The Filter Free Life

03/22/2025

03/09/2025

What if the person who can’t leave your mind isn’t there because you love them or because they are special, but because they are showing you something about yourself that you refuse to see

03/03/2025

If you’ve never learned healthy communication you will avoid it.
Arguments/disagreements in relationships are good. Just like in sports you learn more from losing than you ever will from winning. It’s not you against me. It’s US against the problem.
Conflict for relationships is like going to the gym for your relationship- it makes it stronger.

There are two unhealthy ways I’ve experienced problems -
1. Being yelled at - right fighting. When you’re fighting to be right/win no body wins.

2. Dismissed/gaslit - yes I hear what you’re saying but I’m not going to respond, I’m going to ignore the problem, not address it and hope you forget
Or the crazy making that happens in gaslighting when they twist and turn the story and confuse or just deny it.

If someone refuses to deal with problems they are the problem. You simply can not grow and deepen a relationship with someone who avoids conflict or dealing with problems. At some point you have to say I can’t do this anymore. I want more for myself and walk away.

Do you want to spend the rest of your life in a relationship that doesn’t care about your concerns or feelings?

02/26/2025

Some of us are wounded by someone who loved us.
I remember the first relationship I had after a split with a very unhealthy relationship. He was angry at me and I said to him “yell at me” - he was so confused. I said you’re angry at me so yell at me. I wasn’t use to this communicating thing. Some of us never learned that someone could be angry with us AND still love us and not abandon us.

Some of us as children blamed ourselves for mom/dad leaving that we only knew that conflict wasn’t safe. Conflict led to blowups, leaving, avoidance and love being taken away. We never learned or saw healthy modelling of conflict. So, now uncomfortable conversations are avoided because in the back of our mind conflict and anger are associated with abandonment.

02/19/2025

Choose people who choose you.
Choose people who grow with you.
Choose people who want to fight for the relationship.
Choose people who are brave enough to battle the storms with you.

Relationships aren’t easy. They will trigger our deepest wounds.
Do you want someone who is going to run every time they are triggered?
They’re choosing a familiar pain over and unfamiliar future.

They are choosing the pain of living without you over the pain of doing the work required to keep you.
They are choosing a life without you.

They may want more for themselves but when what they want makes them scared or triggered they will choose a familiar past over and uncertain future.

If YOU want something different YOU are going to have to be someone different.

02/16/2025

That is all.

02/15/2025

Do you miss them?
Or do you miss the idea of them. Do you miss who they were in the beginning and that’s who you are remembering and missing?

You created a version of them based on the potential you saw in them.

You can date someone for their potential
BUT and this is a big BUT
Only if they see their potential too otherwise; that’s a project.

When you find yourself missing them remind yourself of who they really were at the end of the relationship. Remind yourself why you deserve more. Remind yourself that you want someone who chooses you. Remind yourself what you want in a partner and remind yourself of who they really are.

Are you missing them or the idea of them?