Thoughts

Love

It's weird that love has so many definitions and can even change between different people. There are friendships, family, hobbies, and even more intimate relationships. The weird part about intimate relationships is that there are so many of them. And even crazier is that people believe certain things and disregard others. Some may think that commitment is key while others think that love should be some quick, one-night stand. I knew one of those people. At first, I didn't even know that they thought about love that way since that doesn't seem to come up in normal conversation. I did eventually get to know them when we had to be in some love scenes. And no, not that kind of love. Just some kissing and such. Though at first, it was a bit slow as we didn't have time to practice with each other. Then the one day we did, it was boring with a few jokes from her siblings. The next meetup was a bit different though. After an hour or so of repeating lines over and over, we got to talking. About relationships, and how I lacked in such. Of course, she did too but she didn't care. That's when I discovered her thoughts about love. You shouldn't be in a relationship, just make out with randos and don't pay attention to them. It blew my mind how someone could think in such a way. How could someone not put all their love into one person? All chips on black is how I always thought of it.

Dating always seemed to me like the final destination. Whether it was my personal belief that I wouldn't ever date someone or other internal struggles, I always believed that whoever I dated would be there forever. As you may have guessed, that's definitely not how it works. At least, not for us unlucky majority. See, once I got past that first step of finally dating someone, it still hadn't hit me that marriage was even a possible thing for me. It took me dating 3 different people before I realized that there was something more than just dating and breaking up. It was always reinforced in my mind, by myself and others, that dating was the best I could get. So, I decided that when I wanted to date someone, I absolutely had to make sure that they were the one. This made me much pickier with who I would date. In fact, the only reason I even dated my third person ever was because her best friend told me to in front of a group of people. I had become so nervous about asking someone out that I basically wasn't even the one to do it this time around. After we broke up, I finally figured out that the whole point of dating was to learn about the other person. It used to amaze me how fast some people would date someone that they had just met, but now I realize that the whole point of dating is to figure out if you're willing to remain in a relationship with someone for a long time and that it's okay if you break up because sometimes our relationships with others aren't made to be more intimate than they were before.

It feels weird to be the only single person in a group. You get this sort of separation from them as if you aren't the same. While it doesn't usually affect a group seriously, it becomes a lot more interesting when two people within that group are dating each other. In every instance I've experienced, it has ended in disaster. Hell, I'm in the midst of one currently. I actually remember my group of friends making a makeshift pact in 8th grade about not dating within the group because we had seen what happened. No one really followed that and internal dating was bound to happen with an apt number of female and male members where someone always found someone else attractive. What's interesting is that one of the single members usually gets turned into a mediator of sorts as the group is sometimes bound to fall apart. I also notice that break-ups happen noticeably in a relatively short amount of time. I used to call it break-up season before realizing that there was no real connection between the time of day/year/etc. It kinda just happens in rapid succession. I've always had a knack for giving relationship advice. I'm a lot like the stereotype of the single friend who gives the relationship advice. Either way, being a mediator is not fun in any way. You get to discover new, awful emotions that people have for one another. I don't even mean for the person they broke up with, I mean in general. It's a lot like a revelation to the person on how the relationship affected their life. Most recently, one of my friends revealed that she felt more like a third wheel to her group of 2 other people than she ever did before the break-up. I think that friends are our go-to for the pad to fall back on during a break-up and if that padding isn't stable or we're worried about how flimsy that pad is, then we sort of get tangled in this deeper mess of emotions. There's no real way to prevent this then before any of it happens, and as it seems, that's kind of hard to fix retroactively. My best advice would be to not rely on a romantic relationship heavily for your new life with them. This can cause problems with breaking up the life you had before and can provide an unstable world to return to if something were to ever happen. I'm not suggesting to not love someone though. Love and dating is one of the best ways we learn about ourselves, so go out and experiment, but be careful with how you go about it.