These 20 somethings

“Reciprocity.”

“Ain’t shit Ass niggas.”

“Do your work.”

“Meet me.”

“Know your worth.”

“My standards aren’t too high your efforts are too low.”

& other lines from the drama series called ‘relationships in our 20s.'

In such a pivotal time in life of establishing careers, narratives, & identities, relationships add just the exciting plot twist to navigating adulthood. This goes for any relationship but I’m specifically referring to those of intimate & romantic connection. The pursuit of loving another human being teaches us way more than the fairytales & RomComs. I’ve often argued: “the act of loving someone else is perhaps the most teaching season of anyone’s life.”

We don’t always give the deserved attention to learning how we love & why we love that way. The only examples of love we have are from the homes that kept & cared for us. Naturally, including whatever fashion that care was performed, using that as our blueprint to express it across the board. That meant whatever you learned, you expressed as love.

Whatever you learned.

Awesome segue to the inspiration for me getting you in your packed & unpacked ‘these are strictly to be expressed in counseling/therapy’ feelings.

Shall we dive right in?

Whew. Where do I start?

-I’m drawn to Men who offer sparing emotional availability/time/attention because that’s the level I’m accustomed to being emotionally met by a man who says he loves me.

-I’ve been consumed with ‘being ok’ so that when things were going catastrophically left, I wasn’t on anyone’s to-do list to fix or check on. As a result, when I’m feeling low, I feel isolated and not reciprocated without soliciting care.

Heavy.

How does that play out in relationships?

Whew Chile the levels.

It can show itself in an exhaustive love that doesn’t check in with self while persistently searching to address others need. It can show itself in stomaching frustration without advocating for feelings for the sake of ‘peace’ or lack of time to give it proper attention. Believe it or not it can (and sometimes simultaneously) even show itself as a covering unconditional love, met with reciprocity from someone who learned and or yearned to love in the same unconditional covering way. Its certainly not always fun, but it ain’t all bad all the time. What it is above everything is a teacher. Love is a teacher. And needles to say we’ve not loved every teacher we ever had. You remember those moments where it felt like a teacher was expecting you to know something well, that you feel like is almost completely foreign in concept & impossible to digest? Adapt that to your own love story when you & your significant other start hitting the crossroads of “well I just wasn’t raised like that” in intense discord from something as simple as exchanging affection. Love was teaching then, too.

Now, I want to be clear that this blog post is not another over saturated “how the woman finds love in her 20 somethings.” At the peak of women making history & the kick off of women’s history month, women are owed so much more than another quick fix check list to score a mans love. We off that.

What I challenge this to be for you is a check in to how you’re navigating love in these 20 somethings. Are you looking at the ‘why’ behind your actions? Are you dealing with the childhood residue in your perspective; good, bad, or indifferent? Are you showing up & considering your whole self as you journey through love? You may be! You may be learning to. At any rate the lessons are impressing you, & that’s life changing. It takes courage to be young & dumb & head over hills in love. Just like it takes discernment to know when love is no longer being served to you and courage to walk away. We are humans who feel & long to nurture & be loved. This is not a disease to be cured or a weakness to be strengthened. It simply is. So in the throes of the lessons relationships in these 20 somethings teach us, it’s imperative we learn our honest narrative, who we really truly are and what that means: about how we love, what we want, why we need it, & what it feels like when it’s just not ‘it’.

I want women to be liberated from the poor hand love often deals and take control of what meat they walk away with while spitting the bones they don’t need. We are not broken by our air quote ‘failed love’ attempts. We are wiser. We invite the lessons into the wholeness of our new perspective, we make peace with the pain, & we move on. Courageously, believing love that came can indeed return to us, even better than it was the last time. After all, love has new things to teach now.