Love Isn’t Having to Lose Your Life to Your Partner

This Blog is dedicated to the life and memory of three promising young African-American women, 22 year-old Jana Watson, 23 year-old Anitra Shay Gunn, and 17 year-old Jasmine Benjamin, as well as all of the other women who lost their lives at the hands of abusive, stalking, and violent males, all because they loved and cared. Although they are no longer with us in the physical realm, their memories, their love, their presence, their spirit, and their commitment to others will last forever, as they yet live in the depths of our hearts.

As women, many of you believe that the man who chases you to eventually be with you really wants you for love and honor. You gave him total leeway and control over too many areas of your life and you provided him with too much information about you when you first met him. Have you ever noticed that it is often the man who asks you questions about your personal life on the first date or during the first encounter? He gathers as much information about you, but he rarely, if at all, provides any information to you about himself. Guess what? He has played this game many times before and you become a pawn in the game! He’s a charmer, often with a great smile, and he knows everything to say, which you want to hear, so that you can share with your girl friends ad family members about this marvelous man that you have met. The way you start a relationship will determine how it ends!!!

You returned what you thought was love from him. You all were like a hand in a glove; at least you thought so. Yeah, he seemed a little strange, but the sex was good. He didn’t have a job, but you convinced yourself that he’d eventually get one, or he had a job where he controlled the money and the spending, having you to believe that he was ‘taking care of you.’ Red flags are all around you, but you stepped on them, ignoring them, pretending they did not exist

You often failed to engage in having a background check on this charming guy, and you didn’t investigate his past or his present, including his past or current relationships (intimate and plutonic). Let alone not investigating this handsome and sometimes not so handsome guy, you often failed to ask the right questions in order to closely assess this man’s past and present situation. You were probably thinking that you would never meet that special man with whom you will spend the rest of your life. You might have been a divorce’ with children, seeking a new relationship, or you were a single woman with children who has never married, but you were hoping to still be attracted to some man.

There are too many women who don’t assess the guys that have chased after them, including their personality, their mannerisms, their speech, their conversations, or their moods. You become so infatuated with his physical appearance and so caught up in a possible future with him (money and marriage) that you miss the present and you fear asking bout his past. You fail to inquire about his bank account, his job history, his current and past family dynamics and relationships, his marital status, his sexuality, his employment status, his credit score, his dreams, his goals, and aspirations, assessing whether any of these exist at all. Many of you also fail to assess how and if his dreams, goals, and aspirations relate to your own dreams, goals, and aspirations. 

As a matter of fact, you don’t know why he chased you and if he even likes women at all. You get with him because he chased you, whether you really wanted him or not; you didn’t have a say in the matter. You were just glad that some man, any man, seemed interested in you and seemed to want you. On the outside, the world sees a ‘perfect’ couple and you help to perpetuate the fraud, ignoring all of the red flags that only you and he can see behind closed doors.

This guy might be your husband you thought you knew, the new guy who chased after you and you really knew nothing about, but he wines and dines you, giving you hope and making you feel needed and wanted. You all appear in the public holding hands, while behind closed doors and on too many occasions to mention, you have to decide whether you are with Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde. Yes, it seems like a fairy tale until you realize that he can’t do right, because as Anita Baker once sang, ‘he’s the wrong man.’ He starts telling you what to do, when to do what you do, what to wear, who to hang out with, as he checks your phone, on a daily basis and isolates you from family and friends. Sadly, you are so excited about the attention (although negative), that you don’t realize that his actions aren’t love; they are obsessions. He has a need for control and he probably has a checkered past; you aren’t his first attraction, which in many cases might become a fatal attraction. Your soul mate becomes your heartache and your ultimate hate. He sees you as a possession, a trophy, and he is the owner. On many occasions, he has placed you on a pedestal (where you truly belong), but with control and obsession. This guy is the classic profile of the obsessed person who will not let go when it’s time to let go. He will hold on for dear life, believing that you have the problem, and that you ARE the problem; he doesn’t need help from anyone. 

