Right Girl. Wrong Time.

Sometimes, you meet the right person at the wrong time. How do you handle the emotion that comes with that experience? Would your life be that much different? There are some people that you may never get over, as tough as it may be. Come on in and join the conversation. 

Transcript

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Hey everyone, I'm Sam Bailey and welcome back to Once I Knew a Girl, a podcast that explores the complexities of relationships. I know it's been a while since I put one out, but I want to thank you guys for being patient and thank you guys who have listened thus far. If you have not yet heard this podcast, you can find this podcast wherever podcasts are found, whether it be Apple Podcasts, whether it be iHeart Music, whether it be Spotify, Google, you can find this podcast. So I thank you guys for waiting patiently. Thank you guys for joining in. And all those who would be listeners, hang on. I'm going to try to put these podcasts out more regularly and have a lot of things to share, a lot of material to cover. So I just thank you for coming along with the ride. If you get a chance to, go back and check out the intro to this podcast. And it gives you a lot of background of why I'm doing it. The motivation behind it and what the purpose and the aim is. So I can't do all that today because I got to jump right into our subject for the day. And it is once I knew a girl who was the right one at the wrong time. And this can go both ways, right? Males and females. We've experienced this. The right one at the wrong time. See, life is not just about time. Time is currency. It has value. How we use it. Do we save it? Do we squander it away? Do we waste it? Or do we take advantage of it, use it to our advantage? But even within that framework of time, we have something called timing. Timing is like if time is knowledge, then timing is wisdom. So it's knowing what to do with the time you have. It's having discernment, right? Judgment. It's Knowing when to act or when not to act. Timing is everything. Sometimes life puts us in positions and situations where we're forced to be at the mercy of life, where we If I just had come to this college two years later, if I just waited a little bit longer, I do believe that sometimes God will ruin your plans before your plans ruin your life. So for many of us, we find that it was okay that things worked out the way that they did, right? Because life is meant to be lived forward and understood backwards. So it's easy to play Monday morning quarterback. It's easy to guess yourself about things that occur in your life. So This person that you meet, it's all about timing and you can meet them and you might meet them where you might not be in a position to be able to explore it any further, maybe because of your relationship status. Maybe you're dating somebody, maybe you're engaged, maybe you're married now, maybe they have somebody now, maybe time has put you all in different places, different locations. And so It's the right person. It's just the wrong time. Maybe you're not ready now. Maybe there's something in your life that's keeping you from the exploratory nature of what it could be in the relationship. And maybe had you been able to meet this person in your youth, you wouldn't have been able to seeing what you see in the person now. And sometimes there are people who meet each other when they're younger and they're factors that play into whether or not they can go ahead and pursue that relationship beyond their control. So sometimes you meet the person and you're ignorant. You don't know what you need or don't know what you want. You see a lot of people who are younger like that. They really don't know what they want. They think they know what they want. And I always say you can get what you want and not want what you get. That can happen to all of us. And so in ignorance, they look for things that are superficial. And when they were so-called, you know, at the prime of their lives where they could have had anything they want. They weren't serious about that. And besides, who really tells us what to look for in a spouse or in a mate? Most of us learn that by trial and by error. And then we grow. That's why, right? People split up because they grow apart and they don't realize that what they needed when they were younger is not what they need when they're middle-aged or when they're older. So how do you see potential in somebody? Seeing potential in somebody is important because potential is everything. Potential is just that. It's just energy and waiting. It's just something that is there that I see. And most people want something already perfect, something already made, something already that has arrived instead of looking at potential. What could this person be? But then we could flip that and say, what could this person be negatively? We see things early in the game, attitudes, dispositions, mindsets, words, behaviors, and we ignore them because we think that, yeah, this stuff is going to get better. But what often happens is the good stuff gets better, the bad stuff gets worse. And here you are finding yourself in a situation where where you feel stuck. So trying to see somebody's potential is different. We get distracted by a lot of things. There's a lot of distractions that might keep someone from really identifying someone who has the potential to be a partner in life. And that can be really crucial. Somebody says, well, what's it have to do with having the right person at the wrong time? Well, let's look at the opposite of it. What about the wrong girl at the right time. You know, sometimes you can have the person that's wrong for you, but they catch you at the right time. That goes both ways, right? Some of you have been caught off the rebound. You were just in a bad place. You needed somebody to come along to fill the space, fill some time. Maybe you were bonded over trauma, bonded over brokenness. Maybe you were looking for a sign and that person showed up at the time that you were so-called looking for a sign. And sometimes we want something so bad that will take something that's not for us eternity into something that we believe that we need. You find yourself coming back sometimes to yourself, realizing that you missed a lot of opportunities and you missed the right person. And now when you see what they have to offer now, by the time you pull it together now, by the time where you know who you are and what you want to be and what you want to do, now you can't do it. You can't explore it. Yet you see all the qualities, all the characteristics, all the things that you want now, but you didn't know then and you can see them. What do you do in this particular type of situation? Well, just know that I always believe that just because you love someone doesn't mean you have to be in a relationship with them. What I mean by that is a romantic relationship where you live with them, obviously, are intimate with them, obviously spend time on various trips and whatever you define as being an intimate, connected relationship. monogamous relationship. Just because you love someone doesn't mean you have to be in a relationship with it. And then I think sometimes when you start talking about relationships, it