Rejection... Sometimes we all just can't get along

Last night when I was on the twitter machine,  I realized that a Canadian sports journalist I follow had been quieter than usual the past week. Meaning he wasn't clogging up my feed every 10 minutes. So I searched him up to see what the story was, and to my surprise I was blocked. I am not one to point fingers and name names here so for now we will call him D. Cox...  No that might be too obvious...  Damien C.... Yes that's much better.

Anyway this "Mr. Clean look-a-like" apparently took exception to me agreeing with him, in an admittedly snarky tone, that the Oilers didn't tank their season like a bunch of other teams did. My point is they were just legitimately horrible so they didn't need to tank. Honestly, I have taken personal shots at him in the past for his inane ramblings, but unless he has a long memory this seems to be a pretty minor thing to block a guy for.

I would like to take this time to point out that blocking someone on twitter is the most pointless thing to do. If I wanted to see what he is tweeting all I need to do is log out and just search twitter, and if I wanted to continue to grind his gears I could start another account which I assume others have done in the past and probably still are doing to him now. Honestly, if he just muted me I wouldn't have been the wiser but alas he feels like he needs to rule his kingdom so be it.

But what does all of this have to do with the scope of this blog you ask? Simple at some level we all want to be loved. He wants to be in an echo chamber where everyone loves what he vomits online, and I wanted to be appreciated for my humor and my wit. Turns out we couldn't come to a mutual agreement on how this relationship was going to play out and he decided to end it, with out even the decency of a phone call. sigh.

I am sure there is a portion of people out there that claim they don't care what other people think, and to a certain extent I am sure that is true. However, as the cliche goes no man is an island... and if they are its probably more like an archipelago surrounded by other islands.

I have said in this blog that my daughter and I have a verbal agreement that she's not dating till she's 30. I know in my heart that isn't going to hold up, but at the same time I know she is going to get hurt at some point and that bothers a part of me. Every parent wants to protect their children but at the same time I hope I can teach her that it's just part of life.

If you truly think about it most of your relationships you have in your life will end. Friendships, work relationships, educational, romantic, etc at some point they all end. Be it just drifting away, moving on, or sometimes the situation isn't right for you or them. But the bottom line is no one enjoys rejection.

I have been both the dumper and the dumpee. Neither side is fun, but sometimes it needs to be done even if both sides cannot see it at the time. Its funny when I was the dumpee I preferred the band aid method, just do it quick I will take my lumps and then I can move on. However, when I was the dumper I tried to do it soft and gently to protect the other person's feelings, which admittedly is probably worse for all involved.

Probably the best way I have discovered to look at the failed relationships in ones past is to think that everyone you meet was meant to be in your life at that moment in time for some reason. Sometimes they stay, sometimes they move on, and sometimes they will return to you. The hard part is realizing rejection is just sudden change, and change while scary is what makes life life.

Love is easy...

One of the first lessons I want to teach my kids is about love. Not dating, or birds and the bees, but love. Besides my daughter and I have a verbal contract that she's not dating till she's 30, I don't care if she was 2 at the time when she agreed. It is a binding verbal agreement and no one can convince me otherwise.

The lesson I want to teach them is that love is easy. That's it, that's all.. Well actually, love is probably the easiest thing in the world, its relationships that are the hard part.

I have already explained how fast I fell in love with my daughter, and that feeling never changed and never will. I knew I loved her from the minute I saw her. I knew I was going to be apart of her life for a very long time and that I would do anything for her. I can assume that feeling is going to be just as overwhelming the day my son is born.

My wife, on the other hand, while not love at first sight I feel the same way about her. Loving her is the easiest thing I do. I wake up and know I love my wife, I go to bed and know I love my wife. There is no one else on this planet that I would want to share my life with. She's been my best friend for 13 years, my wife for almost a year, and for lack of a better term my soul mate.

