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).

The first thing I asked her was about her feelings for him. Where did they come from? Is he really such a great guy – or are you just CREATING emotions from the sex? She swore her feelings were real, so I asked what he does for her that makes her like him so much.

When you like someone, it’s always good to have actual REASONS – he’s thoughtful, makes sure I get my papers done for class, checks on me after school/work, remembered I loved Christmas lights from a random conversation we had & then surprised me and took me out to see a huge display [personal shout out ;) lol] – something SUBSTANTIAL, even if it’s little things.

I asked her, What substantial things has he done to get you so attached? She couldn’t think of anything.

I asked her, Do you like the person he is? Who is he? Is he really funny? Does he like the same things you like? Same TV shows, movies? She didn’t know.

What’s the man’s favorite color? Not only did she not know, she didn’t really care!

Turns out, their conversations didn’t really get too deep. She did express her feelings for him and her disappointment at his lack of feelings, but what were the feelings based on? None of their conversations really got too deep into who they were as people – it was a sexual situation and nothing more. Once I started getting into the deep stuff with her, she realized she probably didn’t even really care for the guy. In fact, she could think of a million reasons he got on her nerves!

I hear about similar situations so often, I can’t even begin to tell you. This is one example out of a million! I even have my own stories of getting all emotional over nothing. People rarely assess what is going on and take a deep look into their actions before making themselves crazy. You can cause yourself some sleepless nights, embarrassing moments, and unnecessary drama by Jumping the Gun.

To sum this up, before acting up over a situation and getting all emotional, Ask yourself:

·  WHY do I like them? Are they really that great? And how?

·  WHAT substantial actions have they made that’s got me so wrapped up? If it’s just the sex or some other surface-level involvement, stop yourself.

·  And WHAT’S THEIR FAVORITE COLOR?! If you don’t know or even care to ask, maybe you can take a step back and save yourself the drama. [doesn’t literally have to be the fav color, but hopefully you get the point]