Because of his own instability, which probably started when he was a child, he has carried resentment, anger, and other hostile feelings, especially toward women. He probably taught himself how to be a man, an area in which he has fallen short. And whatever his issues have been with women, is probably related to his perception of his own mother, whom he had a love-hate relationship or no relationship at all. This guy who has nothing to lose in life, has nowhere to go in life, is likely suffering from some form of mental illness, has abandonment issues, as well as other issues related to rejection, and is more likely to experience and engage in acts of obsessive behaviors. You have allowed this guy into your head, into your heart, and the most disconcerting aspect of it all is that you allowed him into your bed, and on too many occasions into the lives of your children. In some cases, this guy is the father of your children!  

As women, you want every relationship with your partner to work. No matter how he is, what you see, what he shows you, and how bad he treats you, there’s something in your DNA compelling you to give him another chance. You take him back over and over, but he continues to misbehave. He disrespects you, denies you, defies you, and the man you thought was the love of your life has now become the despair of your life. And just when you decide to let him go, he rejects what you want, what you think, and what you feel. He doesn’t give a damn; it’s all about him!!! He’s a narcissistic, angry, selfish, mentally unstable, and crazed individual. But you have known this for sometime; he showed you his hand months and sometimes years ago. Sister girl, the red flags have been there from the onset and you ignored them, believing that either he would change or that you would change him. You might not have realized it, but you had become so desperate to be with somebody, that you got up with anybody, who essentially turned out to be nobody.

You are finally awake and totally conscious, where enough is enough. You no longer want to be friends with this guy, let alone being a lover with him, and you no longer want to play his games. You just want out, but he is not ready to leave and let go. He is a stalker! 

What you originally thought were acts of love at the beginning of your relationship with this guy were acts of obsession. This guy has so many insecurities, which you believed were opportunities for you to take care of him. You thought he was letting you in; but he was leaning on you, because he was unable to stand. Now he is unable to stand alone…the experience is too frightening for him His mind is playing tricks on him. He has believed he was a loser all of his life, and he has made it up in his mind, ‘not this time; I will never be a loser again!’ He tried to make you believe that you’ll never find anyone like him and he also threatened that he will never let you go. As a matter fact, he would rather take your life, and sometimes the lives of your children, as opposed to letting you go. This guy makes your life a living hell!He makes all kinds of promises about CHANGING. Remember, PEOPLE DON’T CHANGE! He keeps calling you, texting you, and trying to get back with you, but DON’T DO IT; your very life depends on it!!

It’s important that you don’t take the threats, the control, and the instability of this man or any other man lightly. The same goes for men with women stalkers. Women do stalk men, but they are more likely to destroy the personal property of the men they stalk, rather than taking their lives. Due to their conniving and manipulative tendencies, women are more likely to charm another man into taking the life of their intimate partner, whom they have been stalking. 

There has been a dramatic increase in women being followed, harassed, abused, and stalked by their ex-boyfriend or ex-husband, after an end to their relationship. Even more sadly, the murder rate of these women has increased, especially the rate of African-American women. During 2016, African-American females were murdered at more than twice the rate of White females (Violence Policy Center, 2018). In the same study, it was shown that 58 percent of African-American females were killed by a current or former intimate partner

         

Here are some tips to remember if you believe you are being stalked by an intimate partner or other person or in a domestic violent situation:

Let family and friends know what is going on with you and the stalker. DO NOT TRY TO HIDE IT! This is what the stalker wants you to do and is a part of his manipulation in order to separate you from family and friends. 

File a police report

Call the National Center for Victims of Crime at 855-484-2846  

Make a plan to GET OUT & DON’T tell him about your plan

Change your telephone numbers and if at all possible change your physical living space

Find a safe place with safe people

Block him from all online social media and be careful where and what you post on social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.)

Engage with a mental health professional to help you maintain the strength and the self-esteem to completely break away from and leave the situation, without going back…it could cost you your life!

