Episode 29: Love

Well, hey, everybody, welcome to the 29th episode of Don’t lose your balance. My name is Mallory Durrick. If this is your first time here, I want to welcome you. And if you’ve been joining me along the way, I also want to say thank you because I have come to the conclusion that many of these episodes in the beginning, were really very, very personal. And while all of them are actually personal, some more than others. And I’m about to go deep into the weeds of personal here. So this is a hard subject for me to talk about. You can see by the title, it’s about love. We talked about love, in the gratitude room this morning. And this was a topic I’ve been avoiding. Because it’s hard for me to talk about it. You know, so let’s talk about love. I know love is beautiful. It’s got all kinds of dimensions to it. There’s parental love, and love between partners, there are friendships that are full of love. There are hobbies that I love.

02:08

When I think about love, I think about being myself, I think about accepting others for who they are, I think about accepting myself for who I am. Love is just about loving someone for who someone is and what they represent. It’s not about the version of what we want of them or for ourselves, meaning I have probably molded myself into the idea or the version of what others have wanted of me in the relationship, which has complicated it for me. Despite having done considerably selfish things over my lifetime, I can’t lose sight of the fact that love got very muddied for me, you know, I feel as if, especially if I, if I’m going to talk a little bit about it in the marriage, and I’ll go back into the marriage, somewhere along the line, I must not have felt love. It wasn’t that I lost love for somebody else. It’s that I didn’t feel loved. I didn’t feel appreciated. So I might have done things I did do things. It’s not that I might have I did do things to mold myself into this person that I believed could make things better. And it didn’t really make things better. In fact, I created this version of myself that didn’t suit me very well. And that came at a terrible price. It came at a terrible price for my emotional well being as well as my marriage as well as myself as a mother. Because I was just so amped up and so confused about my direction. And when I found myself in this horrible situation of not feeling worthy. And when I wasn’t worthy, I certainly didn’t feel like I was loved. And then I went to get help for whatever I was going through emotionally. I was told, you know, by my husband, and I hope this doesn’t get overly personal. But I was told this was my problem, and I had to go figure out how to fix it. And that’s hard because then I felt even less loved. They cut because I felt as if well I guess I have a problem. I didn’t know what to do with it. And I don’t think that therapy really helped. And I certainly know that the direction that I took to try to find some level of happiness was the wrong one. We all know that. But it did get me to a place where I am today despite 20 years of a lot of pain and anguish when I look at my friendships, God my friendships, my friendships with many women that I have had very close and meaningful relationships with have turned out to be very disappointing. Many of them, not all of them, but many of them. And so what has happened for me is that it’s almost easier to not put myself out there and love my friends, or even get into a deep level of friendship, because of the fact that that disappointment may happen again. And so I don’t want to go through it. I don’t, I don’t want to go through it. So I just keep myself probably a little guarded, and may seem really sad to a lot of people. And I’m sure that it is. But I know that right now, for me, this sort of life that I’m living on my own with the connections that I’ve made with people online, it’s enough for me, while that may be sad for other people to hear, it’s not sad for me to say, reading, I’m not sad, when I think about how much I love my parents and my sister. And like, step siblings, I have to say that it comes from such a sense of real, I don’t have to pretend that I’m somebody that I’m not, I don’t have to apologize for who I am, I have made incredible strides in my health and well being. And I know that when we talk about this version of myself, I am the best version. And I’m not a version for somebody else’s acceptance, which I talked about last week, or love. I also feel that while others may think that I’m not capable of love, I think I’m too capable of love. And let me explain what that means I can easily fall in love with somebody, you know, and that person may not be worthy of the depths of my capabilities of what I give in love. I’m very caring, and loving and generous at my own expense. But at the time that I’m in it, I don’t feel like I’m sacrificing anything. It’s only in hindsight, when the relationship doesn’t go in the direction that I think it’s may have had the possibility to go or maybe it did. But then it becomes something where I feel a little taken advantage of, or maybe a better word would be taken for granted. And that’s where the disappointment in love comes from, you know, look, when we talk about the infidelity, there is no question that I thought this is love. If that relationship had lasted, I can honestly say I don’t know whether it would have lasted into a loving wonderful relationships. Certainly my marriage didn’t. And if the if my marriage didn’t last into a loving, long term relationship, even though 20 years is still a long time, how could that one be successful in the long term? And it probably wouldn’t have and I probably would have been equally unhappy. And I would have had two failed. You know, if, let’s say I married the man, two failed marriages. So I don’t know. Because that one didn’t turn into anything more than what it was. You know, when we talk about real love. Sometimes we talk about the things we celebrate with Valentine’s we just celebrated that a few weeks ago with flowers and cards and chocolates. And, you know, look, love is marketed to be something that it really isn’t what does that mean? Well, in truth, love is blind. Love is messy. It’s mean it’s unkind. It tears you up in the most unforgiving ways, and it can pay you back in the most wonderful ways.

