Polygamy

I have bad news for you. Your significant other is seeing someone else. Every day, they are seeing someone else behind your back. Well, not literally-- but they are often seeing someone else when they look at you. When you talk, they don't just hear you. Standing with you in every conversation, every argument... there are tons of other people.

There are TONS of people in your relationship:

There's you, them, the person you think you are, the person you think they are, the person they think they are, and the person they think you are. There's your parents, possibly your grandparents, their parents and grandparents. There's all of your exes, and everything they ever said to you, and all of their exes and all of their conversations and arguments. There are teachers and mentors and counselors, children and friends. There are co-worker's comments, books and movie scripts to compare you both to....I could go on and on.

It's not very easy to ignore the crowd standing in the room, but you have to. Otherwise, you spend your time responding to what your ex said that hurt your feelings or applying your insecurities to everything your partner says and does. It can get very confusing and makes it impossible to move forward.

I'd love to tell you that I have figured out a magic formula for getting past this~ but there isn't one. You just have to DO it. You have to stop before you react, you have to really think about what your partner says and figure out if you are hearing it un-filtered. Why does it bother me when you do that? Why did what you just said make me so hurt or angry? Is it YOU I am upset with? Is it YOU? Or is it that Verizon network behind you?