Why Do Relationships Get Harder As They Get More Serious?

When I talk to people in long term relationships, I always hear about how the first two years were great. Or the first 6 months. Or for the even longer relationships, you hear about the “7-year itch” – as in, things were good up until 7 years. For this reason, people say they like to be single or they don’t want to get into a relationship because things will eventually go bad. People are blaming time or the seriousness of the relationship, as if that’s what the problem is.

It definitely gets harder when your relationship gets deeper, but in my eyes there are very clear reasons for this. It’s not the length of time, necessarily, that is the problem. If that’s the case, you can just set up a cut off time for your relationships, like say 3 years, and just get a new partner every 3 years. I don’t think that will solve it. I think with seriousness comes a few key things that can be hard to deal with: you get to know who someone really is, people start giving their real opinion, and routines have to be set in more realistic ways – ways that each partner can deal with over a long period of time, rather than everybody being so agreeable. 

“W.W.A.D.: What Would Amber Do?” – Your Friends & Your Man

This is a saying me & my best friend have started that basically represents how you should act, as a woman, if you feel like your female friends are crossing the line with your boyfriend. Amber is one of my friends that we all know doesn’t play that shit. Amber snaps on just about everything when it comes to her boyfriends. She doesn’t like other girls getting too comfortable with him, she wants an explanation for missed calls/texts, if a guy’s story of some event isn’t adding up, Amber isn’t having it – she will go back over something 100x until she feels he’s satisfied her question, if his phone is ringing/vibrating late at night – she would like to know who it is that is contacting him, and maybe even What for.

While Amber can be a little intense in our opinion, there are times where Amber’s attitude is just the attitude you need to adopt. 

The Party Life - Threatening a Good Relationship

I have a friend from back in school who recently came to me about a very serious matter. Because it’s such a sensitive issue and my friend is a very private person, I’m going to give very little detail about the situation – leaving out any specifics that may be identifying. But I will say exactly what I told him because his situation and the conversation we had around it really touched me. I thought it would be perfect to share here because it may help someone else and I’d be able to get feedback from other people.

He came to me because he was having some issues with infidelity. He’s generally a quiet guy, but because of the industry he’s in (whether it be entertainment, athlete, etc), he’s being put in more and more situations where he’s having to put on this façade for the outside world and be this “party guy.” He said he’s not used to all the attention he’s been getting, and he’s starting to feel the pressure of having to juggle everything. With all this newfound popularity and living this party lifestyle comes GIRLS. And that’s where the biggest problem lies. Before he wasn’t in the public eye as much, him & his girlfriend only had regular/everyday issues – now they’re dealing with the cheating stuff over and over.

Even to this day, from the outside looking in my friend & his girlfriend have a really great relationship. They’ve been together since before all the popularity, etc, and he’s a great boyfriend to her. If his professional goals call for him to go out, he takes her with him. Everyone who knows him, knows his girlfriend, and envy the closeness they have. There is no doubt he loves her & she loves him. Everything is great at home, so why does he keep messing up? How does he get a handle on things and stop before he really loses a great girl?

What If Your Mate Makes a Comment About Your Appearance?

What usually comes up is when a person is gaining weight. But this isn’t the only thing your partner can be telling you. You can be slipping on something else – when you guys met you had a nice tight body and now you’ve been letting yourself go. Or guys too, if you were serious about working out, kept your hair cut and lined up, whatever it may be – and now you aren’t taking the same care and consideration with your appearance. Should your significant other let you know it’s time to get it together (take better care of yourself)? I think they should. And I think you should listen! Too often people take little comments that are said like they aren’t that serious. Maybe your boyfriend or girlfriend said something too nicely, or sounded like it wasn’t a big deal so you ignored it. REWIND! They’re not just saying it for their health, you need to pay more attention.

I was talking to one of my really good male friends and he was telling me about how his girlfriend had mentioned something to him about shaving his pubic hair and he was wondering if he should really do it. My advice was a very strong HELL YEAH. I don’t really care too much about it in my own dating life, but she’s the only person’s opinion he should be worried about.

I told him to think about times he’s said something to her about her appearance, like maybe if her hair was looking rough and she needed a perm. Maybe he said it in a nice way, or tried to say it with humor – but his feelings remained the same: she needed to get it together. I asked him how much did he wish she would just go ahead and take care of it, instead of arguing back or saying “Oh, whatever” and making a joke about it. [I’m not quite sure what example he thought of, but it must have been serious because he responded really quickly with “Oh yeah, you right” & got my point!]

