There comes a time when we all make a mistake in our relationship. When we decide to do something that may be out of character for us—but, we make the conscious (and selfish) decision to do it anyway. Regardless of how it may affect the other person in the relationship—we still go along with our desired plan and course-of-action.

So what’s next?

My Personal Mistake

I believe in order to be good at what you do (being a relationship strategist), you have to experience the ups and downs. I’ve been through the ups, and the down (in that order). I’ve been the protagonist that was opposed by the antagonist. That being said, I’ve also been the antagonist. Let’s just say, I broke a heart or two because I wasn’t honest when I should have been. To be quite honest, I didn’t protect them the way I should have. In the end, they were hurt, and I was even more hurt because it was outside my character to do so, and I inflicted unnecessary pain on someone I care about.

One thing I did learn is that I can’t be someone that I’m not, and whenever I’ve slid even slightly outside who I am, it backfires.

Experience With a Mistake

I don’t believe I could be good at understanding relationships and people if I didn’t have my own past transgressions. I cheated before, and I’ve lied. I’ve been the worst version of myself. I own it, and It helped me grow into a better man. Sometimes it took time. Other times, the change was instantaneous. No matter how long, change always occurs if you own your mistake.

When you see the pain you cause the other person, there’s no way you can go back there. Only a fool would go back there.

So what’s next?

It was the hardest thing to do… take that long look in the mirror and realize the mistake I made hurt someone I truly love. Someone I care for. I’ve heard the saying… that you don’t hurt someone you love. I beg to differ. You usually hurt the ones you love, the most. When you don’t really care about someone, their feelings don’t come into consideration (maybe a little). You will live a wayward life, and not care one bit.

When these situations occurred, I realized that I made a mistake. Instead of coming clean, I tried to cover it up. Not because I was trying to be sneaky, I just didn’t want to hurt her feelings. I also didn’t want to face the reaction I knew she’d have. Or potentially risk losing her even if I was truthful. Later on, I found out she would’ve handled it a lot differently than I had originally anticipated (wish I had told her the truth, but hindsight is 20/20). Not so fortunately for me, it was too late. The damage had been done, the die-cast, and I found myself submerged in a profound amount of fecal matter up to the mid-line prominence of my nose.

Humility is

• agonizing
• arduous
• difficult
• dire
• excruciating
• harrowing

…but mostly, it’s flat-out uncomfortable and borderline disrespectful. When you make a mistake, and you take accountability for all the lying, cheating, double-life leading, bull-ish you’ve done, you go through a painful metamorphosis.

Ever been punched in the gut? Yeah…that’s the pain. You gasp for air, and can’t find one sip. But… it’s more figurative than it is literal. It’s more unvarnished than it (humility) is finished with your ass. You see, humility is a redundant son-of-bitch. It will constantly remind you of how “you know you fu_k_ed-up.”

I was Cain in the movie Menace II Society, and my lady was Bill Duke. I was just waiting on her to put the gun on the table. Sitting there, looking like a damn unprepared criminal on the stand. Right in front of Johnny Cochran and Robert Kardashian. Meanwhile, they are both tearing me a new one with question after question. Case and point, after case-and-point.

You Gotta Lose To Gain

I had lost something dear to me (trust), and the feeling I felt afterward was gut-wrenching. I let her down. I didn’t protect her. I felt like I lost my puppy. At the same time, I felt like I kicked a puppy.

I am an empath. I am hypersensitive to the pain of others. As a result, when [I] inflict pain, I feel it three-times as bad as they do. When you care about someone, you feel their pain on some level. As an empath, you feel pain on their level, your level, and some undocumented level.

I know, and I knew, that I didn’t want to feel that emotional pain again. Yet, I knew that I would probably hurt someone else in a new way.

How can I say that?

Because I’m human. The pain I cause, will not be anything remotely like what I described above. However, believing that you will not cause your partner pain, is unrealistic, because you will. The key is to humbly make-up for the mistake and minimize the number of times the mistakes occur.

If you don’t, you’ll be in for a boatload of heartbreak, and heartache.

But… Basically… you’ll be single all over again.

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