With fall creeping up on us before we’ve finished dumping the sand out of our shoes and applying aloe to our sunburns, we’ve got to find a way to prepare ourselves. There’s a lot more to do than stock up on pumpkin spice candles and faux fall leaves to wrap around everything that doesn’t move. It can be tempting to just crunch through the fallen leaves and blissfully enjoy layering on ten sweaters for the 65-degree weather, but we should do some things to clean up our lives in preparation for this change. Before you enter this new season, you should shed some things or someone to prepare for it. The following is going to be about prepping for fall by cutting some people off. Allow me to explain.
As the old saying goes, people who come into your life are either a “blessin’ or a lesson”. Yes, it’s a cringy statement, but bear with me. The people that come into your life, with a minuscule amount of exceptions, are not meant to stay there indefinitely. They either add to your life in a positive way, or they teach you a lesson that you otherwise wouldn’t have been able to learn. It can be easy to regret relationships that you’ve had in the past, but it’s important to put them in perspective, take a step back, and view them as a learning experience. That being said, it would still be beneficial for you to spot a toxic relationship in your life and cut it off before you are unnecessarily hurt.
From the outside of a relationship, it’s easy to spot a toxic person from a mile away. We’ re all quick to tell our best friend how much of a jerk their boyfriend is, or tell our boyfriend how much of a jerk their best friend is. When you’re looking at relationships from the outside, they’re completely transparent to the unbiased eye.
It’s a lot harder to see the damage being done when you’re the one in the relationship.
Believe me, I know. I’ve been caught in many relationships where the person who I thought was a fantastic friend totally wasn’t. And everyone knew but me. Hindsight is most definitely 20/20, and I knew I should’ve listened to the people in my life who pointed out all of the wrong in my relationships. After all, they were viewing things from the outside. But if you’re anything like me, you have to learn everything the hard way. This is both a blessing and a curse in that I have the ability to learn lessons on my own, but I sometimes just get hurt worse in the process. I can’t even say for sure that I won’t end up in a less than healthy relationship again and not know it, but at least I’ve learned from my past experiences. There are a lot of behaviors that you can observe to help you determine whether or not you’re in a relationship with a toxic person right now. If you've been running around in circles trying to make this person happy, struggling to keep up with their dramatic lives, or realizing that nothing you do will ever seem acceptable to them, you might need to tighten your circle.
Relationships are supposed to be 50/50, give and take. An unhealthy relationship will have you doing all the work to keep it going. This is absolutely exhausting, and chances are that if you’re in an unhealthy relationship right now you already know that. Having to be the one who makes all of the plans, all of the phone calls, and exerts all the effort is never okay. If you’re involved with someone, romantically or otherwise, who has you running around like a chicken with its head cut off to make it work, then it’s time to reevaluate. You want to be with someone who wants to be with you just as much, and it’ll be extremely apparent if that’s not the case.
Oftentimes a relationship that isn't serving you will feel draining. Time spent together won't feel rewarding; you'll feel like more is being taken out of you than is being put in. Maybe it's because the other person uses you as a dumping ground for all of their problems and relationship issues. Lunch with a friend feels more like a therapy session than a nice break from your busy day. Obviously, people go through things, and it's okay to be there for a friend that's having a hard time, but it's important to recognize when the negativity is becoming a pattern. Shedding this kind of person gives you so much more time to spend with people who lift you up and who enjoy a good back-and-forth conversation. There's absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to surround yourself with the positive energy of people who give more than they take from your soul.
One of the best ways to send someone running for the hills is to constantly compete with them over irrelevant things. I've found this to be a trend among girls especially; for some reason, we feel the need to one-up each other in every area of life. If you're in a relationship with someone like this, then nothing that you accomplish will ever seem significant to them. They can find a way to knock you down from any angle, so long as they stay looking stronger, better, faster, smarter, etc. People who act like this are obviously acting out of extreme insecurity, but that doesn't mean that that's a valid excuse for their behavior. Having the wind knocked out of you every time you share a piece of exciting news in your life is a tell-tale sign that you're mingling with the wrong company. Your circle can't include people who can't let you have your moment!
Life is short, friends. We only get a small amount of time on this earth, and we get to choose how we spend it. There are far too many places to go and way too many beautiful people to meet for you to be caught up with someone who isn't contributing to your life in positive ways. Don't get me wrong, even the best of our best friends can be guilty of some of the behavior mentioned above; after all, we're human. I'm definitely not saying to cut out anyone who has ever exhibited any of the aforementioned behaviors even once. What I am saying is to liberate yourself from people who are a constant stream of negativity in your life. Don't carry them into the new season with you, you can only grow when you weed out the influences that are holding you back from flourishing.
