The Importance Of Taking Behaviour At Face Value

In the technological age, we seek to understand someone's behaviour to irrational points of thinking.

Let's talk about potential partner's.

In the beginning stages of courtship, it's exciting the rush of feel-good hormones. It feels lovely to be in the euphoria of the start of something new. Then, like all things, reality intrudes, and we face obstacles.

Work, side hustles, external relationships, an ex-baby mama or daddy. Mental health. Pandemics. The Climate Emergency. The need to work on well-being. Maybe even the end of financial year tax time.

All of these aspects contribute to different levels of stress. The way a person reacts to these everyday challenges changes their behaviour. You and your potential partner's love bubble doesn't save you from this reality.

The euphoria transitions from good morning messages to no messages. Or the snap streak ends. Sometimes they dismantle the whole relationship.

You get left on read.

Post someone else on their feed.

Or, they block you.

And then, you sit for too much time, wondering what you did wrong. How you could have behaved otherwise to meet their ends. In what ways you could have subjugated your needs to make sure you felt needed.

However, this hurts you in the long run. You step away from yourself rather than stepping towards yourself. What you need is to check out from the onslaught of inner-dialogue that questions and makes you doubt yourself. You need to reassure, nurture and love yourself.

But, in this technological age, the 25/7 access to people has limited our ability to check ourselves. Green icons, read receipts, geotags… all of these features tempt us to check-in, check on and hinder our need to check out.

Perhaps there's a quote, a liked post, or a song in a story that activates the idea of the subliminal message.

"I know what they told me or what their actions told me… but their social says otherwise."

It isn't healthy having so much access to people. A healthy relationship, romantic, platonic or otherwise, should sustain itself with blips in communication without causing anxiety without 25/7 access to them.

While it is possible they could be going through something, don't you deserve the respect of communication?

And if they can't communicate, what does this have to do with you?

If you are mature enough to enter the beginning phases of a relationship, you should be mature enough to meet the challenges and communicate.

You sat and stressed, ramped up the anxiety and allowed yourself to doubt that you, as you are, are worthy of a potential partner who meets you at the social, emotional, spiritual and physical levels you work towards.

You spent your valuable energy creating stories and fiction of what they could be going through and what challenges they might be facing. And because the euphoria was so beautiful, you create convoluted, romanticised versions of their experience to hold space just in case they came back.

But sometimes, no matter how much we crave it to be different, a person's behaviour is not riddled with underlining meaning from the Universe or from hardship.

It's just their behaviour.

The importance of taking someone's behaviour at face value is to not lose yourself in someone else. You are the most important person for yourself. Before you put yourself in the hands of someone else, you must be so good with yourself that a potential partner's shitty behaviour doesn't send you into a spiral.

What are the exceptions?

There are many, and life's narratives are complicated. For the sake of succinctness:

1. Unforeseen tragedy

We should not live our days waiting for the worst to happen. When it does happen, we should gather around and help each other.

2. Mental Health

People can have months and months of good mental health and wake up one day and be the total opposite of fine.

3. Stress

Some of the greatest stressors we will ever experience are death, divorce, illness, job loss and moving.

These exceptions can impact the way a person thinks, responds, and behaves.

However, but, one moment please -

Even with these exceptions, you're not a counsellor. You're not your potential partner's lawyer, social worker, driver, chef, or nanny. None of these things.

So while the exceptions exist, they should be taken with a grain of salt and set a time limit. Give kindness until they can stand on their own feet. But, keep in mind, if you extend yourself to the detriment of yourself, you've set yourself up for failure.

How to manage these occurrences?

Don't be too hard on yourself

For a while, your potential partner was a special and important person in your life. The feelings you had were beautiful. Don't punish yourself for enjoying your time.

Don't blame yourself

Unless you know you did something with cruel intentions, you can't live life pre-empting someone's responses. Don't live in an unkind manner, and you won't have to blame yourself.

Don't fall into the social media trap

Log out, deactivate, hide their profile. Do whatever you have to do so you don't fall into the social trap. You don't need to check on them. If they need you, they can communicate it.

Reflect

When these occasions occur, even though it hurts, there is so much to be learned. It might be a good idea to speak to a professional about it.

Move On

Once you've mourned for a short while, it's time to get back out there. You deserve to meet someone ready to meet you and grow with you.

Take their actions at face value, and keep yourself your top priority.

You're the most important.