A piece of advice given to me when I was young concerning how I presented myself was, “Don’t start what you can’t keep up!” When you suddenly change your personality to please a particular person or group of people they expect you to keep it up because, “that’s who you are”, right? You go out with the date of your dreams and they like to eat raw oysters and black olives, no way on earth I could stomach either one, so to pretend to like either of those two repulsive offerings to keep him would be more embarrassing down the road when I decide I just can’t do it any more. I’ve been around long enough to see those type scenarios play out and the outcome is never a good one. If you’re not a party person don’t pretend to be a people pleaser to impress, you’ll get tired of glad-handing people you don’t care about and the mask will drop. Best to leave the mask off in the first place and just be who you are. If they like you that way then you are very blessed to find someone that you don’t have to gain approval from.
I speak from the experience of getting involved with personalities that were difficult, somehow it made me feel good to be the one person they did like, however it gets tiring to be that only person when their jealousy kicked in and I proved to be a person who really does like every body, the person who hugs necks instead of shaking hands and lands an occasional kiss on a cheek, it wasn’t well received.
When I learned to just be myself, like me or hate me, if I am being true to who I am then at least I became happier with myself. I advise you to do the same!
Let me know how that works out for you!
Now let’s go listen to Billy Joel sing the old standard, “Don’t go changing to try and please me… I want you just the way you are…”
Harolene.com 
I am always talking about homeless issues on my blog, but that is because the blog is dedicated to them and not to everything I ever think on any old subject.
I especially give a LOT of thought to sociology of agriculture. I was raised in a conservative home and though I moved several times growing up, we tended to live in rural areas among country people more often than not. Thus I have a first-hand experience with numerous communities which were slow to embrace modern/post mod ways of life. I know what it is to live in a town where we don’t lock our doors etc.
I have studied up on these things somewhat, and so I am familiar with the concept of “courting” a girl rather than modern/post mod “dating”. And though I do not have first-hand experience or even second-hand for that matter with “arranged marriage”, I certainly am familiar with them in Scripture, and I have a deep appreciation for such things. The automobile burst on the scene in the 1920s and “dating” replaced courting, the car replaced the “parlor” (where parents and little sisters could keep tabs on things), and premarital sex and shotgun weddings replaced chastity and matrimony. In barely more than a generation, we had the “sexual revolution”, and while it largely gave face to what was already going on in the dark, it was in fact a development that has done more damage than liberation.
Why do I bring all that up?
Glad you asked.
Because in Bible times, only the very, very wealthy had “privacy”, at least on a regular basis. Some cultures allowed a “honeymoon” where perhaps you and your mate would spend a month in a special cottage doing your gymnastics from the chandelier (I am being facetious of course), but not every peasant family afforded even that. Basically, the whole family slept in a one room house, the same room you ate in when everyone was awake. The sexual experience of MOST farm girls and boys was to marry the mate picked out for you years before. You probably knew the girl all your life, even if you did not know she was “the one” all that time. Nevertheless, the parents, and maybe the village elders too, came together and sorted out your love life for you. Thus it was a GIFT. A very special GIFT from Mom and Dad and honored by the whole community. And the sex act was performed as fairly basic grunting under the blanket in your corner of the room while everyone else tried to sleep, and only AFTER the wedding when it all was made official.
Talk about being yourself now. About living out your real personality. All of that is a GIFT given you, not a quest you find after leaving home or navel searching. You are who you are because your loved ones say so. And like a fish in water, you don’t know what water is. All of this is just taken for granted. Natural. Good. And everyone else experiences it too.
Now. I gotta say. I am a modern person. A modern American. A red-blooded American male, no less. I face certain temptations like anybody, except I do it as a red-blooded American male (I am not alone in this, but think about the privileged position that is on the world stage! We are captains of our own fate!) And we like a conquest. And we like to conquer EVERYTHING and everyone. And this moves from the basketball court to the sexual conquests too. Just look around at red-blooded American males and tell me otherwise.
Fortunately, I am a very conservative, deeply committed to my marriage kind of guy, but I know many who grew up since the invention of the automobile, the TV, and playboy magazines who are a bit confused about the value of that.
Anyway, not to chase bunnies here, but to say, I GET IT.
I get it that “falling in LOVE” sounds fun. Every romantic comedy movie I ever saw in some form or another feeds that conquest mentality. And like a fish in water, we don’t know what water is. But we also don’t know what the GIFT is from God that LOVE and SEX is all REALLY about. Even if you are in a committed “successful” marriage, odds are you don’t know what that is in THIS culture.
But, it is about knowing your place and your place knowing you.
Think of it. In the world the way we do it currently, it’s two star crossed lovers together AGAINST the world – and believe me, there are temptations lurking, saboteurs in waiting, snares set for unsuspecting and naïve people. But in the agriculture (and in REALITY that has problems too, but we can begin to take not of the water we fish live in as we contrast our current situation with that agricultural one) the innocence, the TRUST, and FIDELITY of the WHOLE community, the lack of privacy in which to indulge our secret whims and fan the flames of their sparks, you might well be very deeply satisfied, AND REST in complete TRUST for your mate and his/her family AND your neighbors who have all agreed that THIS is the right fit for you because they all KNOW you at least as well as you do.
Worth pondering.
God bless…
LikeLiked by 1 person
PS, in the final analysis, this stuff actually does have real bearing on homelessness too. But not on the surface.
LikeLiked by 1 person
My dad was the first in his family of five guys and one girl to refuse the arranged marriage offered (to say it nicely). The Armenians seemed to think their royal blood should be kept within the clan and not include “odars” (outsiders). When he married my mother after meeting and courting her by walking in the park and climbing the Iron Man in Birmingham for three hours and proposing marriage, they were all shocked. The older ladies in the Armenian Church were not kind to this girl with milk white complexion, blue eyes and blonde hair, but his mother and father did welcome her with open arms. Reading your comment made me think of all the times I heard that story. Without ever experiencing the “olden days” I miss them. I feel I was born out of season (borrowing from the Apostle 😂)
LikeLiked by 1 person
The world is out of joint with it’s purpose. Each generation must deal with it and with all the new developments in the out-of-jointedness we find in it. I too feel that I don’t belong here, or belong at this time… But then of course that deep feeling is common to nearly all who live in this day-n-age, I think. Few exceptions, and most of them are too busy capitalizing on the problem rather than being part of the solution.
We who follow Jesus believe He is the rightful Lord and Master of this world and spend our lives in his service implementing his Lordship in ourselves and in any influence we have. We are like the medicine applied into the wound. That is sorta a yucky image, but then so is the image of a King of kings hanging on a Roman cross.
Well, this is the way I see things, and I do my best to live accordingly. God’s world aches waiting for the revelation of the sons of God (Rom. 8). The world knows it’s out of joint and waits eagerly for us to bear God’s image so it can get back to the business of glorifying Him. We too ache as we wait and work out our salvation in the mess which once redeemed is heavenly.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Some people hide behind pertaining to be something they are not.Whenthe true person comes out Disaster111
LikeLiked by 1 person
I dreamed of you two nights ago. I hope all is well ❤️🙏🏼😇 my long time and trusted friend 🙏🏼❤️
LikeLike
I am so glad that you are who you are. I have always loved the fact that you were a “what you see is what you get” kind of person and I respect that so very much! It has made me love you more and more over the years. I knew I could trust you. I always wanted a sister and I think you are the closest thing to a real/biological sister that I could ever have. I love and miss you so much.
LikeLiked by 1 person