To Thy Ownself Be True

PREFACE: I have reached a point in my life where I fear adults who don't consider themselves to be the most important adult in their lives.  To parents, grandparents and guardians of children as well as children of an ill/disabled parent...I exempt you from this.  To the religious and spiritual, of all flavors, I exempt you from this IF AND ONLY IF you consider God or your deity to be most important.  To all other adults...if you seriously and truly put the happiness, welfare, and interests of another adult, unconditionally, above your own or your happiness together (if there is a relationship involved)...I fear you.

NOTE:  I will ask that everyone re-read the above paragraph because there are a lot of areas here that could be misconstrued.  I definitely do not support or condone self-interest above all else.  The world is made better by people having relationships, communities, families and responsibilities to one another.

Now, let me start by saying that I believe a person who does not value themselves above others is capable of doing just about anything.  They can lie, cheat, steal, ruin and kill themselves.  It's true any person could do the same out of self-interest as well.  Still, there is one critical difference between a person of self-interest and a subservient person...a person of self-interest ALWAYS has the most important person in their life with them.  They will never be separated or broken apart from the person that they have endowed with all the importance of their life.  Not even death can separate the two (if you believe in an afterlife).  A subservient person has placed all the importance of their life on the bidding of another person.  There are any number of ways to sever the relationship or access to that person.  When that relationship, that access is severed...that subservient person becomes very dangerous.  Not only are they left with themselves, whom they don't view as #1 (who cares what I do to myself, let alone anyone else) now they are either working to get back into the good graces of the one that left them (if they are still alive...think of the astronaut-diaper lady) or they are left to search for someone else to become their #1 (the methods used here are too numerous to even give a good example).

Having any form of relationship (platonic or otherwise) with someone who doesn't consider him/herself to be #1 can be extreme. 

If you are the person they consider #1, then you have an incredible amount of power over them.  You can do any number of things to them, to their life, to the people in their life and they will find a way to ignore or excuse it.  You can misuse, abuse and defile them, your relationship or both and that too will go ignored or excused.  Where you will have an issue is trying to leave them.  No person is more likely to snap than someone who has given you everything.  No person is more likely to cut your dick off, cut your break line, stab you in your sleep, stalk you, kill you than this person.

If you are not the person they consider to be #1, then ultimately your caring, sharing, beliefs, opinions, values, rules of personal conduct, rules of friendship, family mores, marriage vows, laws, and divine mandates mean nothing to them.  Whatever the basis for your relationship (that you hold on to) is a string that is easily cut if you should attempt to come between them and their #1.  This person is less likely to be violent with you, but far more likely to use subtle means to keep whatever you are providing.  In any case, they are just as likely to disregard your relationship as keep it because anything you provide them doesn't and will never match their #1.

I have known far too many people in my life who tell a never-ending string of lies to themselves (and consequently to others).  I have spent so long knowing, befriending, and in the past, dating people like this that I've given up on trying to relate, deal with, or fix it.  A person who is either unwilling or incapable of seeing themselves as more important (baring children, the ill parent/child, or the divine) can only fix themselves if and when they decide they want to badly enough.

MARRIAGE: There will be some who would bring up marriage as an instance where there should be an exemption.  A person's husband or wife should be more important to them than themselves.  I couldn't disagree more.  Any relationship where you chose to get into it and could, if so inclined, choose to get out of it is not a situation where you should make this person everything.  Why?  Because if you lose that relationship, by any means, then you are left with nothing.  You made the determination that you weren't #1 and it becomes extraordinarily hard to get that back, if you ever had it in the first place. 

A marriage, at least in most Western cultures, is a voluntary union of two individuals who choose to make the other person important to them.  They choose to take care of the other person, take care of themselves, pay the bills, hold a job, pay compliments, have sex, clean the house, take out the trash, be honest, spend time together, and all the other wonderful things that come with a good and healthy relationship.  That relationship is a bond of choices...you choose to make it important or you choose not to.  The other person chooses to make you important to them or they choose not to.  "Til' death do us part" is not the end-all-be-all.  "Til' I choose not to" is.  If anything, that is why I love marriage and hold it in such high esteem.  I celebrate people who have been married for long periods of time because through all the things they've been through individually and together they have continued to choose each other.  Through most moments, days, months, years, decades they have made the choice that their spouse was important.  As the current divorce rates will tell you, they don't have to make that choice. 

MY MARRIAGE:
My wife doesn't have to make that choice with me, but she has and she does and it is one of the many reasons I love her.  I don't have to make that choice with her, but I have and I do because it is IMPORTANT TO ME.  I love my wife but it doesn't mean that I have to or unconditionally will be with my wife forever or she with me.  If I was a danger to her, our children or both she would leave me and it is a comfort to know that she would...I wouldn't deserve her or them.  The opposite is also true.  We both share a love for our children that would (for purposes of their or our own protection) surpass our love and relationship.   In short, if my wife were a danger to me (self-interest) or my children (also self-interest but holds a higher place than caring for myself) then the choice would change because of something MORE IMPORTANT. 

My children are unconditionally more important than me.  It has caused me to grow in ways I didn't think possible and gave me a greater appreciation of what my mother did for me.  My wife is more important than me in many ways and I readily make that choice.  I am learning to make that choice more consistently, which is just a part of me and our relationship maturing.  My God is more important than me and I am learning to make that choice more consistently as well.  There are many things I will choose to put above myself, but I will always reserve that choice as my own.