Greetings to my lova lovers! I hope you're having the best week and may love, peace, joy, kindness, and harmony find your physical home and heart this week. My love is extended to all who could use a little extra, and may my light exude positivity and kindness. As a society, we will emphasize and prioritize love and relationships in observation of Valentine's Day, and here at whenmallorylives.com, it'll be no different. Black Love Day and Galentines' Day is also February 13.
Because of my busy schedule, my blogs will start aligning with "A Monday Moment with Mal," my live-streamed episodes on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitch. Check them out at the aforementioned links!
You know I love a good definition, and I'm Team #factsoverfeelings, right? So, let’s get into it! Since I have lived in a leadership mindset with this doctorate for the last four years, my colleagues and I spent countless classes reflecting on our leadership skills and personality traits to synthesize what type of leader we’d be in building or district-level educational leadership. I noticed that the lines between what a skill is and what a trait is were often blurred. For example, I took the Clifton Strengths Assessment which helps one determine their innate SKILLS by asking many questions. I’ve also taken the Myers-Briggs and Enneagram Assessments, as well as other personality trait assessments.
According to dictionary.com, a skill is an ability, coming from one's knowledge, practice, aptitude, etc., to do something well, and a trait is a distinguishing characteristic or quality, especially of one's nature. Simply put, a skill is something that is learned, and a trait is something you are born with. Here’s the crazy thing: a trait can be learned, and a skill can be natural. I also think that traits can be turned into skills. For example, you can naturally have empathy, but you can also grow your ability to be empathetic. So, that’s why the line is often skewed, meaning there’s no hard boundary between the two. So, for this blog post, I will assert that every skill I’m talking about needs to be learned beyond the basic level. For example, listening skills must be learned, but we innately listen. There are levels to listening, though. You and I both know! LOL. In the classroom, we educators call it “active listening.”
In last week's "A Monday Moment with Mal" episode, I spoke about relationships in a broader sense, and the biggest takeaway that I wanted you, the listener, to take away from the episode is the importance of optimizing the relationship with yourself…like to the love stage of it! You deserve to give yourself the grandest love you can conjure up. That way, you have a standard of how you need to be loved. You can fill your cup instead of waiting for others to fill your cup.
With the ability to do that, you set yourself up to journey towards mastery of the skills you need to function in a relationship with someone else before actually being with someone else. Every action requires even the basic level of skillset. Therefore, both intimate and platonic relationships require skills of all sorts, including but not limited to communication skills, conflict resolution skills, listening skills, emotional intelligence skills, empathy skills, honest self-reflection, financial management skills, intimacy skills, sex skills (intimacy and sex are not the same), teamwork, compassion, and patience. And like I said last week, I’m actively living the relationship experience I’m talking about today, and I have been. That doesn’t equate to having mastered relationship skills, though. Everything requires a skillset.
I also spoke about the voluntary, personal relationship last week… AKA the romantic relationship. This type of relationship has the potential or does ascend about other relationships because you have to CHOOSE to relate to, show affection to, love, and share intimacy with the person you CHOOSE to be with. Therefore, this is not a comprehensive list, but a list of ones that either have benefited me and my partner over the years or I have found that we are HORRIBLE at them and need to build the skill to improve.
So, without further ado, here are my top 5 in no particular order:
Showing Respect: To be respectful is a trait one can have, but when you’re relating, there are abilities you have to demonstrate to show that you can respect yourself and others. You can demonstrate this by listening to your partner’s feelings, honoring their boundaries, supporting their passions, and talking kindly about them. I’ve always struggled with this one in my relationship because I feel it has been subjective. Like, there’s no official list of ways to disrespect your partner because it’s unique to the person feeling disrespected. If simply being who you are is considered disrespectful, that’s a huge problem. That’s all I’ll say out of respect for my partner.
Accountability: A synonym of responsibility, this is a hard one for me. I’ve struggled with this because, in true Leo fashion, I don’t like to say sorry or admit when I’m wrong. I have also failed to be accountable in instances when I felt like I would be reprimanded for an action that wasn’t pleasing to my partner. There are some things wrapped with that though…people-pleasing and lack of emotional safety are both factors in play with the latter instance. But what’s missing when we’re unable to apologize is the ability to exercise honest self-reflection. This skill is one that I’ve not only struggled with but also noticed missing in many of my fellow Millennial population because they’re around me. I have also had to intervene in yelling matches in my classroom because one or the other parties having a yelling match refuses to take accountability for their actions. I expect the kids not to be accountable and always use it as a teaching moment. As I teach, I try to inject accountability into action in explaining tasks. Nonetheless, this one requires intentional practice because it’s not innate. That darn amygdala goes into protection mode instead of being accountable for actions and needing to atone for what happened. Atonement is the changed behavior that follows the apology. The topic of atonement could be a whole conversation in itself.