09:04

I don’t know if I’m ever going to love again. If I have any interest in putting myself in that position. I don’t know. I don’t want that to be a sad thought. I feel like maybe there’s some things I need to be doing for myself that I am already doing and I can continue to do to be happy. I remember my sister once telling me you know, healthy relationships that you have with a partner are, you know the bonus meaning once once you kind of get it all together with yourself and that’s when we will talk about in a minute. The relationship is just the bonus. And what she’s talking about is the relationship that you have with yourself. The loving relationship that you have with yourself puts you In a position for far more successful relationship with others, because you’re very clear about who you are, I feel like I’m really late to the party on this one. I feel like I should have gotten this 2025 years ago. And I’m now just getting it in my late 50s. I look around and I see some of the people that I, you know, grew up with, or knew when my children were young, and they all seem to have very successful and happy relationships. You know, not every one of us ended up in a divorce, how did they manage to keep it going? How did my parents managed to keep it going? You know, I don’t know. But for me, it just didn’t seem like it was in the cards. And I don’t want to make it seem like I’m a selfish person, the truth of the matter is, I’m probably more giving than selfish, you know, I, I give everything that I have. And then there’s nothing left for me. And maybe I’m just now realizing that that might not have suited me very well, that there were better things that I could have done for myself earlier on, put my foot down a little bit, you know, more strongly and said, you know, no, I need this from you, I need you to go to therapy with me, I’m in a marriage with you. And this is not a one sided problem. This is a two sided problem. Because that comment, which sounds mean, really hurt. And I thought there’s something wrong with me. And there wasn’t just one thing wrong, there was many things wrong, but there was a lot of things wrong with us. And anybody who says any person that who is in a relationship, that it’s all on one person is just wrong. That is just not fair, because it does take two people to make it wonderful and successful. But if it’s not, and one person is spiraling in a different direction, it takes two people to get back to each other. And I couldn’t speak up loudly enough, I was scared. And I didn’t love myself well enough, deeply enough, or confidently enough to say, if you want me to stay in this marriage, we need to do this together. And that just didn’t happen. Water under the bridge, I know. But I do think it’s important to say this in this podcast, because of how deeply it has impacted me, I’m very gun shy when it comes to loving again. And I’m only saying that because I had subsequent relationships after the marriage. But they didn’t turn out to be long term, either they were long term until they ended, you know, and I feel in many of them that the other person didn’t give as much as they could have either. And again, that leaves me feeling a little less loved. So I also recognize that I can’t rely on somebody else, obviously, to bring me up or to love me so that I can feel better about myself. It actually starts with me. And it also ends with me. And anybody who can get inside of that can actually enjoy the benefits of the best version of me meaning my authenticity and my generosity, and my kindness, and my ability and compassion for loving others loving animals loving and giving everything I have of myself to somebody who is worthy and generous enough to recognize it. And then love me right back and do the same. We talked a little bit in the room today. I loved what somebody said about you know, we are conditioned to think that love loving relationships are are like a Hallmark movie, you know, we get wrapped up in the fantasy, even the movie Love Actually. And we get into these, and they’re not sappy because you know what they are, they’re hopeful. That’s what we all want. We all want to have those romantic pictures that we see on the screen and we want that for ourselves. And we see it on social media, you know these romantic engagements and you know, all I can think when I see any of this as God, what are you in for? That’s so mean. Only because that doesn’t mean you know, I see it for what it is I see that it’s hard. And I know that people probably told me it was gonna be hard about loving and I don’t know if I ever really knew how hard I think I really depended upon my capacity to love in the in the way I did for very long. time, until I felt so broken, mostly because I didn’t feel loved in return, you know, my parents, my gosh, talk about love, despite my ugliest moments, they’ve loved me for everything that I am and all that I could be, because they knew it was in me. And now they get to be alive to see that best version of me. And so as my sister, and how grateful I am for that, it’s one of those epiphany moments, you know, I, I really understand that, maybe if I’m going to talk about love, I can speak from it from a place of finally being so happy within myself so content with myself, that maybe I don’t have to love another human being to prove it, I only have to love myself and be healthy and take care of myself, and know that I can take care of myself, I can count on myself to be strong, and to deal with whatever might come my way, even if it’s the the worst, I mean, I went through the worst, you know, and I came out the other end pretty, pretty well off, I had to make some very bold decisions to do that, to come out the other end, you can’t go on the path of destruction and expect to come out the other end a better person, you have to get rid of the toxicity. You have to get rid of the relationships that don’t work for you. You have to say to yourself, this is very important to me, and I want to be happy, I want to feel love and when the right person or if the right person comes into my life, that person will have to love just as well as I can. I’m not waiting for that person to do that. I’m just putting it out there. That I’m not saying no, I’m just saying we’ll see.

16:58

So, this is a very strong subject, this topic of love, you know, there are poems written there movies about it. And I hope that I have spoken from a place of true authenticity when I talk about love. Not unfavorably, but more favorably because I am very much happy and healthy. And love the relationship that I have with myself. So that’s what I’ve got. Okay, well I hope you enjoyed this or any other episode of Don’t lose your balance. You can download it share it. Follow me on Instagram I have two handles one is Mallory underscore Duric. The other is Don’t lose your balance. And SC That’s Mary Sam and David. Don’t lose your balance MSC I have a website. Don’t lose your balance calm, and I look forward to hearing how you didn’t lose your balance along your life’s journey along the way. Thanks so much and I’ll see you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Hi, I am Mallory Durrick. I am a creative. A Marketing Strategist and Web Designer with a small and modest boutique Marketing Agency living in the suburbs of Philadelphia. I am the creator and narrator of this podcast, Don’t Lose Your Balance. This is a culmination of decades of self-help books, countless doctors, numerous hospitals, including rehabs. Once a wife, now divorced, a mother, a grandmother and an addict in recovery. These are things that I am and have experienced.

I’m sharing it all. Baring it all. Hoping to help others; not lose their balance.