Joyfully & Easily Invite Healthy Relationships In My Life

I think in order for one to be able to invite healthy relationships into your life, you need to know what that looks like and what habits or behaviors or mindsets that cause you to invite non-healthy relationships into your life.

There are no unhealthy relationships, close ones, that I have. They’ve all been nixed. You do have to be able to give these up and change your mindset, habits, behaviors. It hasn’t been easy for me, rather super challenging.

So grateful to God for showing me all this over time and helping me change.

So far, I’m really liking my Colombian friend, GV. He’s such a nice, decent guy. He has a great job, been there for quite awhile, a software engineer, doesn’t carouse around, a pretty upfront guy. I get no heeby jeebies from him.

I’m really enjoying his friendship a lot and at first I didn’t find him that attractive because of the few pics he sent me. He wasn’t smiling in the pics and it made him seem a little somber.

But, last week, I was able to get on webcam with him and his serious face as opposed to his regular face, which is smiling with dimples – thick, curly short hair . . . what a cutey. Okay, those dimples (he has 2 of them) are sooo cute.

He’s always very courteous to me, and he pays attention to what I say. He has a great memory. He hasn’t asked anything of me, except for me to not be so hard on myself and a things along those lines when I get really bummed about stuff.

I wish he were here. I somehow don’t get the feeling with this guy that I’m missing something, like when is the bomb going to drop that he has some deep dark secrets?

And, I love that he loves to play the guitar, and that he has some really great male friends he’s been friends with since he was a kid that he still hangs out with. He doesn’t have more female friends than male friends. That is AWESOME!

I’m so glad to have GV in my life. I really hope he gets to come to the U.S.

Today I had this guy I met 2-3 months ago text me. He’s actually the uncle of a single mom friend of mine who is around my age (mid-40s). Her uncle has to be in his 60s.

When I met him, he was totally hitting on me and I was just politely courteous to him. Afterall, it was my girlfriend’s housewarming party and her house, her party, her uncle.

He texted me like a teenager would text me with all sorts of slang. That is soooo unattractive. I was polite with him again, but I wasn’t encouraging him to keep texting me. After a few texts, he stopped.

Maybe it’s flattering to have an attractive woman 20+ yrs younger than you being polite to you? I don’t know. I’m not a man.

Anyway, he seemed semi-intoxicated when he talked to me at the party back then. Drunk men hitting on me is not attractive. Maybe he wasn’t drunk, but his face was red flushed and . . . anyway, I’m not interested in anyone 20 yrs older than me (nor 20 yrs younger than me).

But, I am interested to understand why he came back into my life just for a few moments today. Maybe it’s because I had those wrong vibes with GV and somehow this guy, F, picked up on it through the airwaves?

Gotta stop those yuck wrong vibes otherwise I’ll attract more icky men. EEEK!

They say the definition of Insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.

GV seems like such a great guy. We do have a language barrier, somewhat, but we are both learning. It’s not just him coming to my side to have better English, but it’s me learning more Spanish. He’s sometimes surprised that I know more than he thinks.

He asked me once if I was using a translator. I wasn’t. It’s just what I remembered. However, it’s not all that great with 3 yrs of Spanish how little I actually know. It would’ve been more impressive if I had been chatting with him 25 yrs ago. At least I probably could’ve chatted at least 1/2 the conversation in Spanish except a broken sentence here in there or butchering up sentences.

Oh, I digress.

I found myself wanting to talk about and share some stuff with GV that was leading me down the same path as before with other men. At least this time, I was aware and GV never leads me down any bad conversations. It was me.

But, I praise God that today in Proverbs 3, that one of the things I committed to letting God work in me was sound judgment and discernment. That has screamed out at me all day to make better choices, choices I won’t regret.

And, that is also holding myself to a standard better than what I have been doing with men in this realm. GV is just my friend, but I get the impression that all the things he’s helped me with and availability to me is because he likes me.

I love the sweetness of the friendship, the no pressure and definitely his attention, but it’s not a seedy, perverted, yucky attention. He’s very proper with me, so that is awesome. Totally love this, as that’s how men are with me in real life.

God’s Word does not return void. It’s helping me one action at a time change poor past behaviors. Yay! Praise God!

I think one of the things of healthy relationships that you can ask yourself is, Does this relationship make me a better person? Is the other person a better person because of me?

I hadn’t really thought of those 2 questions until right now.

My Colombian friend, GV, I feel I’m overall a better person and I think I’m helping him be a better person. There isn’t an unhealthy tie here, as far as I can see, at least not on my end.

These past 2 months, I’ve been even more cyclical than usual, I think, with my emotions. Some may be hormones, some the time of year (the heat), and what happened last year, as well as my financial situation. All of that has me in a mini-emotional rollercoaster, among life’s other things.

