Behind closed doors

The older I get the more I realise how deceptive people and relationships are. Almost everyone, without exception, has more going on in their life than you can ever tell from the outside.

If you are sitting at home reading this, with a husband or wife that feels more like a friend who happens to live with you than the passionate romance of your life, believe me, so, so many people feel like that.
If you had a secret little thing with, or a crush on someone other than your other half during a relationship that you've never confessed to anyone, I tell you now, nearly everyone I know has confessed to something similar.
Are you happy? or just comfortable?

There are no perfect couples or perfect relationships. Life isn't a Disney film.

Even the families that we look at with envy, believing they have so much under control, with perfect, angelic children, will be facing their own battles behind closed doors. Those that appear to have everything, could be up to their eyeballs in debt.

No one is living the perfect, happy life that we imagine, and perhaps the most important thing to take from that, is that no one is doing any better at this life than you are. We have to stop comparing ourselves and thinking everyone else is doing a better job than us.

Without wishing to sound overly dramatic, I have grown up being constantly told that I am over sensitive and over emotional. My family did not and do not discuss feelings or emotions of any kind, it's just not done, and as a result I've always felt like the abnormal one. The one that didn't fit in.

I over think every little thing, I analyse and worry and more than anything I express. My emotions are worn on my sleeve like a badge for all to see, I've never been able to hide my highs or lows from people around me, I express them in everything I do.

As I get older and more importantly, as I share more of my personal battles with people, I realise that the old cliche really is true. I am not alone in the way I am. It's not that everyone else can deal with things better than I can, it's not that I am weak, over sensitive or that I fail at things, it's just that people hide it until they feel they can tell you, until they realise you feel the same or will not judge them.

People pretend and people fake it - because we're scared of what people will think, because we don't want to ruin the illusion of perfection we've created, and because, and I suspect this is the one we're all most guilty of, we're in denial.

Admitting all our faults and fears, our feelings of inadequacy, acknowledging our troubled relationships and yearnings for attention and romance, we take them all to mean we've failed in some way. Because we think everyone else is getting it right.

They're not. They feel the same as you. Seriously, take some homework from this weeks entry and confess to a friend something about your life that's not entirely and completely perfect.I don't care if it's something as stupid as not washing your hands after going to the loo -  I am willing to bet that they confess something to you in return no matter how small, and you both feel a little bit of comfort and more secure in yourselves as a result.