relationship – Rosie Culture

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.

black and white street walking zebra crossing — Photo by Jaymantri on Pexels.com

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.

man wearing white tank top — Photo by fotografierende on Pexels.com

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?

smiling woman holding black smartphone — Photo by mentatdgt on Pexels.com

Relationships

My Monogamy Skepticism

I’ve been skeptical about monogamy for a while now. I used to be very gung-ho on love, having a family, and living happily ever after. But the older I got, the more unrealistic it seemed.

We are constantly changing. It’s hard for me to fathom that with all the changes we go through, we will like the same person for the next 50 years of our life. The only people that have even been in my life for more than 5 years are my family members and I’m stuck with them. Is that what marriage is? Making it work because you’re stuck with them?

It just seems odd to me that we force ourselves to be with one person for the rest of our lives when there are so many other places, other people, and other experiences out there. I see so many more bad relationships than I see good ones. I’ve seen the beginnings and the ends of marriages. And it just doesn’t seem like monogamy is natural for people who live 100 years.

I think it has a lot to do with my inability to live in the present, always looking towards the future. I look down the line and think that I couldn’t possibly be as happy as I am now in the next 10 years if everything is exactly the same.

It just seems weird to me that most people feel the need to anchor down to one person and they do it in their 20’s. 3 years ago I was a different person than I am today and in 3 more years I’ll be different again – can it really be that the person you marry will ebb and flow with your changes along with their own? That it really does all just work itself out?

PostGrad

Somewhere In Between

I feel pretty weird about this stage of my life. While I know I don’t need to have everything figured out at 24 years old, I do know that there are some things that I should feel more comfortable with.

But everything is very up and down at the moment. I just moved into a new place, so where I live will be a constant for probably the next two years. Therefore, I really don’t have any big life changes coming down the road – and I kind of thrive on change. I don’t plan on moving, don’t plan on changing jobs, don’t plan on making any relationship steps. Which is all fine, but the lack of change makes me uneasy.

And I feel like I should be more comfortable with my friends, the way I spend my time, the way I look. But I just can’t find a balance.

My friends all have their friends and they all live more than an hour away making pretty much everything hard. I’m tired after work so I don’t really do anything exciting – probably the only thing worth mentioning is my blog but that has become so integrated into my life. And I can’t get past any fitness plateaus, I’m so stagnant.

But what do I do? Join a club at 24 years old? I’ve never been an outgoing person and just the thought of trying to make new friends makes me want to hide under the covers. Do I just accept I’m at a weird transitional part of my life and that the puzzle pieces will fall into place soon? Because so far I’ve learned when you expect things to get easier, they don’t.

Being 24 is weird.

Relationships

Moving In Together – First Impressions

As many of you know, my boyfriend and I moved in together this past weekend. The weeks leading up to it had me antsy to finally be in one place together and stressed to get everything done that needed to get done.

But the excitement was real. It was basically everything we had been waiting for for a couple of months and after a few days of living together, I wanted to share my first impressions of the experience with you.

I was so impatient leading up to our move in because living together would make our lives so much easier and my boyfriend would always be there when I needed him from now on. The move in day was much less glamorous than I had built up in my head. It was a lot of stuff, it was hard, and it was a long day.

At the end of the first night when we were ready to go to sleep, all the dread that had been masked by the excitement washed over me. Moving in is a big step but I wasn’t really regarding it as such, but the big step weighed heavily on me that night. I was giving up my studio apartment that I maintained, paid for, and lived in all by myself. I’ll be giving up more alone time and privacy. In that moment I became scared of what moving in together meant and if I was going to lose myself.

The next few days included unpacking, cooking meals and not ordering out for once, folding each other’s laundry – and the unease dissipated slowly. I know it’s normal to be nervous about a decision like this, but I didn’t even see it coming. I had been so excited that the anxiety hit me like a truck when it was all said and done.

But relationships and big steps require work and I’ve always been slow to get on board with things and hesitant in my relationships so it’s fine to approach this the same way. You can be scared to make big decisions and enter new phases of your life, the unknown IS scary but could also hold great things!

I’m looking forward to sharing what my impression on moving in together is in 6 months because I really don’t know what the future holds for me, but I am willing to find out!

PostGrad

Friendships in Your 20’s

One thing no one prepared me for was how different friendships become after you leave college. In college, you live with your best friends. You eat with them, go everywhere with them, you rely on them like family. Then *poof* graduation comes and you all have to separate.

It’s hard to get on the same schedule after that. It’s hard to see each other, make commitments to each other, and stay in touch. It’s hard to keep that family type of feeling alive because you’re relying on other people now.

It kind of feels like things start to fall apart because you were so used to knowing everything about someone and now you only get to see them once a month. Friend dynamics change. You make new ones, old ones fall off the map, and some friendships start to take priority over others.

Effort is required on both ends to keep a friendship going and it’s frustrating when you don’t live near each other and more effort is being put in on one side and none on the other. I think friendships in your 20’s means sometimes we just have friends who are there for a good time, not the hard times. And we can’t put all our care into those friendships anymore.

It’s fine to keep those people around for the good times, but we can’t get upset when they don’t reciprocate the care we show. Then there truly are friends who are in it for the long haul. Friends who you only see once every 3 months, only text once a month, who you can still turn to at the end of a long day even though it feels like you’ve been strangers for a while.

Friendships in your 20’s is all about putting yourself and those who care first and leaving the rest as a secondary thought. We’re growing up, we can’t put all our time and energy into people who don’t do the same for us. It’s sad, but it’s time to move on.

Capture — Photo by: https://www.flickr.com/photos/emilio_k/