I’m sure you’ve heard the phrases: Going through life with blinders on, blind trust, turning a blind eye, blind truth. They all basically mean the same things which is denying or ignoring the obvious things or events that are right in front of your face,why . So many people do it, yes, I’m guilty as well.
The questions is why? Why do we blindly trust people? Why do we blindly believe? Is it because we want to believe that everyone is good or is it because we don’t want to admit that people are bad? Perhaps we don’t want to admit we were wrong about someone, or acknowledge the faults of others?
As I said, I’m GUILTY! I’ve been taken advantage of by people in many ways, because I believed lies, when the reality was that I was being manipulated and used. Many years ago, after leaving my first husband, I went to an awesome therapist and she told me that one of my biggest problems was that I believed everyone was like me and that people were honest, sincere, truthful and trustworthy. I believed that people had morals, respect for others and had integrity. She was right, I did and in the end, I lost a lot, not only financially, but emotionally and mentally as well.
I’ve also been the victim of someone else putting blinders on and when I was a young teenager, things happened that could have been stopped, but weren’t because others either didn’t want to see what was happening, or didn’t want to admit to it. And, those same people even went so far as to defend the actions of another and to this day still do and I’m sure always will. You know that saying “You can choose your friends, but not your family?”
So, the question is why do we ignore or turn a blind eye to the obvious? I can answer only for myself and my answer, in a lot of cases is that I was looking for love and acceptance. Up until about 10 years ago, I had virtually no self esteem, no self-confidence, no self-worth….nada. Growing up, I didn’t feel or experience love from my parents or family, so I looked for it elsewhere and when people were kind to me and told me nice things and pretended to like me, I think that I so badly wanted to believe them that I ignored the obvious stuff and convinced myself that they were for real. I can’t say that I don’t do those things any longer, because I still want to believe that people are genuinely good and for the most part I truly think they are, but I still, to this day get taken advantage of by people who pretend to be friends. However, what has changed is my ability to see through those type of people quickly, before it gets too out of hand and today, I am loaded with self-confidence, self-esteem and self-worth…perhaps sometimes overloaded!
There was a book I read a while ago by Don Miquel Ruiz…it was a great book. The title is “The Four Agreements.” It talked about agreements we make with ourselves, with the people we interact with and with our higher power if any. One of the things it made me think about was how to be true to myself…to accept nothing less then what I deserved and to realize that I am a wonderful person, who is caring, loving, honest, trustworthy and true and that by ignoring the obvious and allowing people to use me, I am lying to myself…who wins in that case? Certainly not me! It taught me so much, especially about other people, the way people dance around something when they don’t want to answer you, the way someone who is put into a situation will adapt to that situation only long enough to calm the situation and then will revert back to their true selves. For instance the abusive relationship I was in…in the beginning, he was a wonderful guy who was caring, supportive, attentive and more…but it was an act just to get into my good graces. Once he knew he had me, his true self began to emerge, but at the times when he thought I had regained enough strength in myself to separate from him, he went back to the nice guy who claimed to love me. It took me three years to gain enough strength to finally walk away and up until the very end, the very last day, he begged me to stay, telling me he would change, he loved me and didn’t want to give up on me…when he saw that it was the end, he reverted back to his old self and accused me of giving up on “us” and throwing away the life we had together and telling me how it could have been so good if I only had the faith to hang in there with him. Again, even to the end, it was all an act…had I stayed, it wouldn’t have taken long for him to turn into the abusive man who would fly into a rage in an instant and I knew this, I actually experienced it when I was gone for a short while to take care of some business and all the while I was gone, every day he told me he loved me, wanted to make things right, was sorry for all the things that happened and more. But, when I came home, it took exactly 4 days for him to return to the man who would hold me down to the bed by my wrists, squeezing them as hard as he could and berate me for hours. I swear he was trying to break my wrists and I’m not so sure he didn’t put a hairline fracture in them, because to this day, they occasionally hurt. He did break my fingers…guess what, I had the nerve to tell him he had to pay half the rent after he’d been living with me rent free for 11 months while supposedly looking for a job.
I’m getting off my subject here, so I’ll get back onto it and write more about that relationship some other day.
To be continued…..
