Three's 4 Me: What do your relationships do for you?

In my daily creepin' around the ole' internet, I found a wonderful little lady named Ashley, who's obviously quite adorable in her style, but even more awesome because one of her posts has to do with a topic which has been swimming around my head for the past, oh, four years.

What could eclipse my attention for so long, you ask? Well, it's a semi-deep topic, and since rarely do I write on here about deep topics, I stayed away from it. Anyway, the title of her post was,

"What do your relationships do for you?"

It goes on to feature a little quiz you can give yourself, and based on the answers you receive, you can either choose to make a change in your life, or recognize the fact that you have an awesome inner circle.

So what did this post mean to me?

Well, most of us have, at one point or another, dated a weirdo. Most of us have also, at some point, been friends with someone who sucks the energy out of you either because you're trying to keep up with that particular person, or because they are simply a whirlwind of the wrong type of personality. It's just the facts of life. People enter into weird relationships for various reasons, but the point is, why does one stay friends/romantically involved with such people?

Here's some back story as to why I've been thinking about this topic for so long:

In my tender youth, {okay, okay, I'm still quite youthful, but I'm talking high school here, people!}, I always thought it was a great idea to try to fix the people who needed some fixin'. Although I secretly prided myself for possessing this quality, why was I trying to fix people who couldn't be fixed by me? It just wasn't possible. They had serious life issues, they acted out because of those issues. Basically, it was always over my head, but I tried to ignore the fact that I was surrounding myself with quite a few weirdos {I don't say "weirdos" in a derogatory sense, I just mean that they acted "weird" on many an-occasion, and that sort of behavior earned them the label of "trouble makers"}, because I felt like I was their beacon of light, or something, because I would make them laugh and treated them without judgement. I never really considered that hanging with those peeps sort of brought me down, because they were so wrapped up in their own insecurities, they couldn't function normally in society.

{I didn't technically "surround" myself with weirdos. I had my close group of awesome girlfriends, who were real go-getters, then on the side were my friendships with said weirdos.}

Anyway, of course I dated one or two of these bad boys, during which time my parents were going nuts {what happened to our baby who loved pink?}, but once the final break up happened, I decided that I wanted a boyfriend who was an upstanding member of society. Someone who had parents who were proud of him, someone who was fun and spirited, someone who actually loved life, someone like me! {I sounded outrageously conceited right there, try to ignore that......I'm trying to get a point across!}

Anyway, I found him: Chad!

What I'm saying here is, what do your relationships say about you? What sort of people do you want to surround yourself with? Are they people who build you up, or are they people who are warped into Bizarro-World, and bring you down?

{I'm not saying that people with insecurities are bad people, because we all have insecurities. I'm talking about people who act out negatively because of those insecurities, who ultimately affect your life in a negative way. Of course everyone should help one another in overcoming difficult life problems, but are they problems that are beyond your help?}

Anyway, I hope to get this point across to Carter and Babe #2 when the time is right, because it's one of the most important lessons I have learned as an adult. I can thank my positive, wonderful, optimistic husband for showing me that!

Wow, that was a LONG, LONG, LONG post. Geeze. But I'm serious! Surround yourself with people who are positive, and actually bring something to the table, not people who remind you of The Grinch. It's important!

Some positive people? Of course!......