The Holiday Mistake Singles Make
By Frank Kermit
 
There are many mistakes singles make, that keep them single.  The holiday time is no exception.
 
At a time when the motivation to meet someone new to date may be at an all time high, some single people make the mistake of shelving their hearts, and put off dating new people, until after the holidays are over.
 
On the surface, it seems like a good idea. Going into the holidays, is a busy time.
 
Planning for holiday parties and gift buying, trying to finish work related projects before taking time off, and studying for final exams makes the time leading up to the holidays a period of high stress.
 
Who has the time or energy to even think about starting to date, or pursue meeting someone new?
 
So really, what is the problem with holding off dating until after the holiday season is over?
 
Well, there isn’t really anything wrong with it per se. If you do not want to date, then do not date.
 
However, giving into this mindset is habit forming.
 
After the holidays, comes the period after New Years and it is too cold to go out to be social and date. Then comes Valentine’s Day and there is way too much pressure to face dating someone new. Springtime is too wet outside and no one likes how there bodies look coming out of the winter blues and final exams again. So let’s wait until summer rolls around. Then in summer, there are so many places to visit, vacations to plan, work projects to finish before heading out on vacation. Did we mention the humidity?  Ok, and the kids are out of school, so no time for social dating then. We will get back to dating in the fall. Back to school, need a vacation from your vacation, and mending the broken heart from the loss of your summer fling, it is no time to date serious.  Halloween already? I don’t want to date in costume, what am I? A clown? Next month when all the creepy decorations come down, I will make the effort for sure. Golly, weather changes are making me sleepy. Oh gee, so much to do because the holidays are coming up! 
 
Does any of this sound familiar? 
 
If you are perpetually single, it should. 
 
Using the holidays as a way to avoid dating is just another excuse in a long line of excuses.
 
There is no perfect time to start dating.
 
The best time to start is right now. 
 
Sure the holidays are hectic. So what?
 
There will always be lots of reasons to avoid dating.
 
You only need one to start, and that is because you want to.
 
No one wants to be alone over the holidays.
 
That is what makes it one of the best times to get out there and be social and meet new people.
 
It is OK to want to meet someone new to date, and it is OK to want to do that over the holidays.
 
So if you have the chance to shake off the holiday rush, and the opportunity to get out there, meet new people and a date comes your way, go for it.
 
Always go for it. 
 
You likely spend a lot of time getting gifts for other people, so why not give yourself the gift of dating during the holidays.
 
You deserve to be loved as much as anybody.
 
Happy Holidays!

Single Going Into The Holiday Season
By Frank Kermit
 
The holidays can be a time of reflection for some to evaluate if they are where they would want to be with their love lives.
 
Many people who are struggling can end up asking themselves questions such as:
 
Why are all my friends in relationships, and I am still single?
 
Why does she just want to be friends with me?
 
Why won't he commitment to me?
 
While the holidays are usually associated with great images of joyous celebration, and scenes of happiness surrounded by family and loved ones, not everyone feels festive, especially if they are still trying to find a soul mate to share the holidays with.
 
The good news is that this is actually one of the BEST times of the year to go out to meet someone new to date. This is the time of year when people are usually the most open minded when it comes to trying to date different types of people than they previously dated beforehand for one simple reason:
 
No one wants to be alone for the holidays.
 
The pain of being alone as the holidays approach can be so fearfully devastating that some people may end up settling for less than what they want just so that they are not by themselves.
 
In other cases some people even go back to an ex and an emotionally unhealthy relationship because of the convenience, than to face the holiday season without a partner.
 
In fact, some people actually find dating an ex, even if the relationship was toxic and ended badly, more preferable than dealing with the awkwardness of starting to date someone new.
 
Fear based decision making can lead to more mistakes so much easier than most people think.
 
Here is a little exercise that you can do right now to avoid the pitfalls and mistakes singles tend to make going into the holiday season.
 
I want you to imagine your IDEAL holiday celebration.
 
