relationship – Rosie Culture

Doing The Long Distance Relationship Thing

Temporarily, my boyfriend is living in New Jersey while I’m in New Hampshire. And while this is only for a month and not really a long distance relationship, it makes me really reflect on the people who are open to doing long distance.

My first boyfriend and I were long distance for pretty much our whole relationship. We were never more than two hours apart, but many factors ended up keeping us at a distance. When he was in college, I was in high school and when I was in college he was working and living in the city. Our relationship was forced into these spurts of time together on weekends, breaks, etc. Meaning any free time I had was dedicated to him.

And that becomes exceedingly difficult when you’re trying to put down roots somewhere. You can’t just pick up and leave every weekend or else you’ll never feel settled. And then it comes to a point where you don’t want to pick up and leave every weekend because you’re settled.

I think if my boyfriend and I were truly forced to do long distance for more than say 3 months, it would put a lot of strain on our relationship. We are both people that like to go out and do things and dedicating our free time and weekends to a 5 hour drive is just unreasonable on both ends.

I give a lot of credit to the people that can do it and I hope their quality of life and relationship are still in a good place. I’m just not the kind of person who can live off bi-weekly interactions for years at a time. But I can’t knock it if it works for other people.

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Break Ups

How Past Relationships Held Me Back

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.

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Relationships

10 Things I Never Knew I Needed In A Boyfriend

I was very independent before getting in a relationship and didn’t think I’d become so dependent when I got into one. But it’s not dependence in a bad way, it’s dependence in the way that now I have someone to help, someone to lean on, and someone to be there for me. I didn’t know I needed all these things until I had them. Here are 10 things I never knew I needed in a boyfriend:

Someone who lets me win sometimes, but not all the time.
Someone to take care of me.
Someone who might not necessarily find joy in all the things I like to do, but will come with me and pretend to enjoy them anyway.
Someone who will put my success and future first when the time is right.
Someone who is more fearless than me, because I’m a chicken who likes to make big plans with no execution.
Someone who will squash the bugs, open the jars, and make me lunch when I’m too tired.
Someone who is willing to put in an equal amount of work, if not more.
Someone who sees right through my mood swings.
Someone who would do anything for me, but can still take care of themselves.
Someone who is there, all the time, but you still miss when they leave for an hour.

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Relationships

Missing Being Single And Missing Being In A Relationship

You always want what you can’t have, right? That seems to ring especially true when it comes to relationships. You want the person who doesn’t want you or you want to be single again or you want to be in a relationship again.

When you’re in a relationship, it’s natural to miss being single from time to time. New love is exciting and when you’re single, you can find as much new love as you want. You can go on first dates and get butterflies, you can openly meet new people and get your flirt on at the bar, and you can be fiercely independent. It’s those winces of feelings you remember from the old days that make you miss being single.

And they also make you forget any bad thing that was associated with being single. Those good feelings make you forget how terrible dating can be, how lonely being alone can be, or how frustrating trying to find someone can be.

Because when you’re single, you’re going to miss being in a relationship. And it’s not easy to find someone that you get along with or enjoy spending all your time with. Sure, being single can be fun. But being in a relationship offers warmth, comfort, and someone to depend on. You always have a buddy to do something with. It’s those winces of feelings from the old days that make you miss being in a relationship.

It’s natural to miss both sides because both bring something to the table. The most important piece of advice I can offer, though, is being happy with what you have. If you’re happy being single, then be that. If you’re happy in your relationship, then stay there. Don’t throw away a good thing based off of misconstrued memories.

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Break Ups

The Courage It Takes To End A Relationship

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.

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Relationships

Mid-relationship Crisis

A mid-life crisis is an emotional crisis of identity and self-confidence that can occur in early middle age. So I think that would make a mid-relationship crisis an emotional crisis of identity and self-confidence that can occur in early mid-relationship.

And shout out to whoever googled the term “mid-relationship crisis” and somehow got to my blog and inspired this blog idea.

I think it’s very easy to have an identity crisis in a relationship. Before I started dating my current boyfriend, I had been single for years and even living by myself. I had become very independent, which isn’t quite like me, but I enjoyed it. But then we started dating and mostly everything became about us.

It’s not a bad thing to invest your time and emotions in someone else and of course the beginning of a relationship will be so happy and sweet you won’t want to tear yourself away from it. But as the relationship progresses, you may begin to lose your independence. You may be giving up parts of yourself and you might not even notice. And these things are mostly because you allowed yourself to do it, not because your partner forced you to.

All of a sudden, you realize you barely see or talk to your friends anymore because your significant other kind of satisfies the role of a friend. And you stop making the gym and eating healthy a priority because it’s so fun to come home and chill on the couch with snacks and your boyfriend. You stop putting in a lot of effort towards how you look because you see the same people every day anyway, why does it matter?

They are little things that can build up and cause an identity crisis which can cause a mid-relationship crisis and make you think you need to call it quits for everything in your life to be better again. But that’s not always the case.

You can be independent in a relationship and even if you lose it for a little while, you can always get it back. Everyone at some point freaks out about their relationship whether it’s the commitment, longevity, fear of losing someone, etc. Assess your own happiness and decide whether this crisis really needs drastic measures or just a step back into your old comfort zone.

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PostGrad

Being An Introverted Blogger

When I think “blogger” I think of peppy, well dressed women with perfect hair and perfect lives. I think of people who aren’t afraid to network, talk on their Instagram stories, and go after what they want. I think of people who love making new friends and being surrounded by constant interaction.

Yet, I’m a blogger and none of those things describe me. I don’t think there are a lot of introverted bloggers out there. I don’t have a perfect life (but that’s kind of the purpose of this blog). I don’t like networking and it sounds awful but I don’t like making new friends.

I’ve forced myself out of my comfort zone a lot by being a blogger. In some ways, I think it’s been very helpful. I’ve built up the courage to speak to my audience and I’ve made connections with a lot of people. Even though it makes me uncomfortable, it’s all part of my mission. I just want to help and relate to people and I can’t just write things down and then hole up and not respond to those people I’m trying to reach.

It’s taken me years as a blogger to do things that some people are just naturally good at. When I first started blogging, I was vulnerable on my posts but that was when only 100 people were reading. Now I have to force myself to open up a little more and not care about the consequence. I write about doubting my relationship, job, life, and friends – things everyone in my personal life can read and judge me on. But it helps other people, so I’m going to keep pushing myself to do it.

When I started influencing on my Instagram, I had to first come to terms with the fact that not everyone is going to like my content. I don’t have the same perfection as other bloggers. I just started speaking on my Instagram stories a few months ago and just a few weeks ago I started sharing personal struggles in my Instagram captions. But I see people relate and it keeps me going.

It’s hard to be an introverted blogger – I have to push myself outside my box while still maintaining who I am. I’ve thought about stopping many times before, but it’s helping me better myself and introducing me to such wonderful people. What more could I ask for?

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