Guarding Your Heart By Not Taking Crap

Dear Audience to my mind,

Thank you so much to everyone who submitted questions for me! I really appreciate them… they keep blogger Kim in line. ;) You guys have asked me some pretty good questions, and I’m excited to answer them and hopefully help you get closer to clearing your mind!

So the other day I’m talking to a friend of mine. And, when two young single adult Mormon girls are talking, the chances of the topic of boys and dating coming up are pretty high. So yes, we’re talking about boys and she’s a really smart kid! She had such mind-blowing ideas, I even asked her to contribute to this post so I wouldn’t feel like I was plagiarizing her brain. But she said she trusts me. From that conversation, I was inspired me to answer this question: How do you protect yourself from heartbreak?

My last post was all about how to overcome sadness, whereas this one is how to keep the sadness from coming at all. There’s the difference right there. Another difference between this post and the last one is I covered general sadness, whereas this one is specifically the heartbreak from a dude! Whether you got dumped, or you had to break up with a guy you’re still crazy about, you caught him cheating, he lied to you, your best friend stabbed you in the back, etc.

Getting your heart broken sucks. I’ve been there! Sometimes that heartbreak is inevitable, but other times, you can keep yourself from getting hurt. Sometimes you get over it in a week, but other times it can take a year. Sometimes you let go of the pain but you make yourself more cautious, and other times, you just forget it until you get hurt again. Sometimes we brought the heartache to ourselves and sometimes we’re innocent. Either way, I think it would be fair to say that all of us women face situations where if we’re not careful, we run the risk of getting hurt.

Now, just because I’ve had my heart broken before doesn’t mean I see myself as an idiot for letting it happen! Yes, looking back I could’ve avoided a couple heartbreaks from happening but at the same time I don’t regret any of it. As much as I hate to admit it, I’m glad I’ve been hurt before. You know why? Cuz they made me tougher for when another “emotional obstacle” is placed before me. They also made me better able to keep it from happening again by either evaluating what I did in the past that can be avoided in the future or what kind of guys I should avoid. They also made me wiser and more sympathetic, they made me get to know myself, and they taught me what I want for myself now and in the future.

So that being said, just because you’ve been hurt doesn’t make you a weak person. In fact, you may not know it yet, but you are stronger for having gone through a heart break. But it definitely takes a while for us to really see how much we’ve grown and learned. So don’t beat yourself up if you’ve been hurt. At the same time, don’t go out and about doing whatever the heck you want with the mentality of “if I mess up I’ll learn from it, so I’ll just dive in to this without thinking twice!”; be responsible, make good choices, and try your best to learn from others’ mistakes rather than your own, because it spares you from a lot of pain because trust me, in life you will unavoidably go through some hard times. So don’t add more pain to your life by deliberately making foolish choices “just so you can learn from those consequences”. Does that make sense?

Anyways, here’s something about me: I’ve never been the popular girl who’s dated half the guys in her senior class type. So I guess you could say I’m not an expert in relationships. But somehow, I still managed to learn valuable lessons from just casual dating and stories. And I’m here to share those lessons I learned with you, but there were so many of them that I split it all up into different posts. So stay tuned and wish me luck here!

PART 1:

To me, personally, regrets are what hurt me the most. The kind of regret I’m referring to is the kind where you don’t speak your mind. I’m not saying lose your filter and say whatever comes. But if you’re in a situation where you feel like something you could do or say would make things better, then do it! Or you’ll regret it and wonder what if.

Be completely honest (but not nagging or overbearing) with the person. If something they do or say isn’t cool, then tell them straight up! Let them know that you’re not okay with it. It’s by not telling them anything that you’re allowing them to think it’s okay to keep doing or saying it. And if they keep doing or saying something you don’t like, it’ll eventually hurt you when it could’ve been avoided had you told them at the beginning. Don’t be passive-aggressive, because those are the most unbearable kind of people out there. Be honest and assertive!

There’s also other ways we take crap from people other than letting them be mean; there’s also letting them make you compromise your standards, which I will go into more detail later on. Another possible way of taking crap from someone, particularly guys, is letting them make bad decisions that jeopardize their integrity as priesthood holders and/or professionals. Sure, they’re big boys and it’s their responsibility to be worthy; but it’s also ours as women to support their priesthood by helping them honour it. We need to help them want to be better men! It’s our sacred duty to do so. And guys have just as much responsibility of helping the chicks remain worthy as well!