For example, if you are afraid to be alone on New Year’s Eve without anyone to kiss at that first stroke of midnight, then sit down and visualize exactly what your IDEAL New Years Eve celebration would consist of.
 
Do not focus on specific people.
 
I want you to focus on YOU during those future projections. What are you wearing? What are you doing? How are you feeling? How do you look? What are you talking about?
 
Are you putting your newly learned dance steps into practice trying to seduce the new love of your life on the dance floor that will lead to your first magical midnight New Years Eve kiss? Are you charismatically enticing someone using your new charming communication and graceful storytelling skills?
 
Once you have that ideal in mind, work your way back to this moment in time to where you are right now, and ask yourself what you would have to do between now and that event to make your dream vision come true.
 
Sign up for dance lessons? Learn the art of small talk? Pick out a venue and new outfit for that night?
 
When you have an idea of where you want to end up, then you will better know what you need to do right now in order to get there.
 
If you are alone as the holidays approach, EMBRACE it. You have a choice. You can either feel sorry for yourself, or you can start to take action today and focus on what you can do right now, to be able to attract someone new into your love life.
 
Frank Kermit 

Mourning for the Holidays
By Frank Kermit

Doesn't it seem like so many people die around the holiday season?
 
I wrote this article after I attended the funeral of an old colleague of mine.

I made every effort to attend the wake and the funeral. Meeting his family for the first time and feeling their grief reminded me that the holidays are not always a time a joyous celebration.
 
For many people it is a time of mourning and bereavement remembering lost loved ones. There is never a good time to deal with the death of someone you love, and for it to happen so close to the holidays is no exception. What it does mean is that the holidays will be more challenging as people still come together, and the need for compassion and understanding is at an all time high. It is not just because grief will cause people to be sad when most people are expected to be enthralled with making merry. It has to do with the different ways that people grieve.
 
One person's method of grieving may be completely out of line with how another person expresses sorrow. If you remember one lesson from this article, it is this: Show compassion and acceptance for the way someone needs to grieve, even if it is the exact opposite of what you would prefer that person utilizes to manage mourning. Since the funeral, I have been swarmed with memories of Christmas pasts. I wanted to share some with you and also share some ideas about mourning the holidays.
 
When my grandfather died in the 1980s, I was still in elementary school, and too young to really understand the effects of grieving for death. What I remember was being taken out of school for a few days while the family came together around my widowed grandmother, and having to attend a funeral home wake and a funeral service. I do not remember understanding everything that was going on around me at the time. What I do distinctly remember is that every time I was reminded of something that I wanted to tell my grandfather, I had to come to acknowledge again and again that he was gone.
 
Other than the death of pets, it was the first time a human family member died. Although my grandfather died earlier in the year, I do have a distinct memory of how my immediate family and our extended family had to balance celebrating the holidays and honoring his memory.
 
That Christmas was a somber one. We did not have the loud massive family get together that I had become accustom too. I have a hazy memory of my grandmother breaking out in tears missing her husband at one point while being the center of attention, probably opening a gift of some kind at the table.
 
When I later returned to school in January, I was faced with that obligatory writing assignment of the (what you did over the holidays) composition. Not sure what to write given the loss my family was suffering, I asked a family member for guidance and was told to basically "make up something acceptable".
 
In short, I was told to describe a wonderful scene complete with laughter, singing Christmas songs and even threw in some street caroling on the way to a midnight mass...truly a far cry from the quiet, almost depressed real life version of a mournful holiday eve.
 
Heck, it is not like my family ever did street caroling or singing songs when they were not managing mourning the holidays anyways. Too busy talking loudly, preparing food, eating food, and then recovering from the meal.
 
What I wanted to write is exactly what happened, but for some reason it was important to that family member to keep our grief private regardless of the fact that everyone that knew me, also knew that my grandfather died (being pulled out of school for a week might have been a good hint).
 