When I was young I used to get so mad at my mom when she would say stuff to me like, “Ooh, you are musty” or “Take that off, it’s tacky.” I swear, I would be so mad! But she told me things like that should be heard at home because at home it’s somebody who loves you telling you. Outside the house, there are people who will be a lot worse. And most of them aren’t going to tell you to your face, which is worse.

One thing you should consider is that by the time your partner says something to you about your weight, your appearance, how your feet stink – it’s probably been a while. There’s no telling how long they have been thinking it, and they probably gave you the sugarcoated version. No matter how bad it is, it probably wasn’t close to what they were actually thinking.

Maybe it’s just me, but I absolutely HATE relationships where your partner lets you get out of control & you are just looking crazy. I had a boyfriend for my last three years of college, and towards graduation I started realizing that I had been gaining weight & generally not giving a damn how I looked when I walked out of the house. It’s good to be comfortable and all that, but where was the line?! It took me to look at some pictures from my freshman year & compare them to the ones I was all willy-nilly posting on facebook at the time for me to really see I had took a wrong turn somewhere.

Anyway, my point is – don’t take it lightly when your partner does say something to you. And try to think about it in reverse, would you want them to take heed to a suggestion you had for them?

[Comments on blogs can be sent to: askkeeyar@gmail.com & they will be posted for you]

Men, Y’all Out Here Creating These Monsters!!

Guys start talking to a girl (dating, but with no commitment. usually involved sexually), and when they realize the girl wants more – a relationship – they start pulling back. Not telling her flat out they don’t want to see her anymore, but definitely showing less interest and contacting her with less frequency. The calls stop, the texts are not as regular. Usually her friends are telling her to leave him alone or she just gets tired of feeling stupid - Eventually the girl gets the hint and feels like she is doing better when she leaves him alone.

After a while, the girl pops back up in the guys life and starts right back down the same path. She’s looking crazy, though. Why is she back? Why is she popping back up? Because the guy is doing little things to egg her on!

The thing that irritates me is, I have plenty of guy friends and when they get into a situation like this with a girl, they start complaining! They start getting irritated when the girl gets on “stalker status” and starts chasing him – not catching the hint that he’s not contacting her like he used to, and taking the initiative to call or text him anyway, or inviting herself over…trying to tag along when he goes out with friends the way she used to when he invited her during the beginning stages. The reason I don’t care for the complaints is because I feel like the guys cause the bullshit themselves! Yep, I think they ENCOURAGE the girls to act stalkerish, even though they are telling their friends she’s totally acting on her own & probably just obsessed with him.

Let me tell you how and why I think it is YOUR FAULT, men.

Having Better Sex, Because You’re Actually Enjoying It

I’ve spoken many times to people around the topic of sex. Two things that come up are actually very related. Women (in heterosexual relationships, although these same feelings can apply to people in same-sex relationships) can sometimes complain that while having sex, a man can be solely interested in his own satisfaction. Women can just lay there, waiting the 30 minutes or so until it is over. Men I’ve spoken to say they can tell when a woman is not enjoying sex, and it makes for a very unsatisfactory experience. The man may still participate, but just like their female counterparts, they too can find themselves waiting for it to be over.

The solution, it seems, is for these women to make the sex work better for them. Don’t just let your satisfaction rely on your sexual partner; revise the part that you can control: YOU.

These are a few ways for any person, male or female, to have better sex by finding ways to enjoy it:

A Relationship doesn't mean the end of Independence, but the end of Independence could mean the end of a Relationship

Just because you are with somebody and you’re happy to be making two lives into one great life, don’t think it’s time to lose yourself. HAVE YOUR OWN THING GOING ON!

I lived with my ex-boyfriend for almost three years. Our relationship was great. I had a crush on him since I was 14 years old – I was the Freshman with a huge crush on a Junior, and the feeling never went away even when we got together years later. We played video games together, learned how to handle adult life, he saw snow for the first time with me – he even took a road trip with me & got to meet my biological father, whom I only see every few years. Our relationship eventually broke down, though, because he didn’t have a clear plan for the future or set goals/aspirations.

When you are young, your relationship can be your world. Typically, you are working a part-time job because you’re not old enough to have started your career, so that leaves you plenty of free mental space to focus on your significant other. This doesn’t work when only one person moving more towards some goal as they are getting older, and the other’s worldview remains the same. This is not to insult my ex, he was very smart and had dreams – he just wasn’t actively pursuing them.

Distorted Perceptions in Relationships - Are You Sure??

Many times people can make statements or feel a certain way about their relationship in a time of anger or extreme passion - but not take the time to really think before they speak. Arguments can happen or you can put yourself in a bad place mentally all because you aren't being 100% realistic in your own assessment of what is going on. Almost like a caricature; you're focusing on some features of your relationship, but not taking everything as a whole.

