Relationships Should Come with Tags
I’ve done it. Others have done it to me. We have a relationship; we may even care deeply for one another. We learn to speak a language, with shortcuts and funny stories that only the two of us know. We speak “we.” And then, one day something happens. OK, maybe it’s not a big something, or maybe it’s not a something at all. Just a dawning realization at one point in our lives that something shifted while all the living was happening, and the other, or maybe it is us, has literally moved on. It might be a daylong car ride away that interrupts the flow of things, or it could have been the changing of other relationships in our lives. Whatever the reason, or the buildup to it, we will review all its details over and over in our heads for days, weeks or months. The outcome is the same: moving on, moved on. What if at the beginning of that beautiful relationship it came with a tag, like clothing, that tells us what the fabric is like and how to care for it.
The tag might read “his item was handcrafted by nuns in the Czech Republic” (are there nuns in the Czech Republic you may wonder), so therefore you must never let water touch this fabric. This garment (relationship) must be carefully steamed with a light cleaner and hung carefully on a rust-free hanger for exactly four hours before being inserted into a dry, clean thin sheet of plastic and hung carefully until you decide to fetch it.
What if relationships came with tags like this? Hello, meet Joe. Joe is a kind person with a generous heart but he can get his feelings hurt easily because Joe suffers from low self-esteem and tends to also be low on self-compassion. Joe will do anything for you, but it will come at a price at some point because he will remind you of that thing he did for you and how you have not done enough in return for him. This will tax your relationship as you don’t actually like keeping relationship score therefore you will grow weary, over time, of asking Joe for anything because you know it will just cost you more in the end. Your relationship starts to falter, even though you may be very fond of Joe and still see his real intentions, which are to give and receive love. After a few more weeks of the dance of this thing, you finally whip up the courage to break pour Joe’s heart and announce that you cannot continue your relationship. Joe suffers from a fatal wound to the heart, and delivers one more lesson to you on how much more he has given you than you gave to him. I guess in the end he wins the game. But he lost the game-show. And you were kicked off set for being the evil breaker-upper.
But if we came with tags, we could be more careful before purchasing that item, or buying into the relationship. We could say, “oh, I’m not very good with Cashmere, it takes too much care and attention. I’m more of a wash and go kind of person, no ironing either.” Then you could buy cotton, and love your cotton even though it’s not the fancy, fluffy Cashmere that you envy when you see it on others. That kind of garment is more complex, and the owner has to be more careful when they eat, drink and move about. Your cotton is sturdy, and hardy and can withstand anything, and then just be tossed into the wash with the towels. Even that towel used on the dog to wipe his feet when he came in from the rain and mud. It’s all good, and you throw it in the dryer, and pull it out two days later, shake it out and it’s perfect and ready to wear. But to someone else, cotton just isn’t special enough. Or their family owns a dry-cleaning business so it’s no hassle at all to get that sweater constantly pampered. We just need tags.
Misplaced or Damaged Tags
What if you got a new relationship based on the person’s published tags only the person you picked does not exactly match the tag description? Is this intent to mislead, or lack of accurate self-assessment? I think eHarmony, Tender, and Match are prime examples of misplaced and damaged tags. Maybe as much as 90% of the people on these sites have inaccurate tags. Why? It makes the process so much harder when you lead with a mislabeled tag. If you can’t do Cashmere and your potential love interest pretends to be cotton but they are really not, will you just ignore that fabric you don’t desire? Or does your potential love believe that you really LOVE Cashmere, but just have not experienced it yet, and when you do, you will be smitten? That falls into what I call a “smash and grab” love experience. The person will lure you into a false relationship, then at some point lower the boom and tell you the truth and you realize you have just been had. Oh, and by the way, you might actually care about this relationship at this point, however deceptive it may have started out. And you will be the one who has to break it off, right? And you will be tagged as the breaker-upper. Folks, we just need tags. But we have to find a way, and the courage, to make our tags an accurate description of the fabric of who we are. Own your cottony-self. That’s code for self-acceptance by the way.