Keep all threatening text messages, emails, and voicemail messages

Don’t keep going back or allowing him to come back

Don’t meet him anywhere for that ‘LAST’ hug, that ‘LAST’ conversation, or ONE MORE TRY; it might TRULY be YOUR LAST EVERYTHING

Pray without ceasing daily, while listening to God’s divine direction

Remember, “Love Isn’t Having to Lose Your Life to Your Partner.” You have a lot to live for, live it without an obsessed stalker!

©2020; J. Morley Productions, Inc.; P.O. Box 1745; Decatur, GA 30031; (770) 808-6570; www.doctorjoyce.com

The Resiliency of African-Americans: Continuing to Love in the Face of Hate

Happy Black History Month, even though it is celebrated during the shortest month of the year. The contributions of African-Americans to America are immeasurable. However, he gains of African-Americans in America are clearly measurable, and the depths of these gains pale in comparison to any other group in America, even after 400 years. 

It was August 1691when the first twenty Africans were brought to this country in James Town, Virginia. You would think that after all of this time, hatred for the powerful dark-skinned, and brilliant sisters and brothers in America would’ve been eradicated by now. But unfortunately, not only has hatred for African-Americans not been eradicated, in many cases, it has been exacerbated in various forms that are legally acceptable. But no matter what, in the midst of and the face of the continued hatred toward African-Americans in America, they have persevered and continue to show love in the face of hatred.

It isn’t by chance that Black History Month is recognized during the same month as the month of love, which culminates with Valentine’s Day. No matter how beaten down, how discriminated against, how many African-American boys are murdered by white police officers without consequences, no matter how many African-American women are disrespected by whites, no matter how many African-American neighborhoods are taken over through gentrification, and no matter how many African-American children are under educated or not educated at all, through their resiliency, African-Americans still manage to show love, especially to those who have harmed them and continue to harm them.

Although resiliency with love is an admirable attribute for African-Americans as a whole, based on the vestiges of slavery, as well as the psychological impact of the teachings of self-hatred, many of them find it easier to forgive and love others who are less like themselves, as well as those who cannot identify with their four hundred year journey in America. The system is set up to foster divisiveness within African-American communities, further fostering in group haves and have nots, many times allowing African-Americans to treat others like themselves, the same way Whites have treated all African-Americans. Those who engage in self-hatred are more likely to hate those who look like them and can identify with them. To see the reflection of their own economic, physical, emotional, social, and spiritual pain and deprivation in the faces of their African-American sisters and brothers is often difficult for them to deal with. Hence, the hatred for themselves is then projected onto those who bare their reflections, making it difficult for them to love their reflections, because they hate their own pain.

The mainframe of the American White society is still shaking its head and wondering how such a group of people as African-Americans, who have been pawned, sold, raped, castigated, castrated, hung, assassinated, discriminated against, and stolen from are still able to stand, bouncing back from each and every act of hatred, designed to lead to their demise. However, for many African-Americans who are consciously aware of their history and their heritage, who accept themselves, as well as their history and their heritage, find it easy to practice self-love, and love for their people. Because they are conscious, they accept themselves, love themselves, and they are not afraid of publicly being themselves, allowing them to accept those who look like them and are reflections of themselves in their mirrors of economic, physical, emotional, psychological, and other forms of pain. 

As African-Americans, it is imperative that you know and understand your history. It is further important that you teach your children your history and their history without denying it, decrying it, or running away from it. It is also even more so important that as African-Americans, you do not allow others who are not like you, those who have no knowledge of and have not participated FULLY in your journey, to tell your story or write your history. When you fully accept yourself, your history, and your heritage, you will much more readily accept the history and the heritage of those who look like you. A people without a history and a past are not fully the people God put them here to be.

It is also important for African-Americans to remember the struggle experienced by ALL African-Americans, even those who seem to have somehow escaped the economic deprivation placed on the African-American race as a whole in America, recognizing that until ALL African-Americans are free, none of them are truly free! The freedom to be is the freedom to love. Love is the basis and the base for you to forgive yourself, allowing you to forgive others who look like you, but have not harmed you, but their hated status is more related to their existence than it is to their behaviors, their crimes or their faults. In any case, there is never a reason or a rationale for hate.

