I Used To Love Him

I an interesting conversation with a friend the other day that made me think (big surprise right? I'm the queen of thinking and over-thinking). First you have to read these Lauren Hill Lyrics:

I Used To Love Him Lyrics


As I look at what I've done
The type of life that I've lived
How many things I pray the father will forgive
One situation involved a young man
He was the ocean and I was the sand
He stole my heart like a thief in the night
Dulled my senses blurred my sight

I used to love him but now I don't

I chose a road of passion and pain
Sacrificed too much and waited in vain
Gave up my power ceased being queen
Addicted to love like the drug of a fiend

Torn and confused wasted and used
Reached the crossroad which path would I choose
Stuck and frustrated I waited, debated
For something to happen that just wasn't fated
Thought what I wanted was something I needed
When momma said no I just should have heeded
Misled I bled till the poison was gone
And out of the darkness arrived the sweet dawn

I used to love him but now I don't

Father you saved me and showed me that life
Was much more than being some foolish man's wife
Showed me that love was respect and devotion
Greater than planets deeper than oceans
My soul was weary but now it's replenished
Content because that part of my life is finished

I see him sometimes and the look in his eye
Is one of a man who's lost treasures untold
But my heart is gold I took back my soul
And totally let my creator control
The life which was his to begin with

I used to love him but now I don't


So my friend and I were chillin' taking about relationships and divorce and why it happens. We started up on marriage and she asked me if I would get a divorce if I found out my husband cheated on me. My first reaction to this question is always a resounding "YES!" But I stopped for a minute, thought, then said "I would like to say yes, but I can't really say until I'm in that situation, and God forbid I ever am. You never know, if my love for him was strong enough I'd want to trust him again, but I don't know if I'd be able to. And what is a relationship without trust?" She basically agreed with me and we sat their quietly pensive. Then I broke the silence, "I would prefer not to ever know if my husband cheated...but only if I had absolutely no idea whatsoever, no inkling, no suspicions, nothing." She retorted quietly almost as if thinking out loud, "Ignorance is bliss." What would you do though, would you want to know?

Then the conversation turned to marriage as an institution and I wondered out loud "how many of my friends parents that are still married have cheated on one another?" Interesting thought, right? Because most of us think our parents marriages are rock solid, or at least they'll stick it out through the hard times. My friend then began to list her friends parents and who she knew had cheated (her parents were, of course, among the list of parents who would NEVER do that). Then what she said next sort of shook me to the core..."you have to marry a man that loves you more than you love him because then you have all the power and you will be in control of the relationship." I didn't even know what to say to this...I still can't believe she actually said that. I'm sure relationships involve some power struggles, but to base a relationship on who will have the most power seems devious, evil, dangerous, and a recipe for disaster. But then again, maybe I'm wrong.

That's where Lauryn comes in. Her song I Used To Love Him describes how she no longer loves a man who used her and didn't respect her love for him. She gave herself to him mind body and soul and he took it for granted and left her wasted and abused. That is what I imagine will happen if one person has all the "power" in a marriage. I, being the idealist that I am, always imagined a relationship with relatively equal amounts of love where it isn't about who has the power, but is a partnership. Could I really be that off base??

Can People Change?

A friend (lets call her Rosie) and I were talking the other day about another mutual friend (lets call him Franklin) (whom she actually introduced me to), and it was soo interesting to see the different views we had on that one person. I really like Franklin and we relate on a quasi-intimate level between professional and friendship (and I admittedly have some fear and awe for him). We have these quasi-deep conversations but are pretty open and real with one another from my point-of-view. Now Rosie had a completely different experience with him, so she does not even like it when I talk about him. All their mutual experiences seem to be negative from her reaction to the mere sound of his name, either that or old friends are telling her things about him that puts him in a negative light. That being said, we were having a conversation about him and some of his beliefs and apparently I said something about it that Rosie totally disagreed with resulting in her mumbling some incoherent words under her breath. My response was simple "People can change." To which I was given "Yeah, and some traits are part of a person and will never change." In my mind at this point I'm thinking, "Whoa could this guy, who I've been hitting it off with professionally and socially, really have had that big of a negative impact on her and apparently some other people??"

All this to say really that its quite interesting how two different people can view another. And even how different one person could treat those same two people. It made me wonder again how people tick, what makes them do the things they do? Does he treat me one way because he sees ways that he can benefit from our relationship? And treat Rosie a different way because he didn't see how they could have profited from a beneficial relationship? It strikes me as strange that this could be the case, but not totally inconceivable.

Then it makes me wonder about the rest of the general population...do people only befriend people that they think they can benefit from? On some level I think that is true, whether the benefit is companionship, professional advancement, or "benefits". With my relationships though, as I think back I can recall some people that I "befriended" that I didn't benefit from, and to be honest, those were the hardest friendships I've ever been in.

I guess the idealist in me always hopes that people can change.