Rose Tinted Spectacles

When you’re in a relationship with someone, things can get pretty intense. Especially if you’re away from home, at university, for example. Uni relationships (in the first year at least) can be pretty unhealthy. Because you both live in such close proximity, there isn’t the element of space that’s needed in real relationships. You see each other all the time, so feelings get a lot stronger, a lot quicker. This was the case in my last relationship, and even though I’m still not over it, my emotions have recently turned from upset to anger (which I much prefer, if I’m honest!), and I realised that our relationship was nowhere near as great as I thought it was. There was a lot wrong with it, but because of how much I loved and cared about him, I was seeing our relationship through rose tinted spectacles, ignoring the things that were wrong and enhancing the good parts.

After we broke up, I spent any free time I had sitting around moping, because I just didn’t see how things could have possibly gone so wrong. It wasn’t until something happened a couple of days ago (I shan’t go into any grimy details, but it angered me a LOT!) that the anger kicked in, and I really started to think about our relationship.

I realised it was never perfect at all. I think that the fact we were good friends first of all made me ignore some of his qualities that aren’t good in a relationship. And he never changed those qualities in order to make it work between us (which makes sense as to how we got to this point!). My good friend Melisa (go read her blog, it’s great!) told me to create a pros and cons list over our lunch date, and honestly? I felt so much better about the break up after this.

 I realised that the kind of guy he is right now, as much as it makes him a good friend, it wasn't right for a relationship. Not the kind of relationship that I want, anyway. If any of you are experiencing a break up, I’d definitely recommend a pros and cons list. It makes you think about things that you overlooked before, that, because you were so in love with this person, you didn’t see them as an issue. It made me realise that despite the fact he did make me happy at one point, the last few weeks of our relationship, I was miserable. I wasn’t myself at all, and it felt as if my entire happiness revolved around this one guy. It’s only now that I’ve come to realise that ending things was the best thing for us, and now I can finally go back to being the strong “I don’t need a guy to make me happy” girl I was before.