As African-Americans or any other groups of people, no matter how much you’ve been hated, no matter how much you are hated, hate is never an option. However, you still have the option to continue down your path of self-love, family love, and African-American love. Until you experience all of these forms of love, the love you espouse to those who have harmed you is not truly a love of freedom, but a love to belong and to be accepted. Love is acceptance and respect, first for self, family, and your history and heritage. Love is allowing yourself as an African-American, to have conversations about your past and your present with those who look like you, in preparation for your future. Love is confronting your denial of self, accepting your strength and your resiliency of having beat many odds, and going against the grain of the set up by America’s White society.

No matter who you are and where you are economically as an African-American, until you use your resilience to reach back and reach down to pull up other African-Americans who seem to be caught in the struggle, as well as those young African-Americans who have no understanding of the struggle, you are a part of the hate game. You are doing exactly what the teachers of hate have taught you, starting from the plantation. You don’t have to run anymore; you are free to be, you are free to be you. It is time for you to use your resilience and your love to free others, not just during Black History month, the month of February, or on Valentine’s Day, but three hundred and sixty-five days of the year! Let your resilience and your love continue to lead you and guide you, fighting against hate, not promoting hate, and by engaging in anti-hate campaigns to cripple and stop the haters!        

©2020; J. Morley Productions, Inc.; P.O. Box 1745; Decatur, GA 30031; (770) 808-6570; www.doctorjoyce.com

A New Year, A New Decade…The Same Old You

Happy New Year and Happy 2020! I am sure you and I are asking the same question…can you believe it; it’s 2020? Not only are we so fortunate to have crossed over into a new year, we have also entered another decade. And yes, time surely does fly! Because you have come to recognize how fast time flies, it’s imperative as you begin 2020, for you to also to begin to look at the love, the lessons, and your life experiences, positive and negative, that were gathered in 2019. It’s important to not only look at them, but for you to decide the applicability of them for your forward movement in 2020.

You have heard me state on many occasions that I don’t believe that people change. However, I do believe that people grow, as a result of gaining awareness, insight, and understanding. They then can change their mindset, their attitude, and their behaviors.  With each year that you are blessed to live through, you should be able to assess and take stock of your newfound awareness about yourself, your relationships with others, and life in general. You should also be able to assess and share the insights that you have gained about yourself, your relationships, and your life in general. And finally, at the end of each year that you survive and at the beginning of each New Year that you are blessed to enter, you should have gained a measure of understanding about yourself, your relationships with others, along with a greater understanding about life in general. Again, what do you plan to do with the awareness, insight, and understanding that you have gained in 2019? How will you apply all of this powerful information that you have gained, not only to the benefit of self, but also, in order for you to benefit others? You see, one of the greatest things you should learn each and every year is that life is not all about YOU!

Often times, there seems to be no real understanding about life. I had two surrogate godmothers, Queen Mother Corine and Mother Jones, who have both transitioned while in their eighties. Based on conversations with them, you learn a lot in life, but you never gain full understanding of life. However, it is important that you learn and grow, in order for you to not keep making the same mistakes year after year. According to Queen Mother Corine and Mother Jones, you will keep falling, faltering, and failing, with little or no reprieve, until you gain the awareness, insight, and understanding necessary for you to move to your next life realm each year. If not, you’ll continue to experience a new year, a new decade, with the same old you!

However, any level of understanding that you are able to gather is imperative to your continued levels of life growth. It’s one thing to be able to talk about the awareness, insight, and understanding that you receive from one year to the next. The question is, what are your plans to implement what you learned from the past into the present, in preparation for the future? Because God has blessed you to enter into a new year, you should have a new attitude, a new perspective on life, new goals, new life directions, new relationships, and a new determination!   

