Commitment

Tonight I want to write about commitment. Is it a part of our human nature? Why do we seek and value commitment and yet so often fail to provide it?
 
I'll begin with myself. I tend to commit very easily. This can be easily seen in my blog; obvious examples are my dedicated commitment to the Backstreet Boys since the age of 10, my "imaginary relationships" with men for years and it's been a repeating pattern. Richard, Jes, Ken, Eric, etc. I don't easily forget someone who has treated me nicely or pampered me. That's also why I am always the most appreciative student in the class if the teacher has actually enlightened me; I'm still in touch with some of my college professors and I am usually the one picking up the tab.

The problem with me is that I grew up in an environment that I was barely pampered by anyone; I was rid of the right to be a little girl since my younger brother was born, which means I was less than 2 years old. As you already know here and there from this blog, I had a difficult childhood with domestic violence, constant verbal and emotional abuse that still goes on today, weird family arrangement with a half brother and my father's ex-wife, etc etc. I crave to be embraced; I crave to be comforted with gentleness whenever I cry because I barely get those. My confidence has never come from my parents; it used to come from my aunts and some teachers at school, especially a gorgeous English teacher from Canada who was literally my crush when I was 10 and 11. I actually find a lot of the guys I've dated talk kind of like this English teacher--humorous, quick-witted, sarcastic, and always teasing me. He was married with kids and around 40 years old when he taught me, but I fantasized to be with him or have him as my father. I remember even telling other kids at school that he was actually my father. Well, mental and behavioral aberration in me has a history (and now I'm sort of disgusted by the thought that some of the kids I teach today might be fantasizing about me, although they don't seem as physically or mentally mature as I was their age).

Among the three kids in my family, I was the only one who was never beaten or scolded after becoming a teenager. That was the biggest approval I got from my father--silence and solitude for most of my time and no violence used on me at all was the biggest compliment my father could give anyone in our family. I was even scolded for getting into the best university nationwide, because my grades weren't yet good enough to become a financier. I think everyone's childhood and teenage years shape who they are, but if we're living with our parents during those years, who we are is destiny, because we don't get to choose our parents who condition our behaviors and emotional responses.

In my case, it has been a vicious cycle. Of course as I get older, I have been able to support myself emotionally (to some extent); I have learned how to talk myself into believing in my life and how to appear to be confident and relaxed whenever I had to improvised speech in front of dozens, hundreds, to even thousands of people since I was a teenager. But the "dark hole" is always in me. I tried to look up some research about father-daughter relationships and their impact on the adult daughter's love life but there seems to be very little that has been done. Some say that girls like me tend to act out of desperation and in the end push our men away. It is true. I know I shouldn't be seeking approval from anyone else but myself, but this is so hard. All the supportive voices I give myself come from the Backstreet Boys, and then some from my uncle, aunts, teachers, random people here and there. However, none of them is fully committed to me. I'm neither their daughter nor their wife and I have never been given the commitment of unconditional love. Yes, some might say they treat me like I'm their daughter, but it's still different from actually "being their daughter". I can't cry in front of them and ask them to embrace me until I am OK. Simple as that. I can't do that with my own parents either.

So the less approval and comfort I get from my own parents, the more I seek externally. I try to be an overachiever at school and at work so my teachers or students would be so awed and give me lots of praises. Romantically, this becomes a disaster. As long as a man says something appreciative of me or shows his admiration of me or some gestures that he cherishes me or accepts/holds me when I cry, I just want to commit to him. I want to start a family with him so I can be in his embrace forever. Then they disappear. To this day, I still don't quite understand why men always disappear from my life after telling me the sweetest things in the world. Did they really lie to me just for sex? I've asked this questions many times in this blog but I don't wanna believe so. Like I said, I don't believe they're bad in nature.

The only thing that can possibly explain this is that they find me desperate and needy. After listening to relationship coaching audio books for years, I have learned how to express my emotions authentically without creating drama, but somehow, men still find my tears too much to bear. So many of them kissed me after seeing me cry, and all of them left me also after seeing me cry. Are my emotions really cherishable, like they say in relationship coaching classes? My parents have never cherished my emotions so I had been conditioned to suppress my emotions until I took those relationship coaching classes.

Here's the bigger issue--not many parents are able to give unconditional love to their children, believe it or not. How many parents have stopped talking to their kids simply because their kids didn't turn out to be what the parents want them to be? How many parents in the world have abused their children both emotionally and physically because their children did something the parents don't like? Tons of them. All this time we've been honoring the idea of unconditional love from our parents or lover in movies, music, or literature, but the truth is we praise it because we barely have it. I can only think of two parents who can accept their children radically, regardless what they've done, and they're Tanner's parents. But I've only stayed with them for a week so maybe I don't know yet.

If most kids haven't really received unconditional love from their parents, then they would have a hard time loving themselves unconditionally, let along loving their romantic partners unconditionally. That's why any story about unconditional love can be made in a blockbuster--because it's so rare. But I also find fate playing an interesting role here: for those of us who crave unconditional love because we didn't have it as a child, it'll probably never happen to us romantically, and yet those who grew up in supportive families with unconditional love are more likely to find it again from their romantic partners. So again, it's unfair because we never chose our parents but it's simply destiny. We can't reason with the Universe and the destiny it gives us.

From a parent's perspective, unconditional commitment is also required when they give birth to a new baby. Parents should commit to their babies regardless of their gender, health, intelligence, etc. But again, the sad truth is that so often parents shut down their heart if it's a girl or defected or unintelligent. Parents can't commit unconditional love to their babies because their own parents didn't commit to them either. The spiral goes on and on, which turns the majority into a huge crowd of weak asses who fear intimacy and commitment. They fear intimacy in a sense that they can't speak the truth about their hearts and therefore are unable to fully accept the other person's heart until death do them apart. A shut down heart cannot receive another heart.

The world's chaos all come from the same source--their parents' inability to fully accept their emotions and embrace them. I'm pretty sure none of the members in IS received unconditional love from their parents. People adopt many forms of outlet for their cumulative anger, violence is always one of them. Human history honestly is written in blood and slaughters, which we hope so much will end but never will. I believe violence isn't a part of human nature, but anger is. If our anger has never been embraced since infantry, piled up anger turns into deadly violence. Hitler was deadly violent because he was never embraced for any ugly emotions he had as a child; eventually his army became deadly violent because most of the members grew up in similar situations fueled by the economic recessions where people wouldn't even have decent food. I don't think IS is that different. I think all the chaos we have today are a result of emotionally distant parents and a prolonged economic recessions that exacerbated the anger among those young man and women, many of who are around my age, in their late 20s, when they're supposed to be building up a career but have failed because of the fucking recession.

Now we see the commitment of unconditional love is so divine and should be the only key to world peace. Imagine that anyone is always embraced like a little baby whenever they feel angry or sad until they have recovered from their grief. Then, can we imagine these people beheading other people? No, I can't.

Back to the very first question--is committing to unconditional love a part of human nature? I believe it is. A baby loves their mother and father unconditionally until one day the betrayal is so deep that the child must pull away before getting themselves killed. Then is it human nature to keep our hearts forever innocent and unscathed despite so many attacks on our path of growth? No, it's not. It's our human nature to grow callus over a wound, which is the same for an emotional harm. Then...I guess what I've been trying to do with my heart--keeping it as open as a baby's and always believing in the best in others--is against human nature.