GV doesn’t hit on me, but I would surmise his interest in me is more than just a platonic friend, it’s just that he’s smarter than most guys that have crossed my path interested in this route in that he is showing me respect, common courtesy, and not doing things with something expected in return.

He doesn’t always agree with me, thankfully, because sometimes everything that I make up sounds good, when it isn’t. I’ve noticed he’s very action-oriented. If he says he’s going to do something, he does it.

I’ve been having some issues in the computer realm and he’s greatly helped me. He bought me a 2 TB external HDD, the exact one I wanted. He did this Sunday night and by today, mid-afternoon, less than 48 hrs later, the HDD is sitting on my desk to be used to help me recover over 1/2 TB of data I thought I lost on Friday.

He’s sat with me using technology to help me work through this problem through desktop conferencing, advising me, walking me through step-by-step. He’s done this since Friday, sitting with me for hours on helping me figure out how to solve this without it costing me anything.

In fact, between the recovery software and the new HDD in US dollars, he’s spent a pretty chunk of change. Though he is a software engineer, they do not get paid anywhere as well as they do here in the U.S. I’m guessing he probably doesn’t even make $50K/yr in Colombian with close to 20 yrs of experience.

He knew how important my pictures were to me. He didn’t question or really think about it. He just asked me what I thought could fix this problem and I said, and he stepped in sacrificially to help me.

His own mom was a single mom for many years and he saw the sacrifices she made. He wanted to make my burdens a little lighter. Wow! He stayed up Fri, Sat, Sun, Mon nights to help me. Tonight, due to a thunder storm, he couldn’t, but I’m set at least for the next 7-10 hrs of work as I let the computer do it’s thing automatically.

What a contrast GV is to MM! GV doesn’t have the best English, but he’s communicated WAY better to me than MM. I think GV is an incredible person and I look forward to getting to know him better.

Today my Colombian internet friend shared with me, after I solicited a number of questions, more about how he feels about me. He really likes me, but he hasn’t said so because he already gauged that I wasn’t receptive to hearing things like that, at least not earlier on.

He’s been very gentlemanly with me, which I really like.

Though he’s only been in my life for 6.5 weeks, the time has flown and it seems like I’ve known him for longer. I really enjoy daily chatting with him, and when we don’t get to connect, I’m bummed.

He’s helped me on a number of computer & software things, making my life easier, though, it’s not easy. I’m feeling special and I think if he were here, he’d pamper me.

After MM, I was so starved for someone to treat me normally, that what GV (my Colombian friend) does, well, it’s not normal, feels so nice, like he really cares.

Not sure if I said this before, but before he knew I was in AZ and I never said in anything, he loved AZ and told me all these things about AZ that he loves. MM hated AZ and all he knows is that it’s in the southwest and I live in the desert. He’s so stupid about AZ.

GV started the process of getting a passport, then he’s going to work to get a work visa and get a job here in the U.S. There are a lot of IT jobs and since living in AZ, I think him being biligual would help him a lot.

After MM, I’m still pretty cautious. GV is very nice and probably the only thing I don’t like, but is not a deal breaker, is that he’s only 1/2” taller than me, so this means wearing those 4” heels, well, I’d have to be okay towering over him and vice versa or not wear heels at all.

However, I’m not huge on heels.

I’m enjoying my time with GV and do wish he were here. He’s a man of action, so I really don’t know how long it takes to get a visa & passport, but who knows, maybe this year sometime, we’ll meet in person.

He knows my financial situation, so he knows that I cannot help him in any manner. He’s totally fine with that.

I’ve been chatting with this guy on YT for probably 6 weeks and he’s really a super nice guy. He lives in Colombia and is a software developer working for a non-profit or something like that.

He’s really a great guy, 44 yrs old, single. Been married before and has been divorced for about 4 yrs. He shares the same birthday with my son.

He’s been really helpful to me on all sorts of IT issues I’ve had, which has been great. He doesn’t hit on me and is super respectful. This is a HUGE change from MM.

Anyway, he loves AZ and was telling me how much he LOVES AZ, this was before he even knew I lived in AZ. When he found that out, he was even more thrilled and asks me to take pics to show him some of AZ.

He’s pretty non-pressure and I like this. He actually started out as one of my YT subscribers, so it’s weird that he sees me in my bikini, but he never says anything that makes me feel weird, creepy or anything. He’s totally courteous and doesn’t misbehave at all, as many others I’ve found do misbehave on the internet (not here on 43T, though).

Though he has a job, he’s going to start looking for an IT job here in the Phoenix area. I find that pretty impressive that he would go through all the trouble to get a job here, to get a visa, etc. He knows that I cannot help him in any of these areas, but he’s still willing to go through this.

