Why I got in...a relationship post

I just came to the end of the longest relationship (of the romantic kind) I’ve had so far. I could never claim to be experienced in relationships; I mean this was only the third serious relationship I had ever been in. It lasted exactly six months, one week and two days. Wow! That’s a long time for someone my age.

There’s a lot that I had wanted to write about while in the relationship but I felt it would better for it to end before I could start putting them online. While my girlfriend never knew of my blog, I felt it would be disrespectful to the relationship to put such things in the public domain.

However, I have got no problem with doing it now. So that’s what I’ll be doing for the next few posts, if I can, dissecting and writing about my experience in the relationship. I’ll trying to write them as a block of continuous posts but that may not be possible. The post will be mostly in narrative form and probably pointless but I hope you’ll, at the very least, be entertained. They may also be sparsely populated with advice (which you should write down and memorise because they’ll be GOLD - yes, I’m blowing my own horn)

This first post will be about why I got into the relationship. With the benefit of hind sight I now can clearly see why I got into the relationship. Some of the reasons I had at the time were clearly wrong and I was just fooling myself. There were also reasons that were buried in my subconscious that I only really discovered later.

So, as always, some background. I had gone to see my really good friend called Holly. Holly is one of my closest girlfriends. I’ve known her almost since I was 8 years old. We grew up together. From hide and seek, to kissing and sex; we’ve been together through most of it. So while I was there I told her of this girl, who I’ll call Fanta, I was currently talking to a lot and who probably had feelings for me but I wasn’t acting on them; I’ve got commitment issues. She asked me why not and at the time I couldn’t really say I had a very convincing argument except I was scared. Then she asked me as simple question “Why not?”

Leaving her place later, I kept thinking of that question and when I got home I called Fanta and asked her out.

So you see the first reason in that background story? My friend. I let her talk me into the relationship which was a big mistake. You don’t enter relationships because your friends talk you into them. I think this is a mistake many of us make. In my last relationships, while I may have had doubts, I overcame them on my own and got into the relationship because of my own conviction. I’m not saying ignore your friends’ advice, nah, they usually notice a lot you wouldn’t, what I’m saying is don’t let it be a major reason especially if you hadn’t been about to do it yourself.
Also at the time I thought I had feelings for her. I didn’t. What I had was the hope, or feeling, that emotions would develop once in the relationship. I didn’t realize this until sometime into the relationship and I was asking myself, “Where are the feelings?” and then later, “Why haven’t they come?” What I know now is that what I thought were feelings were actually me just loving the fact that I had someone (new?) to talk to who would listen to my bull. I should have, you too, examined my feelings much closer. This was my biggest mistake.

My parents have been separated for almost five years now. I’ve recently just realized just how much that affected me. I’ve become steadily more introverted. I could no longer - maybe didn’t want to - put effort in relationships (of any kind) except those that I had the deepest connections to and who were connected to me. Several of my old friendships are no more. I think subconsciously getting in to the relationship was a way for me to get out of a rut. A way to prove to myself I still had it. That the extrovert hadn’t died within me. That I could still charm and get a girl. It may have worked. But it makes me kinda sad that Fanta may have gotten hurt for it to happen.

Finally I felt that it could be fun and interesting experience. One of these things it was. I learnt a lot about myself during it. These are solid reasons to get into a relationship at my age, in my opinion. You need to experience life and everything that comes with comes with it. Don’t limit yourself because you’re frightened that only comes with regret. So go out and make your own mistakes.
By the way, I was thinking that I’ll have the titles of all future posts about my relationship have it mentioned in the title, like this one. What do think? What have you learnt in your most recent relationships? Let me know in the comments or email me, ‘kay? Peace!!!