Photo from - @thesweetfeminist
Valentine’s Day (a poem to start)
trust
love
mess
shit
body image
weight loss
bowl of spaghetti
live your own life
love your neighbor
love women - they deal with enough shit
stop self-deprecating - you’re worth it
you watched porn - forgive yourself
he watched porn - forgive him
know when you want to have sex
spend time on your own (backup plan?)
The best thing that ever happened to my relationship, (well really, so many wonderful things have happened) but one of the best things to ever happen was to discover something about my boyfriend that I didn’t like so much. I won’t say what it is because at this point people read this and know who I’m talking about.
But I discovered something, that turned me off. Because of this, I felt comfortable beginning to live my own life. Love is confusing and overwhelming, and in this age where we can constantly see and compare our relationships and lives to everyone else’s love can be hard to do right. If there even is any right way to do love (which there’s not).
However, for a lot of my relationship with Pierre, I felt insecure. I felt jealous and not good enough. Part of the reason for this is that we started out in a really unconventional way, or at least a way I hadn’t seen modelled before me. But the models we see can be so misleading, no? Think Hollywood romances, fairytales, etc. It was no fairy tale with Pierre. It was beautiful and real and monogamous but not easy. He was going through a lot at that time and I had just moved to Paris, we didn’t use words like boyfriend girlfriend love and we didn’t intermingle in one another’s lives. After five months, I went back to California and even though we talked nearly everyday we were doing our own thing.
When I came back in September 2017 things changed. We used words like boyfriend girlfriend love and we intermingled and we started seeing each other a lot. This was I guess what I wanted all along and since I finally got it, I think I developed an unhealthy obsession with keeping it.
I would cancel my plans with friends to see him (I’m sorry to my friends, please forgive me), I would uber to his at all hours of the night just to sleep with him, I needed to know what he was doing at all times, I got offended if we ever didn’t see each other as often, and I would even, check his phone, WHICH YOU SHOULD NOT DO IN A RELATIONSHIP, but I’ve done it.
Confessing that isn’t easy because it’s a huge reflection of insecurity. And when it comes to Pierre, it’s really self-sabotaging behaviour, because I never find anything, but I lose his trust for looking at his phone. And as we got closer, our emotions got higher, and our fights got bigger. There’s so much emotion with love, no? Or is it just me? I feel so much with him it’s indescribable. I want to have his babies and punch him in the face. I want to suck his dick and cheat on him. All of this is relative and changeable. I never actually want to cheat on him, he’s everything I could need and more but sometimes I feel a need to hurt him because of one reason or another, and seconds later I just want to cuddle with him all night.
I do not believe we are meant to be monogamous beings, I do not believe we are meant to find serious love at 23. I perhaps do not believe in serious love. Or perhaps, I hadn’t seen much of it before Pierre. But I know somewhere inbetween seeing Pierre once a week, and then seeing him everyday I lost a part of myself. I lost the part of myself that could exist wholly on her own. Perhaps, I loved him too much. And this discovery, this thing that allowed me to like him a little less, has saved me. I am SURE this sounds so crazy and you are maybe judging me left and right but my blog will always be about honesty, and about topics other people maybe don’t want to talk about.
We are so accustomed to facades, walls and lies. With Instagram, with social media, we really put out what we choose to and it has kind of become taboo to be honest or depressing or different. Liking my boyfriend less has led me to love him properly, and love myself fully. Love doesn’t make since to me, I have no manual, but after my discovery I stopped waiting around for a message from him or counting how many kissy faces he would send me. I stopped consistently asking when we will see each other again, and I even made plans with friends nearly every night. In the morning, I wake up and think about myself and my body and my mind and my heart and not if Pierre messaged me over night. All of this has made my relationship stronger, and decreased the fighting, while increasing the loving the fucking and the cuddling. We are two years strong (which is freaking ages when you're 23) and I can only see it getting better.
In our twenties, we need to be selfish. We need to kind of figure out who we are and what we want. This is something you can change and work on your whole life, but if you spend these young years obsessing over someone else and shaping yourself to work with them, you are doing a disservice to your personal growth and ultimately your partner. Someone does not complete us but compliment us, us as fully fledged individual fucked up beautiful humans.
I don’t want to look for answers and validation and security in my partner. I want movie nights, pasta, cuddles, comfort, trips, spontaneity, sleepovers, great sex. To get all of those things from your relationship you need to be doing the background work on yourself. If I can do it, you can do it.
Happy Valentine’s Day <3