I'm going to provide an analogy that I'm sure we've all experienced at some point in our lives by now. You break something: a mirror, a mug, a toy, etc. You have one of two options now that you've broken that thing: 1. You throw the broken object away, or 2. You keep and try to repair the broken object. Well, it makes perfect sense to throw it away now, doesn't it? I mean, it's broken after all, what good is it? But let's say it's your favorite coffee mug or tea cup or something (it can be whatever you want for the sake of getting the point across, as long as it's your favorite). You don't really want to throw it away now, and honestly, you can fix it if you find something to put the pieces back together with, right? So now, let's say you do try to fix it. You find all of the missing pieces, you manage to figure out how they all fit together, etc. Immediately after you're finished repairing it with your incredible handyman skills, you'll notice two new things: 1. If you mess with it, touch it, poke it, etc., the object will (more than likely) fall apart again because you haven't given the glue enough time to dry yet or you haven't repaired it very well in the first place and if you keep poking it like that, it's going to cave in on itself, and 2. It will never be exactly the same as it was before it was broken.
A person's trust is the same way. If you betray someone, that person will never regard you the same as they did again. So now, combine my analogy with real life:
A person you want to be really close to decides to give you his or her trust. It's like giving you a gift, a brand new, shiny, glossy ceramic mug. When you betray him or her, it's like pushing that mug off a counter and allowing it to crash to the floor and break into a bunch of tiny pieces. Now, even if you try to fix it, picking up every last tiny piece and meticulously puzzling them together to form the original mug, it will never be the same.
People are made of porcelain. You can't expect them to forgive and forget so easily. If you've hurt certain people, but you still want them in your life, you have got to make an effort to keep them. Yes, turning to that person and saying, "Man, I really messed up, didn't I?" is helpful and it's the first step on the road to recovering a relationship from a betrayal punch, but, contrary to the popular beliefs of everyone who seems to be around me lately, you can't stop here. Once you show the initiative that you want to keep this person in your life and work to fix the relationship, you have to prove that you're worth it. You have to make sacrifices and prove that you really do want to be in these people's lives. And you definitely can't expect them to trust you right away again. If it worked like that, we might as well have a world akin to that of fairytales, where everything is sunshine and rainbows and, when bad things do happen, there's some random handsome nameless prince ready to ride in on a white horse and save the day.
And, while I'm on this rant, I might as well tell you the science behind why the phrase "forgive and forget" never actually happens, even though we tell each other all the time to do so. We're conditioned when we're young to learn from our mistakes. When you're two years old and you touch a hot stove top and you burn your hand, you learn pretty quickly not to touch it again. It's the same way with relationships. If you're with someone or have a friend betray your trust and hurt you, you're going to learn pretty quickly that you can't trust that person anymore. It's evolution, and it's based solely on a need to survive. Injury is weakness. Weakness leads, in the end, to being weeded out of the population. Emotional hurt is a weakness, and we have to rid ourselves of anything that can cause it in order to be successful and survive.
The reason I'm writing all of this is because I've had several cases happen in my own life. It's happening all around all the time, and I get so annoyed by the fact that people expect the people they hurt to be healed in no time. They expect them to just make up and move on with their lives. But betrayal isn't something that can easily be forgiven and pain isn't something that can easily be forgotten. It takes time to heal a broken heart. We hear it about it in songs and read about it in books, but we often forget how true to life it really is.
So, when someone is betrayed or hurt by someone close to them, please give them the proper time to heal and understand that things will never be exactly the same again. If you don't, it will be like pouring salt into that person's wounds, and then, the healing process will only take longer.
Stay tuned for Part 2. I want to provide some examples of things that have happened recently that I think would help to better get my point across. If you have your own experience that you'd like me to share on this blog, feel free to email me at mesapanaro@yahoo.com. I won't use any specific names in anything, just basic situations.
Questions? Comments? Concerns? Rants? Feelings? Anything to say at all? Go ahead and comment!
Pictures courtesy of Google Image Search
No comments:
Post a Comment