Make SURE you're SURE before you let your emotions take over and you're saying things you don't mean or you get yourself all worked up over nothing.
I'll present here one major way people can negatively affect their relationships or emotional well-being by focusing on a few things, and not The Whole. (There are ways people can amp up their relationships, too, and make themselves feel like things are better than they really are, but I'll save that one for another time)

A debate on putting yourself out there when you're not sure if they have feelings, too

I spent my lunch hour the other day at work on the phone with 2 of my friends talking about a problem one of them was having - and debating with the other over what she should do.
My friend has been on again-off again talking (dating, but with no real commitment) to this guy for about a year now. She has recently come to the conclusion that she has feelings for him, but isn't quite sure what to do. For the most part - from what I can tell, and what she has told me - they are mostly involved physically. Anytime any serious conversations come up - like trying to define their situation (what are we to each other?) - he is not responsive, and they usually take a break from talking to each other for a while.
My stance is a great big HELL NO. My other friend (who was the other party on this three-way call) thought she should lay her feelings out & see what happens. We wound up debating back & forth for a while - and I thought it would be interesting to see what other people thought of it. What should my friend do, what would other people do in her place, and if possible, what do GUYS think is the way to go?
I'll present our arguments here (we literally went back and forth like a prosecution-defense, trying to get her to pick our sides lol) & you guys can tell me what you think she will do.

Messing with someone you know you shouldn’t be involved with…Part 1 of 1,000,000

[Ok, I couldn’t possibly do 1,000,000 posts on this topic, but it is something that probably deserves 1,000,000 discussions]

Deep down inside, you know you shouldn’t be texting that person. You shouldn’t be on your way to their house tonight – or even entertaining their foolishness. But, you are. [We’ll tackle getting OUT of it in a future post, but for now let’s take it from where some people may be at with their situation]

Until you get to a place where you are able to stop, at least do yourself a few favors in the meantime:

- Realize when you are being disrespected

- Stop yourself when you notice you’re doing things that aren’t even “you”

- MOST IMPORTANTLY, be Honest with yourself

Don’t kid yourself. Yes, he just walked straight by you in the club without even a side glance. No, he didn’t get into a car accident this morning and suffer a bizarre head injury that caused him to forget you guys slept together the night before. Watched a movie, too. And ate breakfast off each other’s plate this morning and everything.

JUMPING THE GUN – Torturing yourself emotionally, when you probably didn’t even need to

*as always, this stuff is universal! This applies to guys AND girls, as well as same-sex relationships*

Jumping the gun is an idiom; its literal definition is: to start before the starting signal, to do something too soon, especially without thinking carefully about it. It comes from track races, and refers to people who take off before the gun shot signifies the actual start of the race. 

This comes up a lot in my conversations with people, and I’ll explain what I mean by Jumping the Gun in the relationship/dating world – You get involved with somebody (usually sexually) and then all of a sudden you like them….a whole lot. You’re getting your feelings hurt over unanswered phone calls, unresponded texts, Tweets, facebook chats, whatever – and it’s only been a few weeks. And for the most part, all you guys have done is surface-level things: you’ve hung out, partied, had sex (although sex isn’t exactly surface-level, for the sake of this argument, I’ll say casual sex with someone you barely know isn’t deep at all).

A GREAT example of what I’m talking about comes from my best friend :) She’s gonna physically harm me for putting this one, but it just fits TOO perfectly! I’ll apologize later. Plus, we have a long distance friendship right now, so she poses no real threat at the moment lol.

 Okay, so my BFF has sex with a guy, who before was just an acquaintance/somewhat friend to her. I tried to stop her because she has virtually NO EXPERIENCE with guys/relationships (nothing big anyway), and I knew her crazy ass would go nutty trying to handle sex with no strings attached or prior commitment. BUT, she said it wasn’t that big of a deal & she understood what she was getting herself into.

Fast forward a few weeks & OF COURSE now she swears she likes him. Now she’s all upset and doesn’t understand why he didn’t catch feelings (or develop the same emotional attachment that she had).

When Do You Ask A Guy If He's Seeing Anyone Else?

For my 1^st post I’m going to do what my best friend literally asked me a few minutes before I wrote this. She called me on 3-way with one of our friends from college and went right into what they were apparently talking about before they called. “Hey, it’s a question about boys, ask Kya. She’s like an expert.” Then I just started writing bullet points like crazy while we were talking.

So….

“When is it the right time to ask a guy if he’s talking to other people?”