Five secrets my parents forgot to tell me to help me survive my 20s

In my early 20s I moved by myself to the United States from Italy, and I was basically on my own. My parents forgot to pack their best advise for me, and I did not make a good counselor to myself. I am now over 50, so I figured a couple of things out.

For as simple as the advise below may seem, I really had to sweat it off. I think many of us do.  So, let me spare you some sweat. Save that for the gym.

Advise # 1 my parents forgot to tell me:

1. He is not the love of your life!

You may think you found the only person in the universe that will ever love you and put up with your kind of crazy. You are already imagining getting old together, what color your picket fence will be, and the names of your three children.  And you are just 20 years old.  You are stubbornly clinging to the "love of your life" like a panda to a bamboo shoot. You may even be in denial of all the things that may make your current relationship actually suck.

Wrong!!!

Lots of people will put up with you, your neurotic behaviors, and your stinks. They will even love what your current love-of-your-life just hates. They will love what you may think is unlovable about you. Other people will stretch you, adore you, challenge you, put you on a pedestal, and force you to grow by sheer force of heartache and trial and error.  

No heartache, no growth. 

Don’t despair. You will find others along your way.  The more mistakes, the better your chances of getting it “right” later on in life.  Although being with your high-school sweetheart forever is very romantic and makes for blockbusters Hollywood movies, it prevents you from seeing that things can be radically different, and much better, once you let others in your circle of very close intimacy.  Others will shed a light for you on what you really want, and what you definitely never ever want to find again, in a relationship.  

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P.S.: I know the picture has nothing to do with the subject. Or maybe it does, and a lot.  It's OK to flush relationships down the toilet when they are not good for you. (Yes, it's a toilet. Ever used one of those?) 

Also, thanks for noticing. I only post 100% original work I write myself,  and photos taken with my smartphone.  It is much smarter than I am. I will ask Siri to write the next post for me.

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Thanks for reading and stopping by, I really appreciate it.

Stay tuned for a hot topic tomorrow or at some point in the near future…what my parents forgot to tell me about sex.

If you have any thoughts, please let me know.

[There, I stuck a freewrite exercise in there.  Get liberated and freewrite too!  Look up @mariannewest to see how her creative genius got half of us to write freely and on command for 5 minutes a day]

claudia