Rosie and her 20's
Looking for some good reads on dating? Look no further, here are some great posts I wrote in the past! Leave a comment on one of the original posts so I know that you’re liking it 🙂
Sometimes I read back on my old posts and wish they got a little more love, so I’ll be sharing some links from now on with groupings of my old posts! Enjoy these break up blog posts.
Leave a comment on one of the posts if you enjoyed them!
I’ve always felt held back by the people I’ve dated in the past. I think a lot of my relationships ended abruptly, they left me without closure.
Because sometimes I ended things fast because I wasn’t ready for anything serious. And sometimes I was strung along without any explanation at all and then left for dead after the break up.
I tried my best to not let those things affect me, but they always have. Those things put my love life in slow motion. When I finally found someone I wanted to date, I had to make all the first moves because when someone else did it I’d get scared and run away. It took a while to make things official, to even convince myself this was 100% what I wanted.
And even now as we live together I get so many pangs of not knowing what I want in life.
Recently I’ve heard that one of my exes has moved on…I don’t keep tabs on them at all because the more distance I put between me and them helped me feel better. But the news made me realize I’m ready to move on too.
You know when you hear about an ex getting engaged, married, having kids and you just feel mad? I used to feel that way a lot. Like I’m the one who put so much time and effort into you only for you to crush me and use your brand new self on someone so much less deserving than me. Yeah, I was bitter.
But after this recent news, a lot of things became much more clear to me. I don’t care about my exes. I don’t care about them one bit. I still think of them from time to time, but it’s almost like hearing my ex moved on set me straight. A lot of my doubts have faded and I’ve finally cut the strings my exes tied to me.
I feel better, I feel happy, and I feel certain.
When break ups happen, I think the person who did the breaking up is often overlooked. The person who got broken up with must be so shattered, must need tons of support – but, no one stops to think about how hard it really is to break up with someone.
It takes a lot of courage to end something that has been so important to you. To cut ties with someone you loved, someone whose family has become your family, someone who knows everything about you. It takes courage to flip your life upside down because even though you’re not happy in the relationship, how do you know you’ll be happy outside the relationship?
And while it’s hard to get broken up with, it’s so hard to smash the heart of someone you care so deeply about. For a lot of people, it’s hard to be selfish and put yourself first and realize that the relationship isn’t making you happy anymore.
A lot of people would rather stay in a bad relationship forever than go through all that. They’d rather just settle than face the confrontation. I can’t blame them, especially if it’s just a fizzled relationship. Where there’s no reason to leave, but there’s also really no reason to stay.
I think it takes courage to end a relationship and start over. I admire the people who take this huge step because I know it could not have been an easy one for them. And I hope that everyone has enough self-awareness to get themselves out of something that’s making them unhappy.
I haven’t had contact with any of my exes in almost two years. Luckily, I don’t think any of them care about my blog anymore because I know they’d just be tickled to know I still think about them sometimes.
Of course I do, how could I forget? I still think of the time I got way too drunk at a casual get together in college and the time my middle school “boyfriend” broke up with me through his AIM profile. I think about everything, including my exes.
It’s just here and there, I don’t really follow any of them on social media so that made it easy to escape them. But sometimes a photo comes up in my Timehop, or I tell a funny story that included them to my friends, or I drive by a place that reminds me of them.
And I think about the good times we had a lot. It used to be only bad things, sometimes it still is. Sometimes I still cringe when I think of how many times I drunk called my most serious ex or how I completely shattered the trust of another. But I try not to cling to those things anymore and choose to remember better times. Sometimes I think about how I made the first move and asked him to our sorority date party, how I used to draw all over one boy’s arms in high school during class, how another one used to piggy back me from the driveway to my front door.
But all of those thoughts are very fleeting, that’s the key here. It is of course okay to think about your exes, they were a huge part of your life. I dated one of my boyfriends from age 16-20, that is a very defining chunk of my existence, without him it would’ve been and with him it still was.
If you think about them more than just some fleeting moments, though, you may not be ready to move on. You may not be ready to build another life separate of that heartbreak. And that’s okay too. We can’t just bury our emotions and expect them not to rise from the grave like zombies eventually. We have to accept the things that made us who we are, whether we like them or not.
Thank you all for asking me amazing questions and celebrating my 2,000 WordPress followers with me. Below are the answers to your questions! 🙂
1. Has your blog followed the path that you wanted it to take or has the content you published changed? What’s been the biggest influence of that change?