Some people try so hard to show how easygoing they are when really, they’re just being pushovers and letting them walk all over them. I’m not saying try to find a reason to pick fights either though; I’m referring to things that are genuinely important. Nagging on a guy because he leaves the toilet seat up is not that important! At least to me. And of course there are ways to approach a person without being mean or self-righteous. That’s why it’s important to live a worthy clean life so the spirit can guide you! And if the person thinks you’re being dramatic and won’t listen to your side and your feelings when you approach them as nicely as you possibly can, then they don’t respect you.

That works the other way around too. If a person offers you feedback, listen. Be humble. And if it doesn’t compromise your standards or your values, then work on it and see it as them helping you become a better person.

Okay, what does that have to do with sparing yourself from getting hurt? It’s about being assertive. When something is bothering you, but you hold it in, it’ll only make it worse. The more you hold it in, the more frustrated you’ll be with the fact that they haven’t changed their behavior. Full-time missionaries are expected to have weekly companionship inventories as a way to enhance unity and invite the spirit and improve themselves! So apply that. I don’t know about you guys, but I can tell when a person is mad but trying to cover it up. And it’s annoying when I ask them if anything’s wrong and they say no, but you can tell they’re lying. It’s like, “ok, you’re obviously pissed at me. But if you won’t tell me, how the heck am I gonna know what I did so I won’t do it again?”. PLEASE don’t be passive-aggressive. They are, to me, the most unhappy, bitter and frustrated people out there. Why? Because they don’t have the balls to speak their mind and pursue what they want in a relationship!

That’s why it’s so important to make your decisions and to set your standards early in life. If you haven’t done it already, do it now. As you ponder on your decisions and your standards you may decide, “Hmm.. well to me it’s important to dress modestly, so I want a guy who respects that.” Then if you’re dating a guy who asks you to compromise that and mocks the standards you set before he even came around, it’s a lot easier to dump him and move on.

Never let a guy take advantage of you. I heard a story about a chick who dated this guy and he would ask her to send him pictures. At first he’d ask for normal pictures. Then he'd progressively and subtly would ask for pictures where she was wearing less and less items of clothing. She eventually dumped him before anything else happened, repented and is an active member of the church unlike him. Girls, if you’re ever caught in that kind of a situation you remember the standards you’ve set for yourself and stick to them. No guy in this world is worth more than the standards you’ve set for yourself and let alone your worthiness to enter the temple. No matter how much you think you like a guy, don’t take crap from him. If he’s asking you to compromise your standards, I promise that if you say no, you will find a guy who would never ask you to do that! Don’t settle for a guy who doesn’t respect you and stick to your standards.

At a young women's camp, my stake president at the time told us a similar story about a guy who tried to tempt a girl to compromise her standards for him and he said any guy who does that is selfish and doesn't care about you. And I'm here to stand by him on that. If a guy is driven more by his impulses than your personal worthiness, he doesn't care about you. He is selfish and you should dump him without thinking twice! And if he pulls the "If you love me, you'll do this!", just punch him like you'd punch your laptop when it freezes. He obviously needs a brain implant anyway, so you might as well knock some sense into that little head. Just kidding. That's only something I would do, and I'm not a perfect person! But I promise you he'll get over it and live (the dumping part, not the punching part), and so will you!

I know it’s not easy. Some guys are very persuasive and charming. Don’t, I repeat, don’t let a guy’s charm move you more than your goal to enter the temple. There is absolutely no place on Earth more important than the temple. Think about the many miles the early latter-day saints traveled just so they could enter the temple. Some left their families to join the church. Some lost their family members along the way. But they kept their vision and their goal; they knew how sacred and important the temple was. Let’s follow their example. The Lord doesn’t ask us to walk across the country to get to the temple; all He asks for is a virtuous and worthy life. Don’t let Lucifer tempt you with a hot guy! And if it gets really hard, pray to God. Remember He wants you to enter the temple worthily and make those covenants with Him and He is more than willing to help you get there. But you gotta let Him help you!

What does setting high standards for yourself have to do with guarding your heart? When we commit serious sins like breaking the law of chastity, there are consequences that come along with it. Those consequences can be painful. Yes, you can repent – but not before you go through the consequences of that sin. A heartache is painful enough… why add more pain to that by committing serious sins that have serious consequences attached to them? It's one thing to get your heart broken, and it's another to get your heart broken and on top of that feel guilty for exposing yourself to someone who ended up hurting you.

Another reason as to why setting high standards will protect your heart is that it’ll allow you to enter the temple worthily (as mentioned earlier). When your eyes are fixed to the house of God, you develop a relationship with Him that is so strong, that your faith will increase so that you can withstand whatever fiery darts come your way, like a heartbreak.

Well, that was everything for part 1. Stay tuned for part 2 coming soon!!

Love,

Miss Mottola! :]