Trust the Girls Who Trust

A couple days ago, one of my male friends found himself in a situation with his girlfriend and it’s prompted me to explain something about girls like me…that is, girls who blindly trust and love in relationships.  (Obviously this goes for men too, but since I am a female, I am speaking from my point of view.)

The friend I am referring to is a great guy and he is totally in love, yet he lied about something that was totally innocent.  He said the reason he lied is because he was trying to protect her.  BIG MISTAKE, guys.  He overthought it because he figured she would get mad or hurt her or worry and that’s not fair.  Long story short, she was hurt because he lied and didn’t trust her to trust him. 

GUYS, LISTEN UP!!!  There are girls out there who truly want the truth, who won’t get mad, who will trust you blindly, who will put their hearts into your hand, who are secure, who believe you when you say you will never hurt us, who don’t get jealous, who will protect you and accept you for who you truly are.  I say this from experience…I have witnessed guys lie about stupid things because they are afraid of making their girlfriends mad (of course this has happened to me personally) and it’s really such a slap in the face to that girl who has completely trusted you and believed in you.  It hurts our feelings that you don’t think we can handle the truth.  (YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!!!!!  Sorry, I had to say that like Jack Nicholson.)

I know that a lot of guys just think we are all crazy and this really irritates me, so here is what it’s like to walk around in a trusting girl’s brain who really is pretty freaking cool with who you are.  Don’t mess things up with a girl who believes the following…..

*Just a note, this is literally a random walk through my brain, so sorry if you get whiplash. 

My Thoughts on Why Being Single Forever Beats Faking It

I love true love and not the Disney kind but the Corinthians kind; the kind that can wrap around a person no matter what they have done, who they have been, what they look like, how much money they make, and what they say, do, or feel.  I also love trust, the kind that cries and hurts when it’s doubted.  My idea of what a romantic relationship looks like is very, very hard to find, but I know it has to exist because I figure if I have loved and trusted someone blindly, then someone else out there is also capable of loving me that way.  I won’t entertain anything else because I don’t believe it’s possible to love without trust and why be in a relationship without being loved for who you really are? 

Basically, it boils down to this:

If you know yourself and know that you are honest in relationships, if someone can’t trust you, you can no longer trust them.  If they can’t trust you, then that means they don’t know you and if they don’t know you, they can’t possibly love you and at that point, there is no point of being in a relationship where the person is in love with a person who is not at all you.

Not that complicated, right?  Ok, so maybe I made it complicated, but it’s really very simple.    

My Thoughts on Why People Lie

I think most people would agree that what I described above is ideal.  So why do people lie?  I think it boils down to only 4 reasons….

1.     People don’t like to be nagged and yelled at.  If this is happening, then are you really in a real relationship or is it a dictatorship? And if your actions are wrong and the person has a reason to be upset, then either get your shit together or get out and do whatever you want as a free person.  Either way, I just don’t understand being in a situation where you are not willing to have the conversation and where two people can’t be honest.

2.     People don’t trust the person they are with to love them unconditionally regardless of what they are doing, saying, thinking, or feeling.  It is really scary to tell the truth and be yourself sometimes because there is always the fear that we will lose what we have or we won’t be loved back for who we are, but you save a lot of time and issues if you can just be honest and be adults. 

3.     You are doing something that you wouldn’t want your significant other to be doing, or you are not sure that you would trust or approve of the situation.  If you feel weird doing something, ask yourself why. The Golden Rule is not complicated.  If you aren’t sure if he or she would like it, why not just ask them? If you have a conscience about it, where is that coming from?

4.     The person is legitimately doing something shady.  Why are you in a relationship again?  This is called having your cake and eating it too.  You are just an asshole, man.

