneity.

I refuse to be around yelling, arguing, fighting, self promotion, and lies. I want to be as far away as possible from the ego, from those with the victim mentality. I wish to ONLY be around those that accept my decisions even if the decisions are as simple as what type of coffee I drink, where I sit in a movie theater, or what time I arrive to an event. I will not tolerate those that judge me for operating within my boundaries. If someone decides to harbor anger or resentment towards me because I had to break plans and i DO SO HONESTLY and for HONEST REASONS, or because I opted for something different than what they wanted or they expected then it will be necessary for me to reject that person and their feelings. Their feelings of hurt and sadness may in fact be true and valid but if my actions are what they are blaming for their feelings then they in fact have no boundaries and no respect. I also must say that I out and out refuse to be around those that lie, even by omission (please see blog titled: "LYING")

In this lifetime I want to hear stories and share stories of life happenings, enrichment's, philosophies and new adventures. I want my life filled with a true love, a love accepting of me for exactly who I'm. I want those around me that respect my boundaries and have patience, whom speak when it is necessary but whom speak of love not in attempt to prove something.

You may say, "but Julieann, you aren't you contradicting your self? You are saying to accept and love and yet at the same time to reject."

That is true I'm saying to accept and to reject, these two components of love are not mutually exclusive. These two components need to be constantly re evaluated in order to reach the balancing point.

I'm choosing to accept those into my life whom respect and accept me. I'm choosing to reject those that do not accept me. It does not mean that I love the rejected any less, it simply means that they do not promote growth and thus contribute to my death. I want to live.