The key word in the directive I received was the word: ACCEPTABLE. As in, it would not be acceptable for our family to experience grief at that time of year. I found it odd, but I chose to obey like a good kid. Yet, I always believed it would have been a much more interesting story if I had told the truth about what really happened that holiday.
 
The struggle was managing what -I- would have wanted to help me express -my- grief (writing about missing my grandfather and how Christmas was different this year) and what a family member wanted to help them manage their grief (keeping our pain private).
 
As the years went on, how we celebrated the holidays changed with each year. Some were marked with great celebration for the weddings that took place that year, while others reflected the emptiness left when other family members had died that year. The holidays, it seemed to me, was a time of reflecting on the changing nature of the relationships of the previous year, the loss of some of the people we loved, a reminder of the break ups and divorces happening, and a call to also remember to cherish the good news of new relationships forming and the births, adoptions, and additions of new members into the family.
 
When my father died after a very long battle with his health challenges, it marked a significant change in our identity as an immediate family. My mother was now a widow, and I was reminded of all our mortality.
 
There were a few things I left out of his eulogy that I never told anyone. One of those things is that one of his unfulfilled wishes was for him to see me get married and start a family of my own before he died.
 
A month after he died I celebrated my birthday, my first without him. With each important date that came along (his birthday, his wedding anniversary, father's day, and the holidays) it was an adjustment to the new normal.
 
With each one I tried different ways to celebrate. Some of them I spent with friends, some of them with family and some I spent alone. On father's day I made a visit to the cemetery bringing my mother with me.
 
At Christmas, I spent it with my immediate family, and had to manage my own coping method of withdrawing from the crowd with some of my families coping methods of making mountains out of molehills.
 
At New Years Eve, I spent it alone at home making only a quick visit to another uncle recovering from heart surgery.
 
What I learned is that each person copes with grief in his or her own way. Some need to party with others, and some need to spend time alone. Some need to cry out at the casket at the funeral home, and some need to yell at the people crying out at the casket because there are people who are too uncomfortable at the expression of another's grief.
 
If there could be something I hope will make managing your mourning this holiday season easier, it is this: No matter how uncomfortable you are with the way someone expresses grief, show some compassion and simply learn to accept it.
 
If you cannot do that, at the very least, please shut the hell up. Just because you cannot handle someone else's grief does not make you -stronger- and it does not make the other person -wrong-.
 
In our pill-popping society, family members may often push for mourning relatives to be sedated, not in the best interest of the mourning relative, but because the family members feel ill-equipped to manage excessive expressions of grief. Never yell at someone for expressing grief.
 
Give that the person the space and acceptance needed to process the intense emotions. If drugs suppress those intense emotions, then those unexpressed emotions may and likely will manifest in other ways (like emotional blocks or dysfunctional self sabotaging behaviors).
 
There is no -better- way to grieve. There is only the way that works for you as long as you remember even though mourning is a personal experience, that does not mean you can not get help with managing your grief. It is OK to seek out the aid of a professional, or even a companion willing to listen and who is OK with you being vulnerable and your truest self at your lowest moment.
 
They say that we each need to live each day as if it were our last. I am not a believer of that personally for reasons too numerous to mention in this article.
 
However, I do encourage people to live each day as if it were the last day that someone you love will live. If there is someone you want to reach out too, that you need to forgive or remind that you love, or want to apologize too then do it; not because you might die tomorrow, but because that person may die tomorrow. Get the difference?
 
Once in a while, I remember someone that did something nice for me, and I will contact that person and thank him or her, not because I might not be around, but because I wonder how I will feel if I miss the chance to tell them before that person is no longer around.
 
Three weeks ago, I attended the funeral of an old colleague of mine. I made every effort to attend the wake and the funeral but I never got to tell him how much I appreciated him, his works and his talents while he was alive. Now, I never will.
 
Understanding relationships goes hand in hand with understanding the principle that every relationship you have on earth is temporary and that unions between people end either by choice (break up, separation or divorce) or in the best of cases, will end by the death of one of the people in the relationship.
 