Your journey for a new you doesn’t mean that you get rid of you, it’s all about you taking a panoramic view of yourself in 2020. It’s you engaging yourself in a weeding process. Who and what are the people, situations, circumstances, perspectives, locations, and relationships that strangled your growth in the past year and the past decade? It’s time for you to weed them out! Weeds do not aid in your growth, they negatively overtake your growth, sometimes to the point where you don’t exist any more. Get rid of these people, situations, circumstances, perspectives, locations, relationships, and other infiltrators! If they were not assets in 2019, they sure as hell will not be assets in 2020! Stop fooling yourself and wasting your time and your life; you are worth much more than you give yourself credit!

You can make all of the New Year’s resolutions you would like, but as long as you have the same old negative people, the same old negative situations, and the same old negative circumstances and conditions in your life, you will get the same old negative results in 2020, that you experienced in 2019. But, even though your life might not have been as ‘perfect’ as you would like in 2019 or during the past decade, I am sure that you were blessed in many ways. Instead of wallowing in what wasn’t and what didn’t in 2019, take hold of what was positive and expand upon the positive people, positive situations, and the positive circumstances you experienced in 2019, and take them into 2020.

You are much farther along than you think! Just close the doors of negativity, allowing the doors of positivity to open in your life. You won’t flourish by having two doors open that are going in opposite directions. It’s a new year, a new decade! You are endowed with newness within and throughout your being. Hold your head up, look up, speak up, and stand up, affirming your success, affirming your life as a beacon of light for you and for others. In 2020, you are a force with which to be reckoned! 

If you are in need of a little nudging to help you move forward in this New Year and new decade, with a new you, here are some suggestions to help you along the way:

1. Sit with yourself, with pen and paper. Make a list of the negative people, situations, circumstances and experiences you encountered in 2019.

2.  Sit with yourself, with pen and paper. Make a list of the positive people, situations, circumstances and experiences you encountered in 2019.

3. Make a conscious decision to weed out the negative people, situations, circumstances and experiences you encountered in 2019. Put a timeframe on each, but it should not be months, a half year, three quarters of a year, or a full year. LET THEM GO!!!

4.   Take your positive list and make realistic plans on as to how you believe you can and will benefit from those positive people, situations, circumstances and experiences you encountered in 2019 into 2020.

5.  Take your positive list and make realistic plans on how you will transfer those positive people, situations, circumstances and experiences you encountered in 2019 into 2020. You will also set timeframes and action steps for you to be able to transfer these positive attributes into 2020.

6.  Write positive affirmations that you will post around your home and your office. They should start with, ‘I can,’ ‘I will,’ ‘I am.’

7.  Decide on an accountability partner whom you trust immensely to have your best interest at heart and decide that the two of you will talk either in person or by telephone at least twice a week to keep you on track. Texting is not allowed!!

8.  You will also need a spiritual connection to ensure that you not only take the new you into the New Year, but also into the new decade. Decide how you will engage spiritually on a daily basis, in order to keep yourself focused, grounded, encouraged, and determined to keep moving forward. You can use prayer, positive readings, relaxation techniques, yoga, chants, etc.

9.  Finally, if you are still struggling with letting go of 2019, engaging in the weeding out process, and taking a new you into 2020, get with a mental health professional.

You are well on your way and prepared for your success in 2020. How you end each old year is predicated on how you start each New Year! This is your time to start 2020 anew. You will not be absolved from trials, tribulations, and tragedies, but you will be strong enough to face them. After all, you have a new attitude, new perspectives, new behaviors, and an overall new outlook on life for the New Year 2020! Get ready, get ready!

©2020; J. Morley Productions, Inc.; P.O. Box 1745; Decatur, GA 30031; (770) 808-6570; www.doctorjoyce.com

Seeing the Glass as Half Full Dictates That I CAN, I WILL, I AM

The holiday season often brings about an array of emotions in between the highs and the lows. However, much of what you experience and what you deal with or don’t deal with emotionally has more to do with how you perceive situations, as well as how you act or react to them. Often, what we see is what we believe, resulting in what we get. 

