But It's Not FAIR!
Jan. 27th, 2016 12:45 amIt's amazing how much more fair the world becomes when you stop feeling entitled to things that were never yours to begin with and when you see your partners are real human beings with their own agency instead of need fulfillment machines.
"But we're *married! It's not fair that she can just come along and start taking up his time! He should be cutting time for her out of everything BUT his time with me!"
"But I was here first, so it's not fair for him to expect to get an equal amount of love that I get!"
"But we made an *agreement* that they would never go to that restaurant together! That's OUR place! It's not fair to go without me!"
My partner's time is not my time. It belongs to them and they choose to share it with me or not as they wish.
My partner's emotions are not my emotions. They belong to them and they choose to share their emotions with me or not as they wish. They choose to allow their emotions to be influenced by me or not as they wish.
That restaurant belongs to neither myself nor my partner and is open equally to our business. While it may be associated with certain memories and emotions for me, it is not, actually, the source of my specialness. My specialness belongs to me. My partner's specialness belongs to them. Our relationship's specialness exists only because we exist in the relationship together. No one can take my specialness away from me because it IS me. My partner's specialness does not belong to me because it is a representation of my partner. My partner can choose to share whatever of themselves makes them special with whomever they wish, and I am fortunate, not entitled, to be one of the people they choose to share themselves with.
My relationships are a gift that I get to open every single day. They are more than fair because they are not anything that is owed to me.
Releasing the sense of entitlement to my partners' bodies, time, emotions, and mind makes my relationships much more fair and tends to give everyone a larger slice of the pie. Because agency is not a finite, tangible resource, so loosening the grip can actually make more of it to go around.
Sometimes, we have to let go of our hold on things in order to better secure our connection to them. There's that saying about letting something go and if it comes back, it's meant to be, but if it doesn't, it wasn't meant to be. I appreciate the sentiment, but it's not *entirely* accurate, because it depends on how you define "let it go". You can't replace codependency or attachment with apathy. If you don't nourish your relationships, they won't flourish. The idea isn't to reign in your feelings for someone and stop caring for them. In fact, letting go of entitlement is an act of caring *more*. It's an act of courage. You have to care so much for them, that you're willing to let them be a fully developed human being without your control to make them act as you desire them to act.
What you're letting go is your fear, your desire for power, your belief in control, your disbelief in their humanity. Those are what you let go of, and those are things you don't want to come back. When you let *those* things go, people are more likely to want to stick around. When you let those things go, everything suddenly gets more "fair".