Be mindful of this fact when you take the time we all have (or lack thereof) for granted. Happy Holidays whatever you celebrate and whomever you happen to love.
 
Frank Kermit

 How Much Should You Care About What Other People Think?
By Frank Kermit
 
There will be times when we want to do something in our lives that is meaningful to us. It could be a decision related to abandoning education, what career path to choose, what kind of person to date, changing something major in how we live, or even a new life experience to experiment with to see if it is for you.
 
Each option that you consider can unto itself be overwhelming. However, if it is something that may have the consequence that others may not like you for doing it, it can make an overwhelming option a near impossible decision.
 
With each new choice we make, there will be benefits and consequences. The benefits are usually easier to identify than the consequences. The one alarming factor in your internal debate is the fact that you do not actually control the consequences of your actions.
 
However, when we believe that one of the consequences of our actions may be lack of approval from people, it can make going for what you want a harder decision. If what other people think of you is very important to you, it is likely going to be a huge factor in your decision making process. Sometimes, that can be a good thing, but it is not always as important as people think. Over the course of your life, it is YOU, and not anyone else that will bare the major burden of any decision you make. If you are going to take into account the opinions of others, it is important to keep in mind exactly how effective those "others" are in the ongoing process of your life.
 
There are times when caring about what others think has incredibly good side effects. A teenager, who chooses not to experiment with drugs and avoids the whole drug culture because she worries about how her parents may disapprove, helps keep her safe.
 
That is a good side effect. Caring about what your boss thinks about your conduct both in and out of the office is often necessary as it can have an impact on your ability to be promoted, and increase your earning potential. Not all approval seeking behaviors and decision-making is bad. When the negatives in your life outweigh the positives because you are caring about what others think, and put their approval ahead of your own happiness, that is when you are caring way too much.
 
One of the lessons I teach people who are struggling with pursuing relationship goals is how to balance when to worry about what other people think, and when to just follow through on your interests. People tend to have more regrets about the things they did not do, or at least try, than to regret the things they did do and try, even if they failed at it.
 
When you are trying to judge if you should care about what someone thinks; when you are trying to decide if you should go for it or not, you must ascertain whether or not their opinion actually has any legitimate and actually harmful consequences for you. Does the person in question have the power to ruin the quality of your life in a significant way? If the answer is no, then really, who cares what they think? If the answer is yes, then you have a choice to make to judge if the consequences would outweigh the benefits.
 
For example: you want to drop out of college and start your own business. You have talked about this plan and a number of people think you are crazy, while others support the decision even if they do not agree, and still a few love the idea. All of this is in fact meaningless.
 
The focus has to be on what are the consequences of this decision. If your parents are paying for your education and have told you that if you drop out they will no longer support you and that you would be financially on your own and have to move out of their basement, THAT is one of the consequences that needs to factor into your decision more than others.
 
Are you ready to completely live on your own and support yourself while you pursue this new path? Not sure? In this case caring about what "they" think is important. Also note that if the handful of people who thought it was a great idea for you to pursue, but aren't actually going to help you, or support you in pursuing that dream, then their opinion is worthless. It does not matter if they think it is a good idea. As they are not offering any support for your cause either way, what they think is not something you ever need to care about.
 
That is a key understanding many people miss out on. The idea that liking your idea without actually taking action to support you is as useless to care about as someone hating your idea but not doing anything to stop you from trying it.
 
What about dating and relationships? What about sex? If you want to date someone that some of your friends and family thinks is a bad idea, what should you do? If you want to have sex in a way that you would be stigmatized for, what do you do? You balance the benefits and consequences, including how you will be able to live with yourself long term if you do not even try. It is this one element that can be the most devastating. In the short term it is easy to give up some pleasure in your life in order to keep the peace with the people you care about. However, in the long term, living for others and being self-sacrificing does not necessarily grant peace nor happiness. It is more likely to lead to a life of unfulfilled dreams and an abundance of resentment.
 
There will be a consequence no matter what you do. There is ALWAYS a trade off. That is the way of life.
 