He seems to be one that keeps his word. Any time he has said he would do something, he does it. He’s always looking for ways to help encourage me.

Today I said I really have a lot of things to get done and I didn’t want to be distracted, needed to be focused. No pressure. He left me alone and that really helped.

There is some language barrier, but his English is getting much better. My Spanish is still pretty bad, but he’s teaching me some, as much as I can handle.

What I like is that he doesn’t tell me things I want to hear, rather what would be beneficial to me. He seems like a really decent guy. Time will tell.

I’m finding that I actually love my body more now. I’ve had my weekly videos on YT for 2 months now and at first I was sooo scared to put them out there. I waited over 2 months before I actually even put the first video out there, but I went and put everything from the initial week and all the ones before on up to the time I was at.

Though I still have a belly, that is ever so gradually getting smaller, I didn’t think doing this would actually have me have a healthier relationship with my own body.

I’ve found that among others, I easily willingly put on a one-piece bathing suit. I used to dread doing this and mostly avoided doing this.

Though the last month hasn’t been that great in terms of results with me sort of yoyoing, I think I’m loving my body more. My belly really isn’t THAT bad.

It’s so cool.

Today I saw a childhood friend online on hotmail Messenger which I don’t use, but I just IM’d him. Not sure why as that’s unusual that I do that. We grew up throughout all grade school, jr high and high school together. He was smart, but pretty shy, a loner and awkward.

We had a great discussion for many hours online to the point I had to stop because my arms, hands, fingers were aching. He admitted to me that he had had a crush on me for a long time.

I don’t think anyone has ever told me that they had a crush on me or even liked me outside of being a normal friend growing up. He said he wished he had the courage to ask me out, but he didn’t. I said even if he did, I would’ve had to turn him down as my parents were super strict and I didn’t dare think of boys back then. My parents weren’t even all that keen on me having male friendships.

He’s now on Divorce #3. He’s never really been alone and I encouraged him that he should spend the next 5 yrs alone, without a woman for a number of reasons. He has health issues, is in a lot of financial turmoil, and really needs to identify and change himself to whatever brought about 3 divorces.

It’s not all the other person’s fault, rather we need to all take responsibility. To get all those things – his health, finances, and emotional/relational states in good order, I think will take at least 5 yrs. I told him to embark on it as a new, exciting adventure.

The time will fly and he will learn so much. I also told him to learn to enjoy being with himself. People who are happy with themselves tend to attract better people than desperate people. And, that to form healthy male friendships so there is an outlet for male bonding, so he doesn’t cling to the next woman so much he suffocates her.

It was nice to connect with him. I hope that we can have a healthy, good relationship – not real close, but at least more than every 25 yrs or so catching up.

I can’t be happier about MM no longer being in my life. I’m pretty sure he will most likely not change as he’s 45 yrs old and set in his ways. And, whatever woman that is willing to take him as he is is in for a bunch of stuff. If she’s willing to accept him as is, good for him, good for her.

I’ve felt free to invite healthy relationships and to get to enjoy people in my life, to feel loved and accepted, not wondering if I’m performing the way I need to, or that they are doing things in secret behind my back.

One of the things that I value greatly about people in my life if their transparency and honesty with the challenges in their life. I hope they don’t lead a double life or a triple life – the work persona, the outside work persona, and the internet persona and that all are completely different. That would not be good.

Granted, I know that if you are working, you do need to act appropriately and accordingly. However, the difference between outside work and the internet should not be seriously different.

I was able to see MM’s stuff on the internet and some of the places he participates in, visits. He does look at pornography and has people associated with his Flickr accounts (found out he has 2 accounts) that put really risque pics up, that basically are pornographic.

I know men are visually stimulated, but I honestly want a man that guards his eyes, his heart, his mind, his body. I do not want a man that is into pornography, or has issues along these lines and thinks it’s okay to do these things in private. Personally, my opinion is that they do harm and create unrealistic expectations, and create an inability for intimacy.

I’m not saying that whomever Mr. Right in my life cannot have had those challenges in his life, but he has to have worked through those things and is free from them.

There are things in my life that I’m drawn to, or were really drawn to that I no longer am chained to, but I’m not going to tempt myself and keep those things around or involve myself in them. But, I’ve gotten a lot of spiritual healing, cleansing, renounciation, repentance in those areas, so I do experience freedom.

One of those is exercise addiction. Another is addiction to food, perfectionism, and workaholism. God is still working on the critical spirit, and fantasies that I create in my mind. But, I can say that these are far less than they used to be.

Perhaps there might always be some level of people that are attracted to me that would create an unhealthy relationship with me, but as long as I can recognize it and let it pass on through, not grabbing a hold of me, we are good.

Must keep close to God.