young relationships
Ah, young love
Falling in love young is great right? you get to spend time with someone who makes you feel special. the cuddling, the dates, the conversations, the cute but fucked up faces you make at each other, the netflix, the chilling. Its all great, but the one thing that ruins it is this ideology that you’re gonna be with this person for the rest of your life. it causes so much jealousy, stress, anxiety, and insecurity to look at your partner as yours for the rest of your life. if us younglings stopped trying to have a cinematic rom-com approach to our relationships, we’d be better off in terms of happiness, and learn more during our times with special people.
Im not saying it cant happen, because it can, i see it within my family. meeting someone at a young age, moving out together as soon as they’re old enough/ready, getting married, having a family, and a happy life. But this is a rare scenario, especially in this day and age, based off of general population increase, and all the new ways of self expression. We should be viewing this logically. the average human life span is 79 years, logically sharing the same opinions and life goals with someone who hasn’t lived in the after school world long enough to say what it is they want in life and/or who you are. Im not gonna sit here and name an age that youre “supposed” to decide to settle down with someone as thats subjective to many things, but i am gonna stay to stop expecting your high school/college love to die by your side. Its probably not gonna happen.
Have you ever felt jealous? i have. I remember some dope commented on my ex-girlfriends instagram post “damn cutie, you should come chill with me sometime” and the result was crippling insecurity caused only by my pre-notions and thoughts. The idea of jealousy is so fucked, in most popular religious practices, it will state in their form of literature that jealousy is a “sin” for a lack of better words. So why are we so jealous? why cant we start off approaching relationships logically? We can explain it simply by environment. you watch movies about people who will fight for their relationship, you see some parents who were married young fight to keep their marriage alive at the cost of their human freedom, and possible mental damage. So we fight to stay with people “for better or for worse”. Why the for worse part man? why cant we just enjoy each others company while their around, and not pressure each other to stay together. Because being “friends” with the people they love and cherish isn’t good enough for young people. Throw jealousy and this idea of trying to police peoples thoughts out the window, if “you’re partner” wants to go hang out with their friends, let them, if they want to pick up overtime at their job for some extra money in their pocket, let them, and honestly, if they want to see someone else, let them, because at the end of the day if they want to spend the rest of their life with you they will be by your side because they want to, not because they feel pressured. Obviously if you have an issue with something the other person did, talk to them, understand it, and move on however that is. applying this theory, if you both chose to work on it together, and you both feel like the bond is stronger after, thats awesome and all to you, but some disagreements cant be fixed, and shouldn’t because then your taking someones free will away, wether either of you know it or not.
I recently came out of a 4 year relationship with someone. I learned tons, got to do the cheesy “Tumblr romance” activities, i got to know an amazing person, and i got to learn how to express platonic love better with other people, which is great. But it was so much pain, so much jealousy, and a lot of time wasted since the last 2 years was spent working on something that just wasn’t meant to be, because we were deluded thinking we were gonna spend the rest of our days together, we could have spent the time working on ourselves more as individuals, and possibly meeting people more connected to us. We even lost friendships with great people because we guilted each other to stay next to each other.
Going forward, at least until i meet that person that i mesh well with that makes me want to stick around for the rest of their life, i’m gonna approach my “relationships” as spending intimate time with a good friend. Because i want to fully respect my loved ones feelings and emotions, even if they aren’t towards me. Honesty and Communication will be key to any of these friendships. I can also allow myself to have more fun, because i wont let others choices/opinions effect me. and also i’m hoping in practice this cures my jealousy, and insecurity. I want my loved ones to know i truly love them, and i’m hoping the people i share my intimate time with understands this way of thinking, so i can enjoy the cheesy tumblr moments with someone without the pressure, thats all i want.