There is no one direction that does not have some kind of bad string attached. It is about choosing the paths that have the bad strings you are able to live with. If you have sex when you want to, with who you want to, you will experience one of the great pleasures life has to offer, but you may also acquire the scorn of people who disapprove calling her a slut or him a sleaze. If you choose not to have sex to please those people, you are limiting some of the life experience and life lessons that comes from experience, which may be something you regret not doing down the road.
 
Will it be comforting for you that you cared what others thought when you hit your mid-life crisis regretting all the things you missed out on? Only you can answer that truthfully. If you choose to go after your dreams there will be people who will HATE you for doing it if you succeed, and will HATE you if you fail; and there will always be consequences to just having dreams no matter what they are. Should you still have and go after your dreams?
 
If you have relationships with individuals that some of your family and friends can not stand, you will have to deal with possibly being cut off from them and others you love that may be caught in the middle (like a younger relative that must obey their parents that no longer approve of you).
 
However, you may very well have the main relationship partner of your life that addresses your most important emotional needs better than your friends and family ever could. Is it worth it? Only you can answer that truthfully. Then again, you could forget that potential partner and only date someone your friends and family do approve of that may or may not completely fulfill you. If you do, and given you keep your friends and family connections intact, it could seem like an acceptable trade off. Is it worth it?
 
Only you can answer that truthfully. Or since you can't be with whom you really want, and you don't want to be with anyone else, you could just end up alone for the rest of your life. That way no one is happy, but no one is hurting...except for you. By putting everyone else's needs ahead of your own, you ARE hurting. It is just that it is not always easy to detect when you are being hurt since you are not in the habit of looking after your own needs. (Ouch, those a-ha moments sting don't they?)
 
Whether "they" are strangers on the Internet who have nothing better to do than to troll your efforts and post negative comments, or if "they" are people that actually have the power to affect your ability to provide for yourself, the process is the same. Judge if the consequences are actually worth what you are getting for it.
 
Over the course of time, your consequences change for certain decisions you make for yourself. The consequences of being an uneducated 19 year old, in a closed social circle, who is dependent on parents to survive is very different from the consequences you would have to deal with as an independent 35 year old adult, who owns a business, and does not care about breaking ties with close friends and family.
 
So do keep in mind that how much you have to care about what others think will change over your lifespan, as your dependency on others change.
 
One thing is for sure though. No matter what decision you take, YOU are still the one person that has to live with the full consequences of every decision you do make, and that you don't make, regardless if you cared about what other people think or not.
 
Frank Kermit

Re-Establishing Trust in a Relationship
By Frank Kermit
 
Trust is one of the most important components of a relationship. Love is a great start, but it takes more than loving someone, or being loved by someone, to make a relationship work. But what happens when the trust in a relationship has been broken?
 
Re-establishing trust can be a lengthy process. Depending on what area of trust was violated, and what a person's emotional expectations were, it is reasonable to expect that proving trustworthiness again may take a long time.
 
One of the biggest misconceptions is that re-establishing trust happens over time. Although there is a correlation between re-establishing trust and the time that it takes, it does not mean that time alone is enough to fix the lack of trust that may exist in a relationship. What does help re-establish trust is being able to identify what the source of the break of trust is (i.e. a lie), and then coming to terms with what has to change so that particular breech of trust (i.e the same kind of lie) does not, and cannot, happen again. It is the evidence that new behavior patterns are in place so that the violation of trust is unable to occur again that will help re-establish trust. And THAT is what takes time.
 
For example, an act of infidelity is a breech of trust. The first step is to find out what the circumstances were that brought on the infidelity. Was it an act of revenge on a partner? Was it an attraction from work that went unchecked during unsupervised overtime?  Was alcohol involved thus lowering inhibitions? Was there a lack of sexual intimacy at home, which left a touch-starved partner to seek it elsewhere?
 
