Clarity

The New Year brings moments of clarity.

As a holiday, I enjoy others. The first of January, however, often puts me in a contemplative mood. The dreaded Christmas season is over and there is a chance to start over. Those around me know this, and seek me out for advice on the first day of a new year more than ever. I think I am going to start charging.

Last New Year’s Day, a friend and I sat down over a drink, and he shared some issues he was experiencing in his relationship. Men have relationship issues, too. We just haven’t figured out how to make a cottage industry of it. Anyway, he was engaged to a nice woman who, immediately before the holidays, started suggesting plans that were one hundred and eighty degrees opposite of what they had been. Suddenly, she was curious about how well they knew each other. She basically wanted to scrap the relationship they had built and refashion it according to some template that was more acceptable, a la relationship books or input from other people in her life, many of whom reminded her that she had little success with long term relationships.

This confused the hell out of him. Like many men, he instantly thought some game was being run. You go from something that both parties agree is working well to someone demanding drastic changes that seem designed to push the other party away. He tried to end the relationship, and she raised hell.

“Just because someone doesn’t want you to leave, that does not mean they want to stay,” I reminded him. "Sounds like a long term relationship isn't her thing. She's cool and all, but doesn't sound like she possesses what it takes to really move beyond that period where you're just gung ho about someone. She does not have, it appears, those traits you need to work through something, in and out, up and down, over the long haul with the person she is supposed to love. She may not have the fundamentals to work love beyond infatuation and comfortability.

"People cannot give you what they do not have."

I understand this too well. While married, my ex wife had registered and was actively meeting men on the dating websites, eventually beginning a full blown relationship with one. I confronted her with a mountain of evidence (including profile stating she had no husband, kids, etc.). I then asked her, plainly, if she wanted to stay married. Her answer was an emphatic yes. She moved out less than a week later, and took up openly with her new guy. Even when I filed for divorce, I instructed my attorney to not have her served but to let her pick up the papers to avoid confusion. She neglected to do so, and when she received the papers, called me, angry, demanding how I could seek to dissolve our marriage.

The moral to this story? Sometimes what people say and what they really mean are in no way, shape or form related. Real talk.

After being hit with more and more changes that really redefined the character of their relationship, my friend ended their relationship. “She keeps saying maybe we don’t know each other well enough and these knew things will ensure we are ready. That made no sense to me, as we had really gotten to know each other well already and under the old way, the way we set up, we were learning more end enjoying what we were learning about each other,” he lamented. “Now she all of a sudden wants to redo what we’ve already done, and some of the changes make me feel like I’m being punished.”

Seven months later she was married to someone else.

Another friend was in a long distance relationship with a man she was going to marry. She and I met yesterday, and he shared how his person wanted to change their plans as well. Originally, his plan was to move to her area to be closer to her family and marry her. They were going to blend their families. Suddenly, he suggested putting everything off almost two years, saying that when he arrived, he really wanted to live on her own and “have a place I can retreat back to,” before they married. My friend was angry. In any other situation where a man approaches a woman with that same logic, he is rightfully fifty types of trifling and the wedding is in question, if not in jeopardy. He told her that if she loved him, she would see the benefit in doing it this way. She was confused. She had suggested something similar at the outset of their engagement, and he spent months shouting her down and convincing her otherwise. Now this?

“I love you,” he says. “This is going to make sure we work out well.”

“Something ain’t right. Don’t confuse “I love you” with “I don’t want you to leave…at this time,” I said.

She agreed.

Something about the New Year makes people really look at the bullshit surrounding their situations and say, “Damn.” I have more conversations with folk who, once the hullabaloo of the holidays is over, realize they want something else. What they forget is the same clarity that has befallen them has also befallen their person. It behooves people to have honest conversations with one another and at least part without their former person adding “deceptive” to the list of negative adjectives they use to describe their former flame.

Clarity extends to other areas of life as well. Another friend made it clear the changing of the annual calendar presented her with an epiphany regarding her job. Throughout the year, she had brushed off, or hadn’t noticed, how she was doing a job head and shoulders above everyone else. As is the case in such situations, the bosses came to expect that 150% from her while allowing others to skate by with the marginal input. Her requests for a raise were met with the usual hemming and hawing about the company’s numbers, which her overachieving directly impacted. She decided yesterday she was leaving. Not only do I wish her good luck, her former company has my deepest sympathies.

Yesterday, I listed several concessions that I believed I needed to accept in order to have a more fulfilling New Year. Some of you wrote me, concerned. What’s wrong? Nothing. As I grow a bit older, though, I refuse to be jaded, but I have learned the value of having my eyes as wide open in April as I do in January, is all.

How much further would you be, and at how much more peace would you have, if you stay as clearheaded for the next six months as you are today?

Think about it. Be decisive, but don’t be drastic. Be fair, but don’t be no fool.
Ya’ll know betta.