A thought process behind our quest to understand dating, love, and relationships.
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Your gender, your age, your race – you and I have a soul and a spirit. I cannot help but wonder if our soul knows not of our cosmetic body make up and at its core wants the same thing.
Beneath it all, I believe we may want the same things – but we want them in different ways, we ask for them with different words and expressions, and we express them in our own language.
The meaning behind the words is what we need to grasp in order to understand each other. Forget trying to understand women, or men, or generations, or nationality, we essentially want the same things but we express ourselves differently.
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I have watched male and female friends rush in and I have also seen both genders hold back. I have seen the same hurt in the eyes of many different people, the same fears, and the same insecurities. I have seen people of different ages, genders, and nationalities all ask the same basic dating questions: “when should I call?”; “what should I say?”’; and “what does that mean?” All this leads me to believe that underneath the surface of our actions and words, we seem to have very similar meaning, but what is constantly creating friction is our lack of understanding.
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We need to work with the people in our lives to give love in the way that they need it – we also need to express to others what we need from them to help them work with us.
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If we are ready and the relationship is right, love will blossom, especially if we allow ourselves to really hear and if we are also truly heard. But the friction, the difficulty in dating (aside from being ready and having the right connection), is largly the lack of understanding of each other, or subsequently the misunderstanding.
We need to work with the people in our lives to give love in the way that they need it, in a way that makes them feel deep down that their needs are being met. We also need to express to others what we need from them to help them work with us. And we must understand along the way we each have our own language. Our language uses the same words and expressions but will be used with different meanings based on our own experiences and influences.
I have been misunderstood. I have heard my words turned around on me so that their true intended meaning is lost. This has taught me to always seek to understand people and to be as clear as I can with those in my life. If we acknowledge that we are all essentially the same underneath, I hope this allows better success when we focus on understanding rather than assuming through possible communication barriers.
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Photo: Giandomenico Ricci/Flickr