Thoughts on relationships & defending yourself

Today, I’m drinking a chai tea latte, very frothy!

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My mom would always tell my siblings and me not to date in high school, and she certainly had a point. Dating at such a young age, before you reach adulthood, is honestly dangerous. The whole “high school romance” thing is seriously over-romanticized. Not only are you still getting to know yourself, just starting to figure out how to function in the real world, but you also lack the necessary confidence. Every teenager lacks confidence, maybe some more than others, but no matter what you look like or where you came from, you just don’t have enough life experience to understand how much you can actually handle.

What stands out to me most is the dynamic of masculine and feminine energy. Girls, or those with highly feminine energy, are subject to being overtaken by masculine energy. Masculine energy is such a dominant and overpowering force — which is what makes the feminine so attracted to it — but also makes the feminine subject to being overly controlled and stepped on. And if either the masculine or the feminine lacks confidence, there will always be a power imbalance.

Through the feminine’s view, she risks being taken advantage of not just on a physical level, but also on a mental and emotional level as well. She conforms into the person she never wanted to be, she gives up hobbies and interests in order to match her partner’s ideals, she risks so much of herself just to keep the relationship going. She loses her principles, she does things she’s uncomfortable with, she doesn’t know how to stick up for herself and when to draw boundaries.

Through the masculine’s view, he becomes so wrapped up in the feminine, spending all his energy trying to control her rather than control himself. He crushes the feminine’s spirit instead of focusing on building up his own spirit.

Now even at the start of adulthood, entering a relationship still presents the same challenge. At 18, I feel like I really rushed into a relationship before I even knew what being an adult entailed. A lot of the rushing came from society’s expectation and push for being in a relationship. I was so thrilled with the “idea” of a relationship that I ran towards it before I truly knew how to defend myself the right way and stick up for myself when necessary. And I did feel very taken advantage of in many ways.

Heading towards my later twenties, I have changed so much. In fact even close friends of mine who have known me since I was 18 have commented that they notice a change. They can see for themselves that I basically grew a backbone, to put it bluntly. It’s not just in my head, it shows, and people notice. I still struggle with people-pleasing, but I know how to defend myself now.

I am extremely different from who I was even just two or three years ago. Not just in romance, but with friends and acquaintances, even with total strangers, I was constantly bending over backwards to fit the idea of who people wanted me to be. When people made assumptions about me, instead of correcting them, I would change myself to match their perspective. I was terrified of letting people down, no matter how much damage that would lead to in the long-run. As I said, it’s still a struggle I’m still working on, but the fact that people have literally said to me that they’ve noticed a difference really proves that I have gotten so much better.

I strive to emphasis that we are all on different journeys and there is no distinct timeline. Some people learn how to defend themselves at a very young age, for me it took reaching my mid twenties, for others it doesn’t happen until much later in life, and some will go their entire lives spineless. I’m just saying that it’s very rare for a teenager or young adult to know how to defend themselves when they haven’t had enough life experience to give them the confidence they need.

Sometimes I wish it was the olden times, when most women were married and having children by adulthood, anywhere from teen years to early twenties. Men were typically at that point by early twenties, but some did wait until 30s, 40s, 50s to start a family, especially if they were involved in scholarly pursuits. But with both men and women expected to focus on education, have their career path settled, and financial situation set, before getting married or having children, it’s much more common to see women waiting until their late 20s, 30s, even early 40s.

Maybe it’s for the best that society’s expectation has pushed the age expectation further, considering it generally takes many years for the feminine to know how to truly defend herself. Or maybe the mindset was completely different back then, maybe the feminine was stronger in a relationship because she wasn’t spending so much of her time and energy on developing a career. I have so say that all the energy I had to put into getting through college and finding a job completely drained me and made me a weaker person while dealing with others. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that as soon as I finally settled into my career, was when I finally began learning how to draw boundaries and have the confidence to no longer be taken advantage of!

Regardless, we should never get so caught up in age or comparison. We’re all on different paths, we all have different ages in which we finally stand our ground, we all have different timings of meeting our true soulmate. And sometimes you meet a soulmate who only belongs in a certain time of your life, while you eventually will find a better soulmate who was destined for your future.

I’ll say it again and again — we’re all on different paths, and there’s no distinct timeline. Don’t get too caught up in age or comparison. Know yourself, know when you’re ready, know when you’re not — because when you know, you know… ya know?