What is Love?

Everyone in the world has a different definition of love. You can love one person, break up, and find yourself falling in love with someone different. And although it's the same emotion, the way you feel it is completely different. You can fall in love with 50 people in your life, and each time, the feelings you have will be different.

I recently had a conversation with my housemate about our definitions of love (I might add that by love, I'm talking about the romantic kind of love). We realised that some people see it as you fall in love, and instantly want to spend the rest of your life with that one person. I don't agree that that's the case. So here's a little list of what love is for me.

Love is having that one person on your mind constantly, if only at the back of your mind.
Love is wanting to spend time with that person, and finding yourself getting a little excited when you speak to them.
Love is wanting to see them happy, no matter how that happens. Whether it's to do with you, or through a hobby of theirs. And finding joy in their happiness.
Love is having a constant feeling of content in your life, knowing that this one person can make you so happy.
Love isn't wanting to be together forever, but not wanting there to be an end to it anytime soon.

Feel free to leave your own definitions below, I'd be interested to see how other people feel!

Things I'll Never Understand: #1 - Cheating

There are some things in life I’ll just never understand. Violence, for example. If things get heated, why can’t you just talk it out, then calm down with a DVD & a cup of tea? Maybe throw in a few biscuits if you’re feeling particularly het up. There’s no need for punches to be thrown around. That shit just gets messy.

Another thing I’ll never understand is pet names. In my past relationships, never have I felt the need to use or be called pet names. Maybe I’m just cynical, but “baby”, “sweetheart”, “honey” and a whole manner of ridiculous names do not appeal to me in the slightest. Yes, I’m from Essex, so I’ve inevitably been brought up with the use of “babe” throughout my school life, but I still only use it in jest, not to any male partners as a serious nickname. 

There’s a whole manner of things that I’ll never understand, and hey, maybe I’ll make a series out of it, but one at the top of my list is cheating.

Why anybody in a relationship would want to cheat on their other half is a complete mystery to me. If things aren’t going well in the relationship, end it. Walk away. Why would you instead, make things even more complicated, by involving somebody else? That 1) makes you a complete bastard, and 2) also has the potential to break the heart of the person you once cared about.

I’ve been lucky enough to have never been cheated on. In fact, all of my past relationships have ended on good terms. However, if any of them had cheated, that would have completely destroyed me. To think that the person you care about, the person you’ve shared a huge part of your life with, could just completely disregard all of that history, all of those feelings, and sleep with someone else… I can only imagine how someone must feel in that situation.

Another thing I don’t get is why anybody would want to be a part of something like that. Some people accept that the person pursuing them is taken, yet they choose to ignore that and go along with it anyway? No way. I was once approached by a guy in a club at uni, who I knew for a fact had a girlfriend back home. I could have easily ignored that, and gone back with him anyway, but for me, the thought of being a part of that makes me feel a bit sick. Just imagining how that poor girl would feel when she found out, the guilt would be way too much for me to handle.

I understand that feelings change. Sometimes it can’t be helped. Sometimes you’ll be in one relationship, and then someone else comes along, completely unexpectedly, and you end up falling for them a little. If that was ever the case, I would never string along a guy, allowing him to think that everything was perfectly okay, for him to then find out that I’d cheated on him. If I ever had feelings for another guy, I would end my current relationship way before pursuing anything with him.

I know people who have cheated, and been cheated on, and a common excuse would be “it was a mistake”. Yes, alcohol is one of the main culprits behind moments like this, but still, even if I was completely intoxicated, I’d like to think that my morals would take over before I’d ever have the chance to do anything like that. Or maybe I’m just too headstrong.

For me at least, I never see cheating as an option. I would never think it was okay. If you’re not happy, end it, then enjoy being single, do whatever you please, but never break somebody’s heart by sharing yours with someone else. Besides, you'd then be labelled with the old "once a cheater, always a cheater". 

I’d love to hear your opinions on this, do you ever think cheating is okay? And also let me know if you’d want to see this “Things I’ll Never Understand” as a series!

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.  

What's Best For You?

Sometimes, life throws you into a world of shit, and it's nearly impossible to get out of it without the help of friends and family. For me, this has been my recent break up. It's been over a week now since it happened, and I'm still not over it. It'll take a while for that to happen.

My friends have been amazing, trying to get me out of the house, and stopping me from sitting in bed all day, watching Bridget Jones while eating my body weight in Ben & Jerrys - it happens to the best of us! But even though they've been doing their best to help me, I can't help but get annoyed at certain things.

The common "he's a dick, you deserve better" phrase has become the norm amongst my friends. And although yes, I do deserve better than how things ended, Mr X is in no way a "dick". He was nothing but nice about the whole thing, and he never wronged me once throughout our relationship.

