/The state of …imperfection.

The state of …imperfection.

At some point, we’ve probably all wondered precisely how many people break of their wedding?

Change the start-up they are passionate about?

Leave the country they love to live somewhere else?

Are these rare experience or common occurrences?

Such questions are difficult to answer because they are all challenging events to define. 

There’s never really been a universal consensus on what constitutes infidelity for instance. And how many people really are open about the failures of their companies.

Whilst finishing the PE Versus VC money blog and travelling I just got invited for a known podium to speak about “the state of imperfection”.

Nervous, but proud, hungry but full is the feeling.

Again, the emotional side of imperfection often causes more pain than the merely physical events.

Many people build their identities around relationships and work.

Love, partnership, trust accomplishments – without these, most of us would feel lost.

Breaking up, or losing your job can call those things into question, shaking the foundation of our identity.  

That’s exactly why it hurts: it threatens our sense of self. 

If you spend years as a part of a couple, then your character will unavoidably get entwined with your role as a partner.

That’s why people who go through these events feeling hurt and often feel like they don’t know who they are anymore.

They believe the events is abandonment and that they’ve been rejected because they weren’t enough.

It causes people to start questioning their self-worth.

In the US Americans often believe that romantic love is life’s highest achievement, and it’s that myth that leads them to interpret acts of infidelity as a crisis of identity.

However, it’s not just the deceived partner that may lose their sense of self; the betrayer tends to have a similar experience. Affairs can be fun; but, if found out, the person having the affair is forced to view themselves through the eyes of their partner. It’s seldom flattering and can be very unsettling. 

Let’s say that a men’s dad has hurt his mom by cheating, having witnessed the pain this caused his mother, resolved to be a different type of partner.

As an adult, however, he overcompensated by suppressing his passions, adopting a non-open relationship with his partners. 

It wasn’t until he met his long-time love partner, that he could reconnect with his desires and throw away the personality he’d selected as a partner.

Still, discarding his partner identity also meant assuming a new one. He was now the opposite of the person he really felt himself to be; rather than a faithful husband, he was a cheater, like his father.

That is hard to swallow, I am still debating the talk, but I think doing this might be the ultimate growth.. and as Brené Brown says “we can always delete the tape if it gets more than 100 views” ;-)

More to VC versus PE and this Wednesday.

up to the Cowboys hats and BBQ and after that Pensilvania Ave.