It’s something that thinking about it now, I realized that for some reason, the people that I’ve been in relationships with were always organized. I mean, it wasn’t something I was conscious of or looked at as criteria but now that I’m deliberating on it, they were all really tidy people. Not neat freaks by any chance, just tidy. Organized.
Would I say it has more to do with me, I wouldn’t know. I’m not the tidiest person I know, at all. I’m more relaxed about these things but by no means a slob as well. But then we move over to being minimalist and this is the one I studied. I’ve always been simple in my necessities. From clothes to hair and other personal possessions, the basic things and no more. Do I splurge on myself and buy things impulsively? Yeah, once or twice. But I mostly always regret indulging soon enough so it’s not something I like to do.
I think when it comes to deal breakers in relationships, as the name implies, it’s something that you cannot bring yourself to cope with. I remember one of the people I was in a form of situationship with. We weren’t together, but it was getting there. I’d never been to his place and we mostly had dates at different other places. He spent a lot. And when I say a lot, I mean lavishly to the point of being silly kind of a lot.
I felt it was cute then that he wasn’t tight on the purse strings. But as a typical African girl from a strict, not to mention, very religious household, I usually just smiled at his impulsive expenditures and was like, “No, I don’t want all that. Just this is fine. Yeah, I’m okay with this. No, I’d rather just have one, not five....” You know, that kind of thing.
Writing this made me smile because I remember how one of the sales attendants during one of our outings, had given me a dirty look and whispered when my date wasn’t looking. “If you like keep doing understanding girlfriend, someone that knows how to spend that money will take him away.” I found this quite amusing at the time and just gave her a polite smile. I guess I wasn’t bothered by the statement cause I already knew the relationship wasn’t going to be a serious one.
But that’s on a lighter not anyway. If I had a maximalist partner, someone who spent a lot and wasn’t a fan of simplicity, it may not be a deal breaker for me for a few reasons. The most important being if he wasn’t insensitive or inconsiderate with it. I know everyone can’t have simplistic views like me, and that’s okay. But it would only become a deal breaker for me in a relationship if the guy had no principles with it or was vain. If he trampled on people’s feelings or mine and was unkind with the way he went about it.
I’m not the type that carries around hope when I see something I don’t like in a person, that I would be able to change him. You can either deal with or tolerate a particular characteristic in someone or choose not to deal with it at all. People have traits in degrees. So if I going to be with a disorganized, maximalist person, I’d check what degree of a disorganized person he is, if it is something I can handle, if it’s something that wouldn’t make me lose my mind in the long run. And from there, I’d know whether to stay or leave.
But that’s if I hadn’t yet entered the relationship. Now, if I was already in it, and it bothered me so much and just wasn’t something I could tolerate as a characteristic of this person, I’d talk to him about it. Say it bothered me how inconsiderate he was with these traits of his and if there was a way we could work on that.
The fact is that no matter how highly I held my minimalist values, I’m also fully aware that people grew up in different backgrounds and had different experiences with it, shaping them into who they are now. So while I wouldn’t for any reason punish myself and endure something that didn’t give me peace, I wouldn’t necessarily see it as a deal breaker unless it was like any of the things I’d mentioned before. Understanding and tolerance go a long way in something like this.
It may not be a perfect take but that’s how I feel about this. Maybe my thoughts would be different as the years go by. But till then...
Jhymi🖤
Write on a #KISS topic today.
Image is mine.
