I push people.  I push them towards the places, talents, and goals that they tell me about in confidence.  Also, I sometimes push them because I see in them what they refuse to see in themselves.  Unfortunately, more often than not I end up pushing them far away from me.

It used to bother me when an Ex seemed to do better after our relationship ended.  They went on to achieve the success that we dreamed about for them.  Yet, they did not do much more than talk about it when we were together.  It was a personal blow to hear that she finally started that business, went back to school, earned her graduate degree, completed her licensing, accepted that international post, and actually cut a demo.  I wondered if I had held them back from these aspirations when we were together.  Or, could I have been the catalyst that they needed to reach those levels?

I look at things from different angles and usually judge myself harshly in the process.  I start with the potentially negative views, because I like to end on positives.  In these cases, maybe I was too hard on these women.  Is it possible that my voice was so loud that I drowned out theirs?  Maybe I pushed them to jump before they were ready, or God was ready for them to go.  Maybe I failed because they only needed someone to play the supportive role or provide an attentive ear, and it took someone else to do so to fulfill their basic need.

The juxtaposition is that I was not pushing them after all.  What if my initiatives had the opposite result of holding these women back?  What if I served as the resistance that would actually propel them towards their dreams?  If this were the case, then our season served a positive purpose.

Consider that if you hold something back long enough, then when it is released it will have an even greater momentum to hit its target.  The analogy that I use is a bow and arrow.  If I provide resistance to the string of a bow, and these women were the arrows, then the release of our relationship shot them forward with ferocious speed.  No wonder they all seemed to be successful.

Here lies the crux of the matter for me.  No one chooses another person’s faith entirely.   Whatever impact that I had on these lives is of secondary consequence.  In the end, the only similarity between these relationships is that I had the pleasure of dating some wonderful women.  Each of them saw something pretty special in me/us, too.

Sometimes it may seem as though you, we, prepared an ex for the next – but we must remember that the blocks of life sharpens both sides of the blade.  We gain as much as it appears that we lose.  Be grateful for the relationships, and lessons learned.  Celebrate your ex’s new found success, and embrace all that your future holds.