How NOT to Let Facebook & Twitter Ruin Your Relationship

I always hear people screaming about how social networks are “ruining relationships,” but I think a relationship can do just fine if there are guidelines. I don’t think the answer is deciding you can only date someone who doesn’t have a facebook, twitter, or myspace profile. I think the answer is upholding some kind of standards. Besides, a website can't do anything you don't LET it do

**My constant disclaimer: these things apply to many relationships! Every generation is on social networking sites nowadays so people in marriages, new relationships, live-in relationships – every stage can relate to this. And it gender doesn’t matter either. Guys and girls deal with both sides of the issue. As well as those in homosexual or heterosexual relationships.**

Rough Patches - I Finally Learned They Aren't Hopeless

Every now and then, I think something really good happens and all I can think is: “that’s perfect for the blog!” I really want my blog to be about people learning from each other’s experiences, so I try to include my take on stories I hear from friends or analyze my own situation.

One night a while back, I was having a serious talk with my boyfriend about our relationship. Even in the midst of all the tension, seriousness, and everything else, I was typing like crazy on my Blackberry so I could remember what was being said. I recently came across the note again, and I decided to post it. 

My boyfriend is a writer, so he expresses himself extremely well verbally. He explained his view of our situation so well that I had to write it down. The talk we had really helped me to understand where he was coming from and it took me out of my stubborn position. Anyone who knows me, knows that’s a really big deal – I make up my mind about something and that’s just it. I was irritated so I had decided I wasn’t going to put forth any effort to fix things and I had grown complacent with the barely talking to each other and having little arguments every day. We had been experiencing a lot of tension because of financial and professional stressors, so the quality of our interactions with each other had deteriorated significantly. In a nutshell: We just weren’t being nice to each other anymore. But we talked and, even though I was already going to stick it out, he helped me to decide to do my part and stop the BS now. It was like a revamping of our relationship and getting back to our original purpose: being together as we pursue our individual goals and get closer to the things we aspire to do as a couple as well. *Keep reading, because he had a great metaphor for the dynamic in our relationship*

Easy Ways to Give Your Relationship a Tune –Up

….or just maintain what you already have going.

Relationships are hard. Especially the long term relationships. The new ones are way easier, you make a few nice gestures… remember a birthday or some little known fact about them and suddenly you’re God’s gift to mankind. But when you’ve passed the New-New stage, those same little moves get forgotten. You feel like you know the person so well and people get comfortable. I think people should realize that those little courtesies you give people at work – making sure you check your attitude before you come at your boss, etc – or you give a random person at the store… Or even the politeness you would show a friend – should be shown to your partner, too.

Why Do I Like The One I KNOW I Shouldn't??

I had a conversation with a good friend the other day, and we were both trying to decide what it is that makes us attracted to those situations we know logically we’re better off being out of. Like, Why we love that ex-boyfriend we know just aint no good… Or why we tend to get more excited about the “bad guys” over the good, respectful, “safe” ones. It seems like we get bored with guys who treat us right, call consistently, don’t break our trust, tell us the truth about everything – all the things the “safe” guys do without any hard work, sweat, and tears on our part. But then, we fuss and fight with the bad guys for not doing those EXACT things! 

What makes us stick around and try to fix something, when we could just move on and find something that comes already established. We even had examples of our friends who got into something good and still looked back at a past, broken relationship and felt a twinge of nostalgia.

I brought up some reasons that were both funny and actually seemed to make some sense [these things apply to guys, girls, heterosexual relationships, and homosexual too. I’ve talked to plenty guys involved with girls they know aren’t good for them, and they can’t seem to figure out why. And my gay friends too, just can’t figure out why they keep being drawn to someone who can’t give them what they deserve]:

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. 

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.

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?”