Letters to My Life

12. To Celebrate...

So LML was #1 in #relationship advice for a while and I was really excited, then I come back from vacation and it's been bumped to #4. This was going to be my original message: To celebrate getting #1 ranking in #relationshipadvice, let's start off with some relationship advice!  And even though it's not #1 anymore (for now) I'm still gonna stick to relationships.

So, if you have been keeping track of my love life, I have now been "single" for over a year. And before that, I wasted 11 months of my life! Huzzah! I mentioned that sometimes it's better to look at yourself before you know what you want from a partner. It's the typical "if I had known then what I know now..." situation. If I had, I probably wouldn't have cared so much about what other people thought of me.

Being in a relationship is great! It's fun to have someone to talk to who likes you. It's fun to see someone and be able to give them a hug in a way that's special to you. Something that's different from hugging your regular friends. It's a step between that and your parents. It's fun to stay up texting someone until 2 am even though both of you are incredibly busy and tired. And, believe it or not, kissing is fun! It's something I can't describe other than complete euphoria (shout out to my fellow army's). 

But, despite all of the happy, free, light-hearted feelings you get from being in a relationship, you have to remember to focus on yourself. That's one mistake I made, and I lost part of myself for a while. I was so focused on impressing a guy who already liked me, that it ended up turning him away. And I was the one who got hurt because of it. In relationships, if you're with someone who already likes you for YOU, there's no reason to keep trying to impress them. You just need to be your complete self. Because, if they don't want that part of you, there's no reason you need to be around them.

I have a friend (who will rename nameless because I didn't ask her permission to mention her. And if she's reading this, just pm me and I'll edit) who liked a boy who is incapable of loving her back. I'd told her time and time again that he wouldn't love her, not because of anything she had done, but because this boy literally cannot fall in love with women. That being said, I was incredibly concerned that because she was so focused on impressing this boy, she'd lose any independence she had. It was hard for me not to define her as "the girl who likes this boy" because she was turning into that, and other people besides myself were starting to see it too. It wasn't working out in her favor. If she couldn't stop focusing on this one boy, she'd miss out on so many other opportunities. And I've told her before, "There's going to be some boys who are really attracted to you and really want to get to know you, but if you keep forcing yourself on this one, those boys won't approach you because they know that the only way into your heart would be if they were this other boy that you want so desperately." I feel like it's getting better for her though. And she says it has! I'm really glad she's moved on because she's so much more than a "girl who likes a guy" you know? I hope that she'll forget about him completely. I hope that I'll be attending her wedding to a much better guy in a few years. Much love!

Sometimes you really just need to let go. Not just because someone may not like you, but because it's better for yourself. If you're focusing on someone liking you, and they aren't, your self-esteem WILL plummet. I speak from experience, it does not go well. Your self-worth is based on other people. I'm sorry to say it, but recognition is the easiest way to have a sense of accomplishment. You feel good about yourself when others tell you you're good. That's probably one of the reasons people feel so happy in relationships. As humans, we want to be loved. So, logically, in an opposite effect, if those people we are struggling so hard to get recognition from don't give it to us, it's hard to feel good.

The best way to avoid that is, you guessed it, be yourself. You don't need to act differently for someone to like you. And I assure you, someone will come along that likes you for your true self. You don't even have to do anything special for it to happen. From experience, not too long ago, a boy, who will call Dan, approached me with lots (maybe too much) admiration. I had not known him very long. I didn't really know a lot about him other than the fact that my mom had taken his dad to prom way back in the day. So Dan, being a pretty nice guy, told me how he felt and consequentially why he liked me. I can't quote exactly but it was basically along the lines of "You're not fake and you act like yourself. That is attractive and I like it." Well, anyone would be touched right? Yeah, I was. So we exchanged numbers. He actually turned out to be very clingy and possessive and I stopped replying to his texts. Why and how I discovered this?