In order for the couple to re-establish trust again, a behavior has to change so that, whatever it was that may have contributed or prompted the violation of trust has been removed. As they relate to the examples above, these actions could include replace a desire for revenge with compassion training, finding a new place of employment, eliminate drinking alcohol during social outings, or going to couples counseling to enhance sexual intimacy.
 
That is what takes time. It is showing that the new behaviors have taken affect and that they have become new unconscious habits. As soon as that is proven through actions, THAT is when trust can be earned again.
 
But what if it does not change? What if the new behavior (for example, changing employment) does not change your partner's cheating ways? At that point you have two options. One option is to see if the wrong source of the violation was identified, and to try a different source, and new combative behaviors. The other option is to change your expectations if such changes would be within your personal value system.
 
Changing expectations is not easy. It means to learn to accept something that you previously were raging against. Some people find peace with changing their expectations and accepting a situation. It can actually be empowering for some people, because instead of raging against the issue and trying to change their partner, they accept it as part of being with their partner. However this does not always work long term. Usually, a person sets a boundary of expectation based on what they value, and trying to change that expectation means having to also re-evaluate their value system.
 
Lastly, there is one final key element to consider. There are those people that have major trust issues in general. This means that if their trust is violated once, then even in the face of evidence that a new change has occurred and proof that their partner will not violate that particular trust again, these people are unable to let go of the violation.
 
Being in a relationship means you WILL get hurt, and that your partner WILL make mistakes. If you are a person that has major trust issues, it is unlikely that the level of trust you will need in a relationship will ever be addressed, because over the course of a long-term relationship, your trust in your partner will be let down.
 
Human beings are an imperfect lot. Your partner is going to goof, like forgetting to pick up those tickets to that special event you have been planning for 3 months. If you have such major trust issues that a situation of forgetting tickets will be met with that same reactions as an act of infidelity, then you will likely sabotage every good relationship that comes your way. Ironically, the only person that someone with major trust issues can date for any length of time is a compulsive lair who can artistically hide every small goof of trust he or she makes.
 
Bottom line is that trust is an absolute requirement to make a long-term relationship work. If you do not have trust, you cannot have a relationship. At best, a relationship without trust is just a distraction from the rest of your life. That is escapism, not love.
 
Frank Kermit 

The Scripts that Keep You Single
By Frank Kermit
 
In some people, there is a script. The script is the story they have concocted about how they will meet that special someone and fall in love. Some scripts are more detailed than others covering specific lines that need to be said, or a certain situation that needs to be acted out, to make the scene perfect.
 
Other scripts are a little more basic, drawing from archetype romantic story arcs, of candlelit dinners and moonlit walks.  Whether the script is an elaborate five star production, or a simple outline of bullet points, there is one common element when I work with singles on their scripts. 
 
That common element is that many of the scripts that singles are following, are in part, the reason those individuals still remain single.
 
One of the clearest examples of the script at work is when a single person contemplates new ways of meeting people. Each time a single person refutes a means to locate a potential life partner, because it doesn’t fit in with the way he or she imaged it occurring, they are deferring to the script that does not serve them. 
 
This includes when singles reject means such as blind dates, online dating, speed dating, match making, dating apps or dating a friend, because they are holding out to meet someone through serendipity and a fantasy fulfilling fairy tale; their make-believe script is actually killing their dreams of achieving a chart topping love story.
 
What tends to turn people away from new ways of meeting potential life partners isn’t the technology, the taboo stigmas, or the potential dangers of meeting strangers.
 
It is the fact that new ways of meeting people does not follow the scripts they have inside about the way it was SUPPOSE-TO-BE.  This is an example of what is meant with the saying of “People Getting In Their Own Way”.
 
There are also those times when a person’s script (the story of how the rest of their lives plays out) is downright damaging.  Such as the single mother who refuses to believe that any man could be sexually faithful.
 
Since she is already convinced that the story of her life is to continually be cheated on, chances are she will (likely unconsciously) enact certain choices of the men she dates to help make that script a reality.
 