If you see the glass as half-empty, it will take much more to fill the glass to a level of full. However, when you see the glass as half-full, you will realize that it takes less to fill the glass to its fullest level. The problem is, too many of you see the glass as half-empty, causing much anguish, despair, and anxiety; all because you see less in the glass, and you believe that you will have to work two to three times as hard to fill the glass.

Your life is like a glass. How you look at your life, whether with lack or with fullness, your view of your life will determine how you will handle your life’s situations and circumstances. Sometimes you make dire decisions based on the cloud of circumstances and situations that seem to loom over your life, believing that life is much more difficult than it seems, based on what you see, instead of the reality of what God has ordered as your destiny. However, if you continue to view your negative circumstances as conditions, you have decided that you are stuck in the manure and can’t get out. When you begin to view your negative circumstances as situations, you have already initiated an, ‘I can’ attitude, putting forth a plethora of ‘I will’ efforts, declaring an, ‘I am’ reality of achievement.

In order for you to change your view and your vision of your life’s glass, you must begin to possess a sense of optimism, allowing you to gain or maintain a sense of hope. The hope you possess simply means that you have a positive outlook, you have faith, you believe in a higher power, you have positive expectations, you possesses an inner sense of assuredness, you are encouraged, you are confident, and there is no doubt as to where you are going in life or how you will get there…the glass is half-full!  

When you see your life’s glass as half-full, you possess an optimistic attitude, you believe in a higher power, you are spiritually connected, you are not shaken by what seems to be, but you anticipate what can be, and you believe beyond a shadow of doubt that the outcome of any and all of your negative situations will be positive. As a matter of fact, you will think, feel, and speak with an authority of favorable outcomes. You have an “I can” attitude, as you exhibit behaviors and actions that can and will lead to favorable outcomes. You awake every morning with a song in your heart, you see a light at the end of every tunnel in the midst of all of the darkness, and you believe in what can be rather than what things seem to be. You also begin see and believe in what will be!

In my opinion, it is extremely important for you to be optimistic each and every day of the year, especially during today’s tumultuous times. It allows you to hold on, to keep moving forward, to keep the faith, to laugh instead of crying, to keep looking up, to not give up, to manage yourself as well as your life circumstances, and to believe that the sunshine does come after the rain. All of this is what happens when you see your glass of life as half-full.  

When you view your life’s glass as half-empty, you will not be prepared for, and you will also miss out on the blessings that are waiting for your arrival.  Being optimistic allows for positive expectations, where as pessimism causes you to hold your head down with little or no expectations. Optimism dictates that you hold your head up, in preparation to behold and receive expected positive outcomes.   

Holding onto and seeing the half-empty glass of pessimism becomes the controller of your attitude on a daily basis, with you running the risk of exhibiting negative behaviors, experiencing anxiety, feelings of hopelessness, depression, fear, stress, insomnia, paranoia, addictive behaviors, loss of control, withdrawal from life, thoughts and feelings of giving up on life, suicide, homicide, and seeing no way out of your current negative situation.  

And you wonder why your social life is in the pits! Your vision of your life is in the pits with your half-full pessimistic view of your ability to engage with PPPG’s-Positive People Going Places, © causing you to seek relationships with somebody, winding up with anybody, who turns out to be nobody. Seeing your life’s glass as half-full positively affects your social health. Your interpersonal relations are strengthened, communication skills are strengthened, and intimate relationships are more readily found, developed, and sustained. 

You will never be able to enjoy yourself as an individual, as long as you behold your life’s glass with a pessimistic half-empty vision. As a matter of fact, with your half-full optimistic life’s glass, your mental health is more stable, allowing for an increased healthy love for self, high self-esteem along with increased self-confidence and self-acceptance. Your increased confidence fosters the belief that “I can, I will, and I am!” And with those daily affirmations, your worry about outcomes of your life situations and life circumstances will dissipate, providing you with more of a quest and thirst for inner peace and emotional stability.