So my blog has definitely taken the path I wanted it to take, but the content has really changed. It started out as a relationship blog called Hookup Culture, but as I evolved and grew (this blog is three years old as of the end of October) I changed it to Rosie Culture and made it more personal. The biggest influence of that change was graduating college and then ultimately leaving behind the single life and entering the relationship I’m currently in.
2. What’s your favorite blog post that you’ve done?
I really love the series I did on being better off without my exes. You can start here and go backwards.
3. Least favorite?
Anything I wrote when I was first starting out lol. I really had to dig deep for this one, a very dry post about Tinder.
4. What sort of influence does your blog have on your real life (or vice versa)?
When I was in college, it was almost kind of a negative impact because boys would ask me if I was writing about them and it just created like this weird vibe when I was dating people. Now, it has been super helpful to me mostly because of the advice I’m offered and I have an avenue that I’m not judged on.
5. What do you like most about the U.K?Â
While it’s on my list of places to go, I’ve never been to the UK! I have to say my favorite thing that I know about the country though is the awesome accents and slang! 🙂
6. How long have you been blogging, and what are some of your favorites to follow?
At the end of this month, it will be three years! Here are some blogs that I really love 🙂
7. A question for my boyfriend: Do you read Rosie’s blog? Is it helpful to your relationship to read her insights or do you feel awkward knowing certain posts are about you that random bloggers are reading?
I do read Rosie’s blog! I check it almost every day, and I actually read it occasionally when it crossed my path in college, back in the Hookup Culture days.
I think it’s super helpful to read it. Sometimes it’s a little weird to know things are about me and strangers are reading them, but I’m comfortable enough with myself and with us that it doesn’t make me uncomfortable. I think that in relationships, the most important things are honesty and communication. And it’s not always easy to be honest about the tough things, or figure out a way to express how you’re feeling. The blog really helps me understand where Rosie’s head is at on things – how she’s feeling, what she’s feeling, what works, what doesn’t – and it even gives me insight into how things have made her feel previously. Our relationship is successful partly because of this blog and the WordPress community because both provide her with an outlet to clear her head and get her thoughts out there. Plus, she literally puts checklists of what she wants to do each season up, which is like handing me date ideas on a silver platter.
8. How do you balance blogging, work, social calendar and the other things life throws your way?
I think it’s a little easier for me because social media and writing come very naturally to me. Usually I write my blog posts during my lunch break or while I’m walking on the treadmill then schedule them. I also have a content calendar for my Instagram. I just kind of consider it a second job that always needs my attention!
9. What makes you more excited on your own blog?
Sometimes I ramble when I write, so I get pretty excited when people leave comments and actually understand what I’m saying lol.
10. What makes your readers get connected to your blog?
I don’t really know. I know my break up and dating posts help a lot of people because it’s not something widely talked about and I always try to be as honest as possible.
11. Have you ever regretted a post that you’ve written?
No, but I do feel bad about how hard I was on some people I wrote about.
12. Do you ever struggle with how much of your life you want to share on your blog? Are there any topics/issues that are off limits?
I do struggle sometimes with how much I feel like I can really put out there because of my professional life. I limit my cursing and anything inappropriate. One thing I almost never talk about anywhere is politics.
 Thanks everyone for reading! xoxo
Rosie
If you’ve been with someone for one year or ten years, you have probably hit a relationship rut at some point. I think these are the times that challenge us the most, that force us to decide if this is what we really want.
It’s a time where you’re probably fighting a lot without a good explanation, where you’re unhappy, and where you don’t know what to do. The most comforting advice I can offer is that everyone goes through them and you’re not alone. It’s okay to question if this is what you want to and to realize your unhappiness. But you have to do something about it, you can’t just let it build up and explode.
Getting out of a relationship rut takes communication that sometimes hurts. It’s alllll about the honesty. But when you put all of your feelings on the table and openly listen to your partner’s feelings, then you’ll be able to see how you got here in the first place.
If you’re like me, relationship ruts usually occur when you let things get too comfortable. When you stop going on dates, stop putting make up on for when they come over, stop trying to look good for them and make them feel good. It’s when you start ordering in and watching Netflix every night and stop making them feel special.
And you don’t even notice it happening because it’s nice to feel comfortable. But it’s overwhelmingly boring and unhelpful to stick to the same routine and just stop appreciating each other.
If you’re in a relationship rut, don’t worry. We’ve all been there and if you want things to work then you can make them work. Be open and honest when you don’t feel good about the way things are going, the earlier you make a move – the better!
