Stubbornness and Suspicians

Dictionary.com defines stubbornness as being “…fixed or set in purpose or opinion; resolute…” Have you even known anyone like that? Someone who has it in their head that a situation is a certain way and nothing that they see or hear is going to change their mind? I used to be like that.

As a matter of fact, there was a situation one time that I was convinced happened exactly the way that I thought it did, and nothing was going to change my mind. Someone had told me a story about my boyfriend and I was absolutely 100% convinced that it was true. And of course, me being the analytical person that I am, I was able to find all the “evidence” that I needed to tie into this story that I was told. Of course, I was wrong. There was no “evidence”, just some poor choices made by my boyfriend as he tried to protect me and some creative imagination on my part. But I held on to that story. Boy did I. I swore that it was the truth and he had done this atrocity and nothing he said was going to change my mind. When I think back to all the time I wasted being mad at him for something that he didn’t do, and I was too stupid to believe him, it makes me sick. Yes, my stubbornness almost cost me my relationship.

I used to be a really jaded person. I didn’t believe anything that my boyfriend told me and was punishing him for everything that had ever been done to me. And when he did make an actual screw-up, well dammit I was so hard on him that he felt he had to be perfect. I expected perfection from him, but I told him that he had to accept me for who I am. What a hypocrite I was. There is something that he said to me that I will always remember and I try to live by. He told me that I have to stop thinking the worst of him. If I just automatically assume the best of him, then things will be right.

I had to learn not to be so stubborn. I had to remind myself over and over again that things are not always as they appear. I had to get myself out of lawyer-mode (interrogator/suspicious mode) and take what a person says to me as being the truth. I had to tell myself that if this person loves me, then they aren’t lying to me. I had to stop accusing them and thinking the worst of them. And I had to always assume the best from my boyfriend, even if things made no sense to me.