Seeing your life’s glass as optimistically half-full allows your spiritual health to become more solidified and stable.  Your belief in a higher power that is greater than you and your negative situations and circumstances allows for increased faith, less doubt, less worry and less fear. Your life will more certainly not only seem to be filled more with sunshine than rain it will actually be filled with more sunshine than rain.

If you have difficulty moving out of and beyond your negative, pessimistic, half-empty glass syndrome, it is imperative that you engage in psychotherapy with a licensed mental health professional who practices from a positive perspective and uses tried, true, and tested activities to increase your self-esteem. Because there is truly no life understanding and no life answers, you must practice seeing your life’s glass as half-full, with positivity and optimism on a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis. 

Remember, life will deal you many hands.  However, it is not so much the hands that you are dealt as it is how you view and feel about the hands that are dealt to you, as well as how you play them.  If you see your life hands that are dealt to you as having possibilities or opportunities (half-full optimism), you will play to win. However, if you see your life hands dealt to you as not having possibilities or lacking opportunities (half-empty pessimism), you won’t play at all.  Why play a losing hand?

The half-empty glass dictates, I CAN’T, I WON’T, and I’M NOT! As a result, you don’t! You must see life as a glass half-full, rather than a glass half-empty.  It will take less to fill your half-full glass, fostering encouragement, hope, and expectations.  The half-full glass dictates I CAN, I WILL, and I AM! Starting today…YOU ARE and YOU HAVE accomplish all you set out to accomplish!

Here are a few tips to help you to practice the half-full glass life style, daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly:

1.    Engage in daily prayer.

2.    Practice daily oral positive self-talk.

3.    Engage in daily meditation for 20-30 minutes.

4.    Engage in daily journaling, documenting your feelings and thoughts at the end of the day, recognizing the half-empty pessimistic patterns, as opposed to the optimistic half-full patterns.

5.    Practice letting go of negative thoughts & negative beliefs on a daily basis (negate the negative).

6.    Develop realistic, attainable, and measurable weekly and monthly goals with objectives, timelines, and contingency plans.

7.    Take life in small chunks, instead of big hunks.

8.    Learn to appreciate life and live it one day at time, letting the sunshine in and appreciating the rain whenever it enters into her life, but not allowing it to determine her life.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, Happy Kwanza, and Happy Holidays!!!

©2019; J. Morley Productions, Inc.; P.O. Box 1745; Decatur, GA 30031; (770) 808-6570; www.doctorjoyce.com

How to Deal with Your Relationship When One of You is More Successful than the Other

As one of the partners in a relationship filled with disparities based on the success of one partner or the lack thereof of the other, it is imperative that at some point, issues related to the identified disparities are dealt with, preferably by both, but most certainly by you. In order for you to have a healthy and positive relationship, feelings and thoughts regarding the disparities surrounding the fact that one of you is more successful than the other must be addressed. In all actuality, the issues of disparity surrounding success in your relationship should have been dealt with prior to your commitment to solidify your relationship with each other. But since it wasn’t dealt with prior to your commitment, it is now the right time for you to do so.

How you deal with the disparities that exist within your relationship, as a result of one-sided success will probably differ based on your maleness or femaleness. The definition of ‘success’ must be factored in when considering the real or imagined disparities you and your mate are currently facing and have been facing for quite sometime. However, the reality is that although one of you in your relationship had already attained a greater level of success than the other, prior to your involvement with each other, you all ignored the red flags that often come with the disparities, hoping and sometimes believing that they would go away. 

As a male, it is promoted, expected, respected, and accepted that you should be more successful than your female partner. However, on the other hand, when your female partner is more successful in the relationship, your male ego sometimes seems to get in the way. Sadly, society still espouses a lack of respect, a lack of acceptance, and a lack of expectations for relationships with successful females to positively exist. 