Or the man whose scripts insists that no woman would ever marry him for any reasons other than his bank account, would likely live out that script by only focusing on materialistic women to date, and (likely unconsciously) ignore or be turned off by the women that would actually be able to fall in love with his character.
 
If you find yourself a struggling single, and are looking for ways to expand your horizons, then it is important to look at the synopsis of the script inside you and re-write the scripts that are working against you on the stage of life.
 
Frank Kermit

 Be Thankful For a Broken Heart
By Frank Kermit
 
Ok, I hate this. I really hate this part of the process. However, it is a necessary part of the process, and if I am expected to help encourage others to do it, first I have to demonstrate doing it myself. It is about being thankful for the times your heart got broken.
 
Before we go on, I want to make something perfectly clear. This is not about forgiveness. This is not about condoning any horrible act that someone perpetrated on you. This is not about wishing for it to happen again.
 
This is just a perspective to change your mindset. This is to help people focus on what they can learn from heartbreak. By focusing on what you learned, it puts you into a position where you are more aware of signs you missed the first time, so that you can limit your exposure to massive heartbreaks in the future, without having to close yourself from opportunities of love.
 
Ok, here I go.
 
I am thankful for getting stood up at my senior prom. There were lots of signs I ignored about the way I was treated by that girl leading up to that night. If it was not for that event, I may have always continued to be too trusting and in denial.
 
I am thankful for losing my ex-fiancé to one of my best friends. This event taught me so many lessons. One of the lessons included not talking about my problems regarding my partner with friends, when I should be discussing those with my partner.
 
Another lesson I learned is that even at your best, you are still only 50% of a relationship, and that is not enough to force a relationship to work if you are with the wrong person for you.
 
I am thankful for a girlfriend having cheated on me by having a threesome with a married couple. This lesson taught me about being realistic when wanting to try an open relationship with certain rules, and not taking action to ensure those rules are followed.
 
I am thankful for an ex-lover who got me to visit her in Vermont after we broke up on the promise of a romantic weekend, only to find out that she just wanted platonic company, so that she would not be alone, and had no interest in being romantic at all. Although the trip was not what I had hoped, it gave me an opportunity to take action when I felt disrespected, and I got up and left. It was something I previously would never have done, had I not learned lessons from previous heartbreaks.
 
Now, I am actually thankful that any of these things happened? Well, not exactly. I wish none of those events had taken place. These events were some of the most devastating experiences of my life when they happened, and with each one, I thought my world was crumbling around me.
 
However, what I must acknowledge about myself in this process is that I probably would not have learned those hard lessons any other way. It took being hurt badly, in order for me to wake up and realize the choices I was making, in terms of the people I dated, were the wrong ones.
 
Without the heartbreak as a motivation to change my behaviors so that I could avoid the same heartbreak again, it is more than likely that I would have continued to make the same mistakes over and over.
 
And for that reason, I am thankful that the lessons I learned did not have to be even more devastatingly hurtful than they were. I had the chance to smarten up before making the same mistake again, which could have had worse consequences.
 
With all that said there are some heartbreak stories that were not so bad, but that I was still able to learn something and be thankful for.
 
I am thankful for finding my very first official girlfriend. She taught me that I was lovable at a time when I struggled to love myself.
 
I am thankful for the women that I have connected with on my journey to understand relationships, as each one taught me how to manage different kinds of relationship structures, and that different relationship structures actually exist and can work.
 
I am thankful for my wife, that has thus far experienced me at my worst, stuck by me anyways and is a great mother to our magnificent son. Together, we continue to learn the true meaning of marriage and all the good and not so good challenges that marriage offers. Lots more lessons to learn here.
 
Inevitably, the majority of the relationships we have in our lives will end one way or another, either through break ups, or for those that last the rest of our lives, death will do us part.
 
Those relationships that do not end in a break up will still have their share of heartbreak. We are human, and human beings make mistakes and hurt the people we love. It is also part of the process.
 
However, if with each heartbreak we can grow a little more, then in time, we will also learn to love a little more, and love with less hurt.
 
Frank Kermit