My Thoughts on Being Straight Up and Being Real

1.     Hold out. Because I don’t feel like I have to be with someone to make me happy and I know I don’t have to be bothered with things that irritate me, I often look around at people in relationships where trust clearly isn’t there and I wonder why they bother when they don’t have to live that way.  This isn’t meant to sound judgmental, it’s more that I am making an observation from the other side, meaning, I have been in relationships where trust either never existed or was abused and eventually lost and then I later asked myself why I was ever in that situation to begin with.  It sucks being in that situation.

2.     Say no to the crap. I have always been an open book with the opposite sex and it hasn’t always been the smartest thing.  I always assumed that if I were honest, the guy would also be honest.  Sadly, that’s not always the case because it’s hard to find someone honest and people are freaking shady.   If you are honest, you deserve honesty in return.

3.     Tell the truth.  Tell the truth and ride it out. I don’t understand people who get mad at you for telling the truth.  Isn’t a lie worse?  

My Thoughts on Technology

People who are going to cheat are going to cheat regardless of technology and living in a bubble is just not feasible.  I understand that smart phones and apps and email and texts cause problems, but are they really the problem? Or are they just exposing problems that already exist?  I look at it this way….

1.     Everyone should have a lock on his or her phone.  You are an idiot if you don’t; it doesn’t make you shady, it makes you smart.  All it takes is one drunken night where you leave your phone at the bar and BOOM, your pictures, bank information, contacts, emails, are vulnerable. 

2.     I don’t have to give a man my passcode.  BUT, I will. 

3.    BUT if I give you my passcode and you check on me… I am done.  Relationship over. You don’t trust me, therefore you don’t know me, and so you may as well waste someone else’s time. 

4.     If you give me your passcode, I will never check.  And if I do, I am done and you should be too.

I just don’t know why that’s so complicated.  Why is it so terrible to trust blindly?  If someone cheats on you or lies to you, you are going to find out.  Why do people ruin things with preventative measures that don’t prevent anything at all, especially the inevitable?  Blaming social media and technology instead of a cheater is like blaming a gun instead of the psycho.   

My Thoughts on Why I Believe All of This

There is nothing more infuriating than not being trusted when you are honest and there is nothing more hurtful than being lied to when you have been brave and real and gone out on a limb.  Dishonesty and distrust ruins relationships. I have experienced the most stifling, awful relationships and also absolute freedom.  It would be awesome to be "allowed" to be or accepted as the same person in a relationship. 

My Thoughts on the Guys Who Don’t Believe We Exist

Stupid.  Wrong.  Should kick themselves in the asses. Don't lose a girl like this!

The Idea of Copy

I have wanted to sit down and listen to Ryan Adam’s re-recording of Taylor Swift’s 1989 in its entirety and at 4 am thanks to insomnia, I got my chance.  Now, you don’t have to like either one of them to appreciate what I have to say, or you can like them both and hate what I say and that’s fine too; what I found most interesting about his re-recordings was his perspective and of course, the people hating on both of them for the project altogether.  This got me thinking about the idea of copy on a scale.  Ryan Adams taking every word and making something new is at one end of the spectrum, John Lennon observing violence, wanting peace and writing “Imagine” would be on the other. 

I see a lot of people do things simply to be unique and different.  They reject things because they aren’t unique enough.  They want to do something weird simply because they want to be different. And ironically, they become a group of people who are nothing unique and are all like each other. I guess I am wise enough at this age to know that if you simply like what you like and do what you want, you’re still not going to be the only person on earth to like what you like and do what you want….but you’ll be a true version of yourself and isn’t that the goal? 

I think that when people are uncomfortable with re-recordings, remakes, and the idea that everything is inspired by something, there are a couple of reasons why.  First of all, your medial pre-frontal cortex is actually tied to your music.  We simply become attached to the original and have our own love affair and experience with it.  Why would we want someone ruining that experience and relationship?  When you fall in love with a song, your senses are tied to it forever.  Ask any girl in her 30’s how she feels about a remake of Dirty Dancing.  She will have the same kneejerk reaction, which is to feel as if a remake will magically change the first.  Secondly, intellectually, the idea of copy is just uncomfortable.  I know for me, especially as a writer, when I sit in a movie theatre and see nothing but a string of trailers for movies that already exist, I get upset.  I think  “Have people just run out of ideas?  Is there nothing that hasn’t been done?  No story that hasn’t been told? Why are these people working as writers?”  Those thoughts are very stifling.  It’s also not a very rational one to think that just because copy exists that nothing new does.