One of the major problems that usually ends a relationship sooner, rather than later, is the fact that many couples ignore the larger picture containing red flags and focus on the feel good aspects of the relationship, such as sex, outward appearances, and lust. They ignore the fact of the unequal level of accomplishments in the relationship. If the disparities in levels of success are not already prevalent when you enter a relationship, as one of you excels beyond the other, the disparities will eventually rise out of the ashes. Hence, it is important to be proactive. 

When one partner in the relationship is more successful than the other, it is imperative that the two of you sit together and talk honestly and openly with each other about your feelings, thoughts, insecurities, and concerns. It is also important for the two of you to discuss the current and anticipated impacts that the disparities of unequal success are having or might have within the relationship. This conversation will also be a great time for the two of you to clarify your expectations of each other, as well as your expectations of the relationship, and set written goals, especially when one of you is more successful than the other. It is best to have these conversations before you become too involved in the relationship. It is always easier to prevent issues than it is to intervene later, once they have raised their ugly heads.

Positive, healthy, and respectful conversations with each other can relieve a lot of stress and anxiety, as well as possibly save your relationship. And if you cannot discuss and deal with these feelings together, civilly as a couple, it is time to for you and your mate to visit a marriage and family therapist to help you to sort through the divisive feelings and thoughts that exist as a result of one of you being more successful than the other. Destruction of the relationship and destruction of each other are the only outcomes of harboring feelings of insecurity, resentment, anger, and sometimes jealousy.

Discussing the disparities that exist within your relationship of one being more successful than the other is only one of the major steps necessary to allow you and your mate to live happily ever after. And just in case your love grows stale in the relationship and the fire stops burning, and as you anticipate future disparities that might arise in your relationship, it is important to engage in a verbal and written agreement to not allow your differences in accomplishments to interfere with your relationship, as well as the consequences of such. A WRITTENand legally ratified prenuptial agreement is always a great way to bring some stability to your relationship when one of you is more successful than the other. It helps to take a lot of worry out of the way, so that you can focus on loving each other. 

Too often, the non-successful partner takes and takes from the successful partner, without any investment, until he/she takes all and runs to someone else. This doesn’t just happen with very successful people such as Mary J. Blige, Sherrie Shepard, Melba Moore, and Jill Scott; it also happens to successful women that the world has not discovered as of yet. It’s just realizing the fact that there are real opportunists and real vultures waiting to prey on unsuspecting people, especially women looking for love.   

Even in relationships with disparities of levels of success, you must learn to focus on the positive aspects and commonalities that exist within your relationship, instead of focusing on the disparities in your levels of success. In other words, you must focus on what you have in common, rather than your differences. You must allow your commonalities to be connectors and not dividers, using the success of one in the couple to guide the success of the couple as a whole. You must learn to give each other compliments, as well as tell and show each other how proud you are of the accomplishments of each, not just based on levels of success, but on the fact that God has blessed the two of you to have and be with each other.  

Celebrating the accomplishments of each other removes the focus from the disparities associated with your different levels of success, and keeps you from competing with each other. You will come to not worry about or focus on what others might think, believe, or say about your respective roles as the man or woman in the relationship, as well as how your relationship should be, or how it looks, because one of you is more successful than the other. You will come to recognize that external success cannot and will never outlast internal success and eternal love. 

  

The two of you are partners, not competitors. As the successful partner in the relationship, you must learn to see your level of success as an inflator for both of you, instead of seeing it as a deflator for you. Your success should be seen as a compliment and an enhancement to you and your relationship, rather than a disgrace or disparity between you and your mate.  And if you are not considered the successful partner in your relationship, it’s time for you to find your own self-worth through having a life of your own, by identifying and focusing on what makes you “successful” in your own right, without separating yourself from your mate. You must engage with your mate without competing with him/her, and without trying to overshadow his/her level of success. Engage in public activities with him/her without shame or guilt. You have nothing to feel guilty or shameful about. Find your own shadow and walk in it! 

No matter what the level of success and who is considered the ‘successful’ one in your relationship, it’s a matter of loving and respecting each other, no matter how successful or unsuccessful you are…you are in it together! Walk in it, and act like it!   

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