actually can diminish to a certain extent that initial feeling that you have about love. Because what happens is instead of the person seeing you for you, And the purity of what love is supposed to be, you start being defined and judged and handled and dealt with by your role. You are now somebody's mother. You are now somebody's husband. You are now somebody's provider. You're now somebody's object or, you know, feel a need or whatever it may be in your life. And that's it. And you forgot what it felt like to have butterflies. You forgot what it was like to stay up like a schoolgirl or a schoolboy. You forgot what it's like to see... that note handed to you to say, will you go out with me? Check box, yes or no. And I was thinking about this today. Those little Valentine cards that we had back when I was in school and they would say, be mine. And you would get a little picture that was a sticker that you would peel it and you would stick it right on the middle of the card and you would give it to people that were your friends and they would smile. And I was going back through some stuff the other day and I found some notes, love notes from high school, from girls and Not a lot of them, but a few of them. And they were very sweet. They're very thoughtful and they would write hearts and I would write back to them. And it was before the text message. We couldn't send text messages. We couldn't send pictures. We had to learn how to write and articulate and read through the cursive. I can't tell if that's an L or an I, but we found our way through it. I remember going through the hallway and we Pass notes to each other, slide a note in her bag, or you know that in between class, in between the period, you were going to get a note from the person and that you were going to write them one, you know, instead of doing your homework. And it was going to be like that. And that was just part of it. Right. But there were a lot of people in those times that you might have missed that could have been good. But you said maybe we're too young. I don't see how this is going to go or where it's going to last. And we forget to trust in our instinct. And I want you to know, if you find yourself in that position, where you've met the right person but it's just the wrong time it doesn't work for them it doesn't work for you you can't do anything with the situation now maybe your again your status in your life does not afford you to be in that place realize that sometimes in life there are some things that you can never get over and you never will get over you just got to deal with it and you may never be able to get over the fact that you blew an opportunity I think that's the beauty of life is that we don't get everything that we want. I think a beauty of life is that we get to woulda, shoulda, coulda. That's what we like about Sports talk radio, Monday morning quarterbacks, right? We get on, we talk about all the scenarios that could have happened in the game, that might happen in the game, that need to happen in the game. And we listen to our favorite commentaries and commentators just talk over and over and over about the same thing. So yeah, it's okay. It's okay. Sometimes that's what makes the miss you song sound good or the breakup song sound good or have you seen her song sound good because you don't always get the girl. You don't always get the guy. I like those love stories that don't always end up happily ever after, where the guy doesn't get the girl, the girl doesn't get the guy. I think I talked about that in one of my first podcasts, talking about summer, 500 days of summer. And I don't want to spoil the movie, but it didn't go like traditionally. It wasn't You Got Mail, where Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan meet in the field with a dog with a Somewhere over the rainbow playing in the background in New York City in the spring. You know, everybody's story is not going to end like that. You just got to be able to deal with it. And you got to be able to say that I have to be able to compartmentalize what this is now and what it is. And I have to say, yes, I missed the opportunity. But listen, there might be somebody out there just because you missed the opportunity the first time around. Some people are afforded a second chance. Some people afforded a second chance to try to see where it goes and what happens from it. But you can't you can't spend your whole life tied up in the idea of something that you missed. And then sometimes. you know, we can second guess ourselves. There could have been something at the time. If a lot of time has passed, you don't remember what it was, but there could have been something at the time that you were keying off of or that you were noticing and that you were trying not to ignore. There could have been somebody in the way distracting you. And then you never know what could have been. And I think that's, again, the beautiful thing about history, but it's also the hauntingly difficult thing about history is that our past, we have to at some point accept that it is what it is and know that in the present, if I allow it to continue to keep me hostage or hold me hostage, I can't move into the future what I have ahead of me. So yeah, chances are you probably met the right one, even if you're not in a relationship right now, even if you're in a bad relationship right now. And when somebody says, what is a bad relationship? Well, I think that There's a word called compatibility, and I believe that some people struggle, and this is just my opinion from counseling, from observation, from all the different avenues that I've seen. I believe that many people have a difficulty connecting because they're not compatible. Some people argue with that, but Pieces got to fit. I'm not talking about just having someone who, and I'm air quoting, completes me. I'm talking about complementary pieces, pieces that fit together. We may both be go-getters, but we know how to balance each other. We may come from different sides of the United States, but we have the same family values. I know who you are at the core. I don't hit you below the belt. I respect you. I respect our differences. I listen to you. I understand you. And I get you for who you are. You don't have to be anybody else around me, but who you are. And that's an important characteristic to note and an important characteristic to keep and look for. So right, girl, wrong time. You got to live with it. That's one we cannot get around. And that's one we cannot avoid. And so I hope That gives you something to think about. Again, we're trying to keep the discussion going here on Once I Knew A Girl. And please subscribe. I need you to subscribe wherever you listen to this podcast. So I'm back in business now. I'll be putting these out regularly. If you subscribe, you'll know it and it'll ding in your phone or being in your phone or show up in your phone or your laptop, whatever you listen to podcasts on. And we'll just put some information, encouragement, knowledge, insight out into the world. Eventually, I'm going to expand this and bring certain guests on to talk about certain things. And so thank you guys for joining. Thank you guys for supporting. And I'll see you next time right here on Once I Knew a Girl. Peace.