The older I have gotten and the more I understand the world, the more I appreciate the process of creation, and that’s taking something, anything, and having a new perspective.  That makes the idea of  “copy” a little more tolerable.  (I still don’t want them to remake Dirty Dancing.) 

Everything that is created originally is in fact inspired by something else, be it a historical event, a place, a song, a feeling, the weather, a person….it’s a concoction, a storm, smatterings that come together to create a unique  perspective.  Even feelings are not unique, and thank God they aren’t or we would all feel alone.  Certain songs resonate with us, art, books, and that’s because there is something familiar about it, something that exists in it that also exists within us, which means it isn’t completely original.  The way it was created is what is original, and the twists and turns that it took to end up whatever it did, like something would in a chemistry lab. 

I remember writing a poem in yoga about a year ago (and what I mean by writing is that I had thoughts bouncing around in my head and they came together in a way that I could take home with me and then put on paper; I wasn’t literally writing on paper in Down Dog.)  I am me.  There is only one Brittany Chenault.  I was thinking something that led to something that led to something that led to something and I have no evidence that anyone has thought these thoughts in the exact order that I had them in the history of the world.  I used a vocabulary of words that I did not invent, but I placed them in an order that no one had.  I have had feelings that other people have also felt, but have never described them in the exact way I did.  And yet people read it and knew EXACTLY how I felt. 

Does the fact that everyone can identify with what you say, do, sing, or write take away from the originality of creating it?  Of course not.   So in reality, are we too easily offended by the idea that we are not original, and nothing in the world is original, and missing the fact that the only originality that truly exists is our experience with copy?

I think so.  There is so much more in the world to enjoy when you truly understand the idea of a muse or inspiration, or feeding off your senses and feelings and people around you. 

Listen to the link below. Then go listen to Taylor's.  The comparison of something identical doesn't actually make me feel like the world is getting smaller, it actually makes me feel like the world is huge, that the spectrum is infinite, and it brings me to my knees when I think about how God gave us art.  We can simply never get bored if we appreciate what’s been given to us….the process of creativity. 

Ryan Adam’s “I Wish You Would”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wvrFyukGGI

Chill, Don't Chase

Don't be this girl

I have been advising one of my friends lately about a guy she likes and it’s sparked me to write this because I think a lot of women could benefit from this advice, even though they have heard about it over and over.  (Myself included.)  “He’s just not that into you” is not a groundbreaking concept and yet we sometimes refuse to accept how simple it is.  We want to give men the benefit of the doubt when we start talking to them but it’s really such a stupid thing to do.  You can avoid a lot of problems and save a lot of time by avoiding men that aren’t interested from the get-go, but you have to do it early before you’re hooked, in the palm of their hands, and wind up with a broken heart.

This is a simple rule:

Don’t chase men, plain and simple. 

Men are easy to figure out for the most part.  If they aren’t texting you, move on because there is a reason they aren’t texting you.  It doesn’t matter what the reason is because it doesn’t concern you.  If they aren’t trying to see you, move on.  It doesn’t matter why they aren’t trying because it’s none of your business and it doesn’t measure your worth.  If they want to see you but only if you come to them, move on.  Screw that.  I mean, really???  You are expected to use YOUR gas money, rearrange YOUR schedule, go out of YOUR way…for what, a lazy little boy who can’t even commit to dinner???  No.  If they aren’t taking you out or calling you, move on.  Their actions are telling you what the end result will be and it will not end in your favor.  The guy could have 100 real reasons for stringing you along, but why do any of them matter to you?  Do the “reasons” change anything?  No.  And because there are so many girls doing the chasing nowadays, if they are lazy and spoiled, they have options that make it easy for them to never have to hunt or do anything and you are simply too difficult.  I don’t know about you, but I am not a slab of meat plopped in front of a zoo lion.  I am a lion running in the wild and I would rather be difficult than plop in front of someone.  Too much work?  Sorry about your luck.  And regarding the ones who are willing to hunt you, well, congratulations.  You found a man and in one swift move, you managed to separate him from the boys. 

