Faith Restored

Every once in awhile, someone comes along to restore your faith in humanity, or at least in the opposite sex. 

I'm fortunate enough that I have the friendship of many such people. Several of them read my blog, just happen to be female and all of them have had a profound effect on my life. 

Among people I call friends are ladies with whom I have decades of history. Some are ex girlfriends, some are old classmates and some just people that impacted my life along the way. 

Many of them have shared with me their own tales of relationship challenges and I've learned a great deal from them. We all have one thing in common, if nothing else: we're all human and as such, we're not above making a mistake despite seeing the warning signs. 

They say you should live life without regrets but I don't think that's realistic. I've stayed too long in a bad relationship or two, I've let a good one go (just recently) and somehow, I've managed to take the lessons I've learned to try to better myself. 

Everyone needs good friends, especially during rough times. Sometimes, a friend just needs to vent and sometimes, they genuinely want your advice. Universally, they don't want judgments and speaking for myself, I certainly don't want to them to tell me what they think I want to hear. 

I've had the opportunity to view the damage done by friends telling you what you want to hear. Supporting one blindly only feeds the narcissistic tendencies in some so for me, I'd much rather hear things like 'what did you learn from this?'

Self reflection is a good thing, but only if its honest and deeply introspective. Fake friends are no friends at all and taking relationship advice from anyone not introspective enough to openly share where they went wrong is probably not advisable. 

Fortunately, I don't have people in my life like that. 

I can appreciate the notion of a friend being supportive, but there has to be a balance. Each person must take responsibility for their own actions and carefully examine what they did, right or wrong, to influence the outcome of their relationship. 

They say that every romantic relationship fails except the last one you're in. But is it really a failure if you take the lessons learned to heart?  

And I've learned something from every relationship.  More importantly, I learn from my friends. 

While we all make mistakes, it's what we learn from them that fosters true personal growth. 

One lesson I've learned the hard way is that you can't change a person that thinks they are without flaws. Another is that birds of a feather flock together. But the most enduring lesson has been to recognize my own flaws and how I must suppress them better when faced with adversity.  

By no means will we ever be perfect. But we're all human and what separates us from other life forms is the ability for self improvement.  In short, if you identify something you don't like about yourself, change it. If you find something you don't like about someone else, decide whether or not you can accept it. If not, don't even try.  In the end, you're the one who will come off looking bad.