Emotional Intelligence: This encompasses all the skills you need to demonstrate that you understand your own emotions and the emotions of others. Self-awareness (ability to understand your own emotions), self-regulation (ability to manage your emotions), social skills (which includes active listening, verbal, and nonverbal communication skills), empathy skills (ability to understand someone’s emotions from their point of view), and intrinsic motivation, which means your motivation for doing something doesn’t come from gaining an external item). I’ve got some glows and grows in the emotional intelligence department, but even at almost 40, I’m still building these skills. I find the harder ones are directly tied to either my trauma triggers or my astrological program. Whatever the case, all praises to the Most High for bringing me to THIS point of awareness!
Conflict resolution skills- Raise your hand if you were a peer mediator at any time in your K-12 school experience. (Raises hand) Raise your hand if you were trained in restorative practices as an educator and often triaged children as they navigated through the conflict they were having. (Raises hand) Raise your hand if you and your partner have mastered or are good at conflict resolution. (Crickets) Why am I so great at it outside of my relationship? (Heavy Sigh) It takes more than just you to have the skills in order for the high-level acquisition of this skill to be possible. This skill goes beyond having emotional intelligence because it includes problem-solving with possible compromise and negotiation, patience, and collaboration, which I spoke to earlier. As far as marriage is concerned, in people’s large-scale misinterpretations of traditionalism, ritualistic religion, and in the attempt to preserve patriarchal ideas, the flow and ebb of conflict is subconsciously muted (or not) by the S-word… SUBMIT! The Biblical term and others' interpretation is largely misunderstood. And in the infamous words of Nene Leakes, “I SAID WHAT I SAID”! Yet another topic for another day.
Intimacy/Sex- I’m going to put them together for the sake of this list, but I want everyone to know that they are NOT the SAME THING! Intimacy is the closeness you can feel with someone else. And not just physically. One can be emotionally intimate, intellectually intimate, experientially intimate, sensually intimate, spiritually intimate, AND creatively intimate. All examples of intimate needs! Furthermore, your partner may be unable to provide all the ways you need to experience intimacy, so you should either provide that type of intimacy for yourself or find someone else to share it with. And if you’re partnered, discuss with your partner what your needs are and how you’d like to explore your other intimate needs with them or someone else. Again, I'm not just talking about physical intimacy. As a creative, I LOVE being creatively intimate with others! And I love having experiences, so I love sharing fun and unique experiences with others. My partner is an introvert, and I'm extroverted, so there are some experiences we can't share...and that is OK! Now, physical sex is another part of this. And I denote ‘physical sex’ because when we mention ‘sex,’ we assume that sex is only physical. For some, that may be on an ascended level of thinking, so I’ll stay with what’s widely accepted. Sex is a skill that you think you learn by watching pornography, but that’s not even realistic. People think they gain skill by putting what they’ve watched into practice and even cutting and pasting to fit everyone they’re sexually involved with. But ultimately, each experience should be unique to the person or people you’re experiencing the exchange with…look, I don’t discriminate, so YOU DO YOU! People with a high level of sex skills should also have a high level of intimacy skills. The sex is ignited by what happens in the hours or days before. Also, it should be noted that the pleasure of sex is for all people involved…not just the male species. Raise your hand if you received the message of sex only being for the man, either directly or indirectly, when you were not told anything about sex and had to learn from avenues other than the adults who cared about you. (Slowly raises hand) Oh, just me? Aiight. Well, anyway, when a high level of sex skills and a high level of physical intimacy skills collide, it is a beautiful way to connect. This also sounds like another topic for another day! Argue with your mama, not me!
Whew! This was a heavier topic than I expected! Thanks for hanging in there with me! Notice I mentioned nothing about honesty, trustworthiness, kindness, supportiveness, loyalty, commitment, thoughtfulness, etc. These fall in the ‘traits’ category, yet again, another topic for another day! So, if you made it this far, the question of the day is: What skill is important to you and your relationship that did not end up on my list? I’m sure there’s something important to you that I didn’t put on this list. Feel free to chime in by DMing me or just leave a comment on this blog. I’ll respond!
And to wrap up, I leave you with a quote and affirmations:
Well, that's all for me this week! Next week, tune in to my livestream and blog because I asked the elders in my family about relationships. I’m entitling it “What Did We Learn From Our Grandparents' Relationships?”
Alexa, play Dwele's "Affinity" on YouTube because it was a leaked song and never officially released. It is one of my favorite songs, and it can invoke a beautiful, intimate connection.
Comments