Why is it that certain conditions often have to be met for many of us to be motivated to change a toxic part of ourselves? Often, those parts of ourselves that we want to change would benefit our lives greatly if we made them all on our own without waiting for those certain conditions to be met.
A friend of mine in the AA recovery circles told me the other day that they would walk out of a job that is extremely toxic for them if they met someone special and developed a romantic relationship. Knowing their job situation, which indeed is quite unhealthy for their spirit, I asked them why it wouldn’t be something they would want to do as an act of loving themselves a little better. I never did get their answer, but from my own experience, many of those conditions that I waited for never happened, and for those that did, any changes I made in my life were only temporary until at some point circumstances led me right back to doing those toxic things. The best example I can give out of my own life for how I learned this is what transpired back in 2000 when I met my last partner.
During the summer of 2000, like many other addiction based periods of my life, I used sex and porn to numb the mental and emotional pains I had inside. On most evenings I spent hours on the Internet engaging in visual stimulation that did nothing but pass the hours by. When I wasn’t doing that, I’d set up random “dates” with people that were really nothing more than attempts to have sex. In either case, I used the excuse that I was single and that I would change those behaviors if one of those “dates” ever turned into a real relationship. Deep down I knew that neither behavior was healthy for my mind, body, or soul but I kept doing them under the premise that I’d change when the condition of me getting into a relationship was met. And in August of 2000, that condition did occur. I met someone who I fell in love with and sure enough, I made those changes. First, I let go of all the people in my life that I was “playing around” with on any level. I stopped looking at all pornographic material. I even stopped making sexual innuendoes and doing occasional flirtatious comments. All of my focus was on the new relationship. And for awhile, it worked. I stayed healthy and away from all those toxic behaviors. But when then newness wore off of that relationship and that person moved in with me, I no longer got as excited over the connection. And one day, just like that, something stimulated me from my past. Whether it was something that someone sent me in e-mail, something that popped up on my computer, something that was said to me, or something altogether different, I can’t remember anymore. Either way, something triggered me with a quick high and a memory of how good those old behaviors used to temporarily make me feel. Within a short period of time after that, I was back to spending hours and hours looking at porn, fantasizing about other people, and hanging out with many toxic people who wanted to see me out of that relationship. And eventually, that happened and the relationship ended.
There have been other cases in my life where I told myself I would change certain things when other conditions were met. As I mentioned before, many of them never came to fruition and I usually lived with various excuses that kept me staying in states of toxicity. What wasn’t changing was what was driving me to doing all of those toxic behaviors in the first place. But there came a day when I began realizing all of this and started seeing I was just going around in circles. It was then I decided to work on removing all of the toxicity permanently in my life regardless of any outside conditions being met. Not only has it brought greater peace in my life, but it also has landed me in a relationship that is spiritually growing and healthy for me. While the highs are gone now in that relationship, I have experienced quite a number of temptations recently, that in the past would have derailed me and led me back to toxic living. But with all the work I’ve done and a deeper relationship with God, they have remained just that, temptations that I have never acted upon. Not even once.
Waiting for certain conditions to be met to make a healthy change in a person’s life doesn’t work. Often those conditions are never actualized and even when they do, it only temporarily leads that person to a healthier state. If you know of certain parts of your life that really do need to change because they are seriously toxic, I encourage you to take a moment, breathe, and ask God for the strength to make those changes now. Do the work necessary to making them permanent and I can assure you, your life will get a lot better and a whole heck of a lot healthier.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson