Let’s talk relationships. Well, first, let’s briefly mention how I won’t be at Pantheacon after all and the details are at the bottom of the post. Now, let’s talk relationships. Mainly ones that have flat lined and there’s no chance of revival. At all. Ever. Not even if the survival of humanity depended on it.

See, being a Witch, this means I get all sorts of people in my inbox. This also includes the “I Want Cha Back” crowd. These folks, you might as well play the iconic Jackson 5 song, they nearly recite the lyrics word for word without knowing it. These folks tend to contact me in hopes that somehow, despite the fact I have said several times on my site I disagree with manipulative love spells and don’t do Pay for Pray, that I’ll do it for them to bring back that just-recently-reconsidered-special someone in their life. And usually it’s supposed to be done without the recently departed significant other’s knowledge. And usually it involves the fact that the ex is the one who broke things off (and with good reason).

Yeah, no.

When it comes to magick, I always tell people to imagine the mundane version of the magick to get an idea of what they’re doing. For this, it’s no different than stalking and harassing your ex and yelling “I’M STILL IN LOVE WITH YOU!” at them as they walk down the street. Very rapidly. Away from you. Far. Away.

Here’s the deal, people: you can’t make people fall in love with you. (Well, you can but they’re not really going to be in love with you. I’ll get to that in a sec.) Love is a natural – and sometimes, a pretty frustrating – process, you can’t really force it. If it were that easy, Ok Cupid and other craptacular sites would never exist … or, at least, not to the extent it does today. If you screw up in a relationship and the other person breaks it off because of that reason or if that other person thinks it would be better to be single for a while, that’s up to them. Not you. It hurts to go through a break up but you can’t force someone’s hand. That’s not natural. And it’s controlling, which is not love. That’s abuse.

Now, note I said that you can make someone fall in love with you but they’re not going to be in love with you. It’s kinda like the mundane world version of blackmailing, harassing and guilt tripping a guy or girl to love you. They may be showing the displays of what is outwardly considered affection but it’s not coming from a place of affection but more of a place of “Will this person stop bothering me?/I don’t feel like I have a choice.” They don’t really love you, they’re just faking it until they see the first opening to dash out into the wilderness like a spooked rabbit.  It’s not right to just control someone’s heart and go, “Newp. You love me now. I may be a screw up and will mess up to the point you’re fully justified to break things off or maybe you need some time to yourself but newp, not letting you go because it hurts me too much.” That’s pretty selfish. Which also isn’t love. Affectionate love isn’t that self-serving and never should be.

Break ups happen for a multitude of reasons. It seems as of recent I’ve been getting the “I messed up/the former bf/gf thinks I messed up but I totally don’t get it” letters. They’re not what I like to see because, welp, I’m gonna probably side with the person who left you because you didn’t get it together as appropriate for the relationship. And I mean when there’s an actual problem in the relationship, such as you being a poor communicator, relying on tired gender tropes and trying to shove your now-ex into said trope boxes, and/or just having too many issues and not dedicating enough time to unpack them in a healthy way. It’s important for people to know that when they’re in a relationship, they’re taking on the role of the significant other, not the replacement-parent/authority figure.

For the former, the “I messed up”, these folks are aware they screwed up – too bad they figured it out faaaaaaar too late. These folks have got to know that there is such thing as the Point of No Return and said point has such a name for a reason. If the now-ex person was a good or even average communicator, chances are they already said their piece and made it known that there was some problematic behavior they weren’t gelling with. Life isn’t like tv, it’s not always that the now-former significant other just up and leave without letting you know beforehand. It’s nice that the person coming to me finally came to their senses about their behavior but guess what? If you have to come to a witch to repair things, it means you still blew it big time, and I mean nuclear. It implies that the ex doesn’t want anything to do with you, doesn’t care whether or not you learned your lesson, and doesn’t want to come back to you. And who am I to force them? I wouldn’t want it done to me, why would I want to do it to others so they can be dragged back into a relationship that made them so unhappy? And this is running on the assumption that the person coming to me not only knows about how bad their flaws were but actually changed them and plan to keep it that way. Usually folks slide far too easily back into their old ways when they feel like there’s nothing to lose from doing it if that desire to change isn’t intrinsic (meaning: coming from the inside). If you messed up, learn how to remedy that and move on.

