I don’t have the greatest relationship with women. I don’t have a good relationship with my mother. I have a terrible relationship with my ex-wife and her sisters. My defacto daughter in (common)law and I get along according to how her relationship with her mom is going. The Lady Talis and I are doing fine, which remains the outlier. I’m not sure what it is about the relationships, but they don’t ever seem to go well for very long (save the Lady Talis, of course). I blame my mom for the expectations I have of female relationships. I believe that expectation is that they are going to crap all over me, and I’m supposed to smile and say, “Thank you m’am, may I have some more?”
Clearly that hasn’t been working out. At some point, however, I leaned into the idea of being who I want to be and basing my habits and ideas around that person and how that person ought to be treated. For example, when my Mom continued to treat me like crap, I stopped talking to her but continued sending mom day gifts and best wishes, because it was the person I wanted to be and the right thing to do. At some point it stopped being about her. On the other hand, the time and energy I put into picking the right gift; the right words for the Lady Talis is reflective of a bond.
What I mean to say is there are different levels to every relationship. We do what we do either for the person we love, because of the person we love, or because of how we want to feel as a human. I find that those things exist in a descending order. The greatest gift you can give to another human is to do something for them and them alone. The least you can do is to do it for how it makes you feel. That bit in the middle is a sliding scale, and it can mean so many different things.
Truly too many to get through in ten minutes.