With my recent break-up(got back with the girl mentioned in "Unforgivable" and are broken up again) I've been thinking about the nature of my relationships.
I recently realized that I've been involved with someone for almost three years now. That could technically qualify as my longest relationship yet; except for the fact that it's not a relationship in the traditional sense. She best describes it as a non-relationship and that seems like a good description to me. The thing that seems to stick out most to me though is the fact that that has lasted longer than any of my full fledged relationships. Now if this were a movie or something some friend would probably say that it has affected my other relationships; I can definetly say though that it hasn't, as this issue has been going on for a long time. Truth be told this has nothing to do with that conversation. This is more about me wondering why the others haven't lasted as long.
Now I do realize that the common factor in all of my past relationships is me. I've dumped, been dumped, and have just had things just fizzle and die. There are probably some things I need to change about my approach to relationships. For one thing I need to stop allowing myself to be pulled into relationships so fast. The majority of the women I've dated that led to a relationship happened within the first couple of dates. As a friend I tried to date pointed out to me (and I may be remembering poorly) "The fire that burns brightest burns quickest" and that is how a lot of my relationships have gone. We start dating and it's all passion and "I love you" and all that way too quickly. I know I for one tend to get swept up by my emotions and it's as if I have no control over them. I fall hard and fast. The relationship always seems to end about the same; hard and fast.
The interesting thing(to me anyway) is the fact that with the women I'm more than friends (but not in a relationship) with I don't seem to have that problem. I don't put any pressure on things and am more relaxed. That may be why they have all lasted longer. Part of the reason is the fact that I know from the get go that it's not as serious and therefore I don't feel the need to try so hard or cling as much. I don't know if it's because I know that from day one or if it's the fact that the way things happened I was more comfortable being myself. Either way I'm not throwing "I love you" out there(I do still love them it's just different) and not placing any sort of expectations about how long we'll last or where things are going or any of that stuff.
I think what I need to do is figure out how to get my mind to a place where I can treat a full fledged relationship like I treat those. I'm planning on taking time off from being in a relationship and try to work on myself and my issues as much as I can. I'm not giving up on them and if someone decides they are interested in dating me then that's good but I do need to make some changes in how I handle things. I know what I do wrong in relationships so I need to stop doing those things. I also need to stop treating every relationship like it's the one that is going to lead to the whole "Happily ever after" thing. Honestly I'm not entirely sure I even know what my happily ever after will be. Over the years the ideas I had of what I want have changed as I change. When I was younger my ideal was a wife, kids, the whole nine. I now know that kids aren't something I want, a wife would have to be someone accepting of polyamory, and there are other things that have changed in what I want.
Now that I'm 30 I think it's time to do what needs to be done to get what I want.
No comments:
Post a Comment