For the latter “I have no idea how I screwed up but the bf/gf still left me because they think I’m [insert what could actually be the problem], I want them back”, that person is just myopic. Sometimes erratic breakups happen but these folks tend to have a very evident problematic trait that they have no plan on working on any time soon nor want to work on because they themselves don’t see it as problematic. Those folks are unbelievable because wow, talk about dragging someone back to hell. This means they’re not going to work on their problems (because remember, it’s not a problem in their eyes) and they don’t understand that people don’t have to put up with their nonsense if it’s not reaping any super justifiable benefit. People are allowed to be flawed because everyone is but no one should be expecting anyone to deal with their issues as if that’s all that should matter in the relationship. Relationships can’t survive in a one-sided fashion.

It’s important to note that both folks are pretty self-preserving. Instead of letting the ex go (which is a painful and extensive process, let’s not negate that), they’re trying to force someone who’s already made up their mind to leave back into a place they, the ex, already expressed they didn’t want to remain. There’s no thinking about why the ex did it and what good did it do for that ex to leave a problematic person behind or what traits need to be worked on as a whole to prevent this all from happening again. Instead it’s about what unhappiness comes from a break-up and how to somehow turn back the hands of time to revive a dead relationship. Which then becomes a zombie relationship because there’s no love, there’s no feeling. It’s just an undead lingering feeling that will just wrack up more problems and less love because again, you can’t force anyone to love you just like you can’t force a dead person to be alive like they were previously. This is controlling behavior, which is not based in love. At all.

Controlling anyone, removing anyone of their freedom to choose, that isn’t love. Not at all. It hurts having someone leave you but forcing them to come back won’t make anything better. The love is gone, dude. Casting a spell on a person (which is a long and grueling work because chances are it’s going to have to be refreshed again and again and again depending on how long the client wants the spell going) is a terrible way of showing someone that you “care”. It’s no different than sticking a gun in their face and saying “So, we’re gonna be exactly like we were before. You never left me. We never had problems. I’m the guy/girl for you and we’re going to be happy, happy, happy. You just don’t understand it yet but you’ll see. We’re meant for each other.” That’s crazy talk. You need a visit from a therapist, not your ex if you truly feel that way.

Oh. And then there’s the obvious, “No one really likes it when you cast a spell on them to like you” part. I think it needed its own paragraph. Seriously, think about it: “I had a spell casted on you so we could be together, I just really didn’t want you to leave me,” is not going to get you greeted with admiration.

So, if you’re dealing with break-up pangs, don’t contact me about Pay for Pray. I don’t do it and I definitely don’t do it for something as unethical as that. Just let that person go. If they wanna get back with you, you better have your ears open and get ready to do some longstanding work. If they never want to get back with you again, respect that decision. I didn’t say “don’t cry about it”, “don’t get emo about it”, “don’t post ranty blog posts about it”, “don’t express unhappiness about it”. I never said, “Just accept it with a smile and move on as if nothing happened”, I said “if they never want to get back with you again, respect that decision.” You’re free to be as upset as you like. You just aren’t free to take someone else’s freedom of choice just because it doesn’t work with yours.

Now, about Pantheacon. I won’t be able to go due to travel issues (*cough*TSAandPTSDdon’tmix*cough*) and I am going to instead try to do a livestream of my feature instead on the day and time I was supposed to be doing it in Cali, which is Feb 16, 11 AM PST. More updates on that later.

Next week on The Arts!….DOCUMENTARIES (fun/interesting ones, I swear)

– Jimi Hendrix
– Paris is Burning
– Century of the Self

Woo!