Ask any man and he will tell you the following:

If a guy wants to see you, he will find a way.  Even men who know they don’t have a SHOT IN HELL will usually try.  Remember, this is the same gender that shouts at you from their cars in traffic and from gas stations and construction sites so why are we so willing to give them excuses when it favors what we want to believe?  If a guy is thinking about you, he’s texting and calling you.  If a guy wants to commit, he is going to commit.  If he is interested, he will show you.  If he doesn’t want someone else to have you, he won’t leave you alone and available.  There is no other explanation.  And if you are seeing him but you have to do all of the work, reevaluate that situation. You are a perfectly convenient situation for the present time.  It doesn't mean you will change him. 

Men also prefer a challenge, unless they're losers or lazy pieces of crap.  They are hunters and they don’t want something that falls into their lap.  (Neither do I, actually, so I understand the feeling.)  If we could all behave the same way with the guys we like as the ones we don’t, we would be a lot better off.  Remember this before you send that text because he ignored your last one! Ask yourself "Would I be inclined to do this with (insert the guy you don’t like)?"

I have been in one situation where I had to do everything and it did not end well, nor was it like me at all to alter myself to that degree, nor was it a good reflection of me, and I can guarantee that it will never happen again.  I stick to this philosophy and if you are vigilant and love yourself and value your time and your heart and your efforts, I promise that it will help to keep the lazy, confused, wishy-washy assholes out of your life…also, it's exhausting chasing little boys, isn't it?  Pointless and exhausting!

Here are the rules:

• Chill, don't chase.  Just calm down and let him come to you. If he doesn't, you got your answer. 
• Do not text or call him when he is random, spacey, disappears, and then comes back around when he feel like it.  
• Set your own terms.  
• Do not rearrange your schedule at the drop of a hat when he does nothing to plan ahead. 
• Don't ask him out and constantly run around like a crazy person trying to see him.   
• Don't put in the effort when he is not. 
• Put it out there and see what he does...and listen to what he says. 

A guy once said to me “I don’t chase, you'll have to chase me.” 

My answer was “Then I guess we won’t be seeing much of each other.”

It’s legit.  Try it. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piGl_Vfcfi4

Karma Fell Asleep

Yesterday morning I was driving down a long, somewhat country road and I saw a cop hiding.  I do realize it’s illegal to warn people that there is a cop by flashing your headlights, but you are also talking to a girl whose insurance just went from $92 to $204 a month because of one stupid speeding ticket received in ATLANTA, where everyone speeds all the time anyway and honestly, I can’t even talk about it because I GET SO MAD!   I didn’t even get points on my license!  It’s not like I got a DUI.  I got a speeding ticket.  So whatever.  But on with my story….I warned everyone about the cop hiding in the distance behind me and I reached my destination.  I had to pick something up, so it literally took 30 seconds, and I turned around and went the way I came.  I knew that the cop was there, so I was going the speed limit, of course. 

This guy came up behind me and was riding my bumper and honking at me because I wouldn’t speed up.  He was seriously maybe a foot away from touching my car.  I couldn’t even step on my brakes to make a point or he would have hit me.  I sped up a little and did what anyone who wanted to see an asshole pay for being an asshole would have done....I pulled over on the side of the road and let him pass me.  

Ha ha ha ha haaaaaa!  

Unfortunately he didn't get pulled over because he pulled into the neighborhood right in front of the cop.  I was totally bummed that my schemes didn't work, but I am even more bummed that my story was totally ruined.