Since we broke up, I've wanted to talk to Mr X. Just talk things over, clear the air, find out what actually happened, so we could go back to being the good friends we were before our relationship began. But not one person agreed with me that sending him a message was the right thing. Not one. There were two counter-arguments. The first, was to wait for him to speak to me, which in my opinion, is childish. What if he was waiting for me to speak to him first. After all, if I was the one to end a relationship, I would try to give the other person space, and wait for them to speak to me first. The second counter-argument was that I should cut off all contact until we go back to uni in September. 3 months. 3 whole months. If anything, that would make the whole situation extremely awkward, not the opposite, which is what I was trying to salvage by talking to him.

I tried to take everyone's advice and not talk to him, but every night, I would over-think things, and get emotional over it. So last night, I wrote out an essay message to send him, explaining that I wanted to be friends again, but could he explain what actually happened to make his feelings for me change. I saved it on my computer, and contemplated whether I should send it or not.

I woke up this morning, knowing full well that I needed to send it in order to try and move on with my life. So I sent it. And waited for a reply. The response I got was so sweet it brought me to tears again, and it explained that it was nothing I did, and that I hope I know that I have no reason to change anything about myself. He told me that he was focusing too much on himself, and not making enough effort with me, which wasn't fair, and that I deserved better than that, but that he was more than happy to go back to being friends. We then spent the next hour talking about random shit, just like we did before.

So the moral of this longwinded story, is that although friends give you good advice that, yes, you should listen to, sometimes you need to go against that, and follow your heart. Do what you believe is best for you, not what other people think is best.

The Break-Up.

I'm not usually one to tell random strangers about my love life (or lack of it, right now!), but since becoming recently single, it's come to my attention that there's not that much on the internet about actual break-ups. I mean of course you get the usual "how to get over him" sites, endless lists of things to do to "get over him".  But really, how often do these things actually work? You don't just read an article telling you to go out and distract yourself and BAM. Instantly over him. Which is partly why I decided to start this blog. Not just as a way to keep myself busy over the long summer, but to document the journey of getting over an ex. It'll also be a sort of therapy for me, a way to rant about the ups and downs of life without having to bore the people in my life!

I met my boyfriend ex *sobs* in my first week of university, as he lived with one of my course-mates. We'll call him Mr X. You think you know where this is going, don't you? You think it was love at first sight and that we started seeing each other right away. Wrong. You see, my little friends, I already had a boyfriend at the time. We'll call him Mr Y. I'd been with Mr Y for 2 years prior to university, and we decided to give it a go long distance, as I went off to Kent, and he moved to Southampton. However, that didn't work too well, and we ended up breaking it off early January. 

Back to September, during my second week of university, I received a text from Mr X, telling me that he liked me. I brushed it off, explaining that I had a boyfriend, and just wanted to be friends. Everything was fine an' dandy! And me and Mr X became good friends. I then found out in December, that he STILL liked me. After 2 months. So naturally, after me and Mr Y broke up, Mr X convinced me to start seeing him in February, and we became a legit couple at the start of March. 

Things went well. Really well. We had our Spring break for a month in April, and we did a visit each to our home towns. It was really lovely. We then went back to uni, as happy as clams. I fell for him in a big way...

The thing about me, is that it takes a lot for me to let people into my lives in such a big way. It's like Shrek explains. Ogres are like onions. I'm like an onion. We both have layers. It takes a lot for me to peel away those layers, as I know that once they are all peeled away, I can get hurt. With Mr Y, it was easy. I liked him first, I did the "chasing" if you will. So it was easy for me to let him into my life. Whereas with Mr X, he liked me for 4 months, he did the chasing. It took a lot for me to peel away those layers, but once I did, I let him into my life completely, and truly loved him. However, this meant that if something he did upset me, it affected me in a big way. All the barriers I had to up prevent myself from getting hurt were knocked down. I was vulnerable. 

Things only started to go wrong in the last few weeks of uni. Tensions were high due to exams, and everybody was stressing out. Mr X seemed distant. He was unaffectionate, and hardly wanted to see me, despite the fact we lived literally a minute away from each other. I asked him what was wrong, and he told me that he hasn't been feeling into the relationship the last few days, but that he wasn't going to give up yet, because of how long he'd fought to get me. We gave it until exams were over, and the last week of uni was perfect. We went out for dinner, went to the beach, spent loads of time together, and everything was how it was before. 

However, as soon as we went back home (me to Essex, him to Cambridgeshire), the contact was almost non-existant. And when it was there, it involved me initiating conversation, but getting minimal effort back. I confronted him about it 3 days ago, and asked if it was the same issue as before. He said yes it was, and that he doesn't see it changing. So that was it. The best relationship I've ever been in, over. 

I realise this is an extremely long and depressing post to read, but I'll be posting updates on my situation, how I'm dealing with it, etc. I'm hoping that some of you recently single ladies can relate, and I'd love to hear how you've dealt with similar situations. Or maybe you can post what went wrong in your relationship, and we can all be depressed together!