Relationships

I've got absolutely nothing to report, but it's been a long time since I've posted anything, and I'm highly addicted, so I'll share some recent random musings I've had lately. Relationships. So, obviously I don't have a lot of experience in this field --I'm 25 and still single --but why on earth do these things have to be so complicated? My friend John Visser once told me that the reason men are so complicated is because "you women assume we have more depth than we actually do." Comical at the time, but since then I've come to realize more and more that it's actually true. At some point ya gotta grow some depth or something! I mean, come on man! I would like to review some trends I've noticed about the way that relationship-changing phases usually go. I use the term relationship-changing phase, because break-up doesn't always cover it. For instance, what if one is unsure of the status of the relationship to begin with, one can't necessarily label it a break up if one is unsure of the status of said relationship to begin with. Can you break-up from a more-than-just-friends-but-haven't-had-the-dtr-yet relationship? Breaking up just seems the wrong term. I understand that I'm not making much sense, but it's my blog and it all makes sense in my head, so take it for the comedic value there is :) The point is, whether you're dating or talking about platonic friendships, things change.

When I was in nursing school, my favorite sign/symptom of a disease was 'sense of impending doom.' We used to joke that we were going to call in sick to class on test days saying that we felt a sense of impending doom and were sure we were coming down with an acute case of COPD. The first sign/symptom that your relationship may be changing is often a sense of impeding doom. This feeling may be accompanied by a tightness in one's chest, occasional bouts of shortness of breath, and unexplained wrinkles on the forehead. If these symptoms persist you should call 911, otherwise you can rest assured that it is due to the fact that the relationship is changing. This sense can be triggered by thoughts such as, why didn't he call this morning, my fingernails didn't grow AT ALL yesterday, etc. Now, it is important to note, that you should be feeling the sense of impending doom for the relationship, not for oneself, otherwise see suggestion above.

This sense of impending doom leads to various levels of panic and/or hysteria. This is evidenced by uncontrollable and unreasonable crying brought on by love songs on the radio, leading to irrational thoughts that you will be alone for the rest of your life. You may find yourself drunk-dialing friends at all hours of the night in tears (and not actually drunk) asking for their opinion on why he hasn't called in the last 12 hours. You also may feel a compulsion to become clingy, and overly flirty. You should fight this compulsion with all your might. You should also resist the temptation to check your phone every three minutes just to make sure your phone didn't ring, or he didn't text you and you somehow missed the sound. This will just drive you crazy.

Eventually he will call, and this will start the confusion phase. You will likely find that all is normal when he calls, you may flirt just like normal and convince yourself that you panicked for nothing. Then you realize that you are just getting mixed signals. What do you do when the conversations get shorter and shorter and more sporadic, but when they are there, they are just like the hour long conversations you used to have, just abbreviated? You may tell yourself thatit would be better if he doesn't call, that way it would be more difinitive, but that doesn't stop the feeling of relief you fell when you see his name on the caller id, or the anxiety and depression you feel because he still hasn't called. Once all hope that things are fine has been squandered, you will move on to the next phase which is depression.

You will find yourself very lonely, regardless of how many people you are around. You may find yourself missing all things familiar --your family, friends, your pet fish who died two years ago, etc. You will stop listening to the radio, and watching movies because all you see and or hear is inevitably a love story --and at this point you want nothing to do with any of that. It's like when you're starving, but nothing sounds good, so you don't eat.

Eventually, you will become angry. You may find yourself yelling at your phone after hanging up with him. You should really try hard to not throw rocks at things that remind you of him. Like his car in the parking lot, or store windows, or your tv, or billboards, or at the beach --lest you should maim a small child/animal. You realize that this change is a good thing, because obviously it wasn't meant to be, and while this thought still nearly brings you to tears, you are too mad and don't want to scream profanities in public again --that was really embarrassing last time. A healthy outlet for your frustrations would be retail therapy. I recommend shoes. Remember shoes?! Also good are jeans, lip gloss, bubble bath, whatever you like. Flowers. Buy yourself some flowers! You should also stay as busy as possible. Shopping can occupy a lot of time. Go to the park, go to the zoo, blow some bubbles outside, read a book or two. Also, remember the therapeutic power of a girls night out. Inevitably while at a girls night out, you will get approached by a lost soul who will remind you of why it's ok that you're single. Like the guy who hits on you first, and after you politely turn him down, he makes his way to the other side of the table to try his luck on that end. Or the crazy guy dancing with himself occasionally stopping to stare at the wall. Yes, there are definitely worse things than being single. Other ways to occupy your time can be found online. You may be surprised at the amount of hours that can be piddled away on facebook, myspace, blogging, etc. Especially if you don't have all 3 --think of all the time you can waste creating them! You will inevitably find family ad friends that you haven't seen for years, and spend about that long getting all caught up on their lives! There are also such fantastic websites as willitblend.com or jughead.com --where on you can spend hours watching people making fools of themselves, and learning how to give a homie handshake, and swear creatively.

One way or another you will come to a resolution of the relationship. The difficulty comes in knowing how or if you can regress back to a friendship state ...were you ever 'just friends' to begin with? I suppose that would depend on how close to the friend zone you were when the relationship began. Can you go backwards into the friendship zone, or is that like a one way street? And if we're talking platonic relationships, do you want to back off a couple notches on the friendship scale? Or is the friendship zone ruptured beyond repair by all the carnage left behind? Once you get to this point, you will start to form a patch over whatever part of your heart was wounded. At first you may find yourself wondering how on earth you forgot how to entertain yourself --what did you do when you had a night to yourself with nothing to do? You know what you can do? You can hang out with girls again. Hanging out with girls is great! Chances are you will find it oddly refreshing --like a popsicle or glass of ice cold kool-aid on a hot summer's day! Hanging out with the girls will lead to great experiences that remind you why you're glad your still single --and eventually you will cycle on up out of the awkward relationship into blissful contentment with the single-and-loving-it life. The only problem is that one time it isn't going to be the creep that you meet while out with the girls, it's going to be the next great guy, that you want to start a relationship with. I'm told that eventually, for most people, one of these relationship things eventually lasts and the cycle I've mentioned will eventually end. Hopefully before I get motion sick!