Communication, sex, trust, money, toilet seat up or down, etc can all affect a relationship for the good and for the bad. It is all about how you deal with the bad and remember the good. However, the human brain isn't really wired that way, the good is easily forgotten while the bad lingers it is why we learn better by failure than success. No wonder why the "Everyone gets a trophy" generation is failing society.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand....

Communication is probably the biggest hurdle in any relationship, it is basically what all the other things stem from, even the toilet seat quandry. A quick amazon search brings up over 10,000 books on communicating in a relationship, a google search brings up even more articles, and who knows maybe the "relationship communication" tag I put on this blog will get me a ton more hits.

There are many ways to communicate, words we use or even simple visual clues.  My wife knows when something is bothering me as well just by the way I look, or more often then not, how quiet I am. It is something I am trying to work on, I tend to over think and focus inward in trying to solve a problem but by then the conversation is usually over and it's never in the man's best interest to start the "debate" again. Though admittedly I forget that sometimes... 

Being on the road as much as I am, I have learned to pick up small clues in the way she texts me.

"Morning my handsome husband" - Great

"Morning my husband" - Good

"Morning" - Uh oh I think I did something wrong

"Asshole" - Yep I did something wrong...  To be fair I haven't actually gotten this one... yet...

At the end of the day, I want my kids to find their true love like I did. I want them to be happy, I want their love to be easy, and I want them to realize that while the rest of it can be hard work its always worth it.

Love at first sight.

I was never one to believe in love at first sight. I thought it was just something that was fantasy, a way to speed up the process in books and movies. The usual boy meets girl, they fall in love, some conflict separates them, they get back together, true love conquers all, and on your way out don't forget to buy the soundtrack featuring the new hit by the Goo Goo Dolls.

Don't get me wrong, I always considered myself somewhat of a romantic at heart, hell I won my high school's poetry contest 3 years in a row (Iambic pentameter for the win bitches!). But I still never believed it was real, that was until I was 30.

I wish I could say it was my wife, but nope she hated me when we first met... true story.  No lie, she HATED me with the fires of hades but obviously my charm and good looks won her over.

I never believed in love at first sight until I met the girl I now call my daughter. I met E, a week after my 30th birthday, when she was days away from being 5 months old. She was sleeping at the time, she looked so peaceful and innocent nearly broke my heart. Correction, it did break my heart because part of me was pretty angry at the guy that liked to call himself her father already walked out on her and J (who is now my wife).

Coles' notes version of me and J up to the point where I met E... Met in university, we became teammates, she hated me, then we got along, became friends, became best friends, and stayed close for over a decade. If you want the unabridged version I am sure that will come in a future post at some point.

Anyway, back to the matter at hand. That little girl made my heart melt, and she was just sleeping. When she was awake, I was putty in her tiny tiny hands and I was OK with that. If you ask my wife not much has changed, as much as I try to be the hard ass she always has daddy's number.

Some of my favourite pictures of her and I when she was little always involve us sleeping, something about when she would just snuggle in to my chest I would be out probably just as fast as she was. If I could have figured a way to bottle that I'd make my first million and I'm sure I could get Ambien off the market.

As much as she floored me when I first met her, I wasn't prepared for her to use the D-word. We hadn't even be teaching her it, we were trying to teach her my name when she was learning to talk. J told me on the phone one time that she was saying my name and E said "Dada". I didn't believe her, I told her it must have been "Gaga" and she was just having trouble with my name. Then the next time I was with them I went to E and said "Say G..." "Dada"... Well of course I took it in stride, and by taking it stride I mean I cried.

That little girl has been one of the best parts of my life the last few years. Words cannot express what she means to me, or how much she breaks my heart when she cries as she tells me she misses me when I am on the road, or how proud I am every time she says matter of factly, "Daddy is Batman, Mommy is Batgirl, and I am Robin.", or how happy I was when the adoption got approved last week. She is my daughter, my world, and my munchkin and nothing is ever going to change that.

Love you E.