Hi, I’m back. *takes a deep breath*, it’s been nice to take a break, and to have the time to focus on other things for a while. Sometimes I get so wrapped up on certain things that it feels like I can’t take a breath, and have no time to just relax and live. So, hi, I’m back and I’m refreshed; teeming with blog ideas which I’ll hopefully be able to write out for you guys over the next few months. But, as for this blog, I’m going to ease back into writing for you all. Today, I’m going to be talking about one of my favourite things, C, and what I’ve learnt since starting our relationship over a year ago (yes, a year, ahh! It’s been the best just-over-a-year of my life).
So far, I’ve come up with thirteen little points covering what I’ve learnt about being in a relationship, and also what I’ve learnt about myself since entering my first serious relationship. However, I’ve condensed it down into nine slightly bigger points as some of them were repetitive – and kind of boring.
Let’s dive on in.
It’s difficult struggling with your emotions and understanding them before entering a relationship, but when you’re in one it’s even more complex. Suddenly you don’t have to just think about yourself, there’s someone else who is just as important and everything is a bit messy for a while as you try to figure it out. One thing I seriously struggled with back in August last year was point number one:
1) It’s okay to be sad sometimes
This was one of the most difficult emotions I had going into my relationship. I didn’t understand it, or why I was sad. I had been depressed for a while, and for some reason I thought that would just disappear after I started dating C. I was wrong. Depression isn’t something that just goes away. I was a fool for thinking it would. There are levels to how I feel, and sometimes I don’t understand them. It was certainly never C’s fault for me feeling the way I did. Yes, sometimes he upsets me, but not to the extent I was feeling. Some days I feel worse than others, and being with someone who makes me feel stupidly happy has no say in it (although it does help me feel better sometimes).
When I’m with C, my life is great. I’m happy when I’m around him, but that doesn’t stop the self-doubt and self-hate from creeping on in. I overthink so much and so rapidly that I’m rarely ever sad about just one thing at once. It all stacks up and I’d like to hope that C has learnt that I’m hardly ever upset because of him. In fact, it’s usually because my writing isn’t going how I wanted it to, or what’s happening with my job or it could even be down to an interaction I had with someone else in the day. Sometimes I just get upset because I’m feeling frustrated or irritated.
What I’m trying to say is that just because you’re sad, it doesn’t mean your relationship is a failure. In fact, having the support of your other half can even help you feel better, if you have the strength to tell them you’re upset. Being sad doesn’t mean you can’t be happy again, that took me a while to realise.
Being sad isn’t the only emotion I struggled with when entering my relationship. I also (and I know it sounds strange) struggled with being happy.
2) It’s also okay to be happy
As a teenager (but only for another couple months), my moods can change quite quickly, and as a result, I can go from being very upset to being very happy in the span of about five minutes. It took me a while to realise that dating C made me stupidly happy (but not too long, because he’s literally the best) and that being around him makes me feel loved. For a while, I even felt guilty about it, because I think I hadn’t been properly happy for a good few years. The quick change made me step back and worry that it wouldn’t last.
Something I realised because of this, is that worrying about the consequences of being happy is unhealthy. I think part of the problem was these depressed feelings I was having creeping back in to taunt me – they like to do that. I don’t think that anyone should ever feel bad or guilty about being happy. You’re allowed to be happy, and if someone makes you feel that way hold onto them tight (unless they’re not good for you, and deep down you know it). C has helped me heal, he helped me feel happy, and still does. I should never feel guilty.
Feeling guilty for being happy leads me onto my next point, one which explains that problems you have don’t just disappear when you start out in your relationship.
3) Lack of body confidence still exists even in happy relationships
Some days I’m more conscious of my body than others. Luckily, I have quite good body confidence, and I’ve kind of come to terms with this being my body, and me not being able to do much about it all. However, that doesn’t mean I don’t question if I’m pretty or not. Unfortunately, I was one of the people who thought that being in a relationship would completely get rid of my lack of body confidence. Oh, how wrong I was. In fact, I think for the first few months I was really bad. I wouldn’t feel confident in myself at all. Something I would do a lot was compare myself to C’s ex (which looking back on it was really toxic for my mental health) and it would trap me in a cycle of thinking I wasn’t good enough for him, as I don’t really look anything like his ex. I thought I was the wrong ‘type’ for him.
Social media also didn’t help. Anyone I saw online who I thought was attractive (which is a lot of people, because I am a fellow bisexual), would have me second-guessing if I was pretty or not; not only pretty enough for myself but also for C.
However, I’m getting better. Battling my upsetti feelings is difficult, and battling my body confidence issues is exhausting. Sometimes I just want to burrito up and cry. But C’s support helps. He usually tries to drag me from my burrito and give me a cuddle. He also tells me I’m cute and pretty, which makes me feel warm and happy.
I hope that if you struggle with body confidence issues or body dysmorphia, you can battle it and come out on top. Everyone is beautiful in their own way, it’s just the believing it that is what matters.
I think body confidence is also paired with how you present yourself. This brings me to point 4.
4) Be as weird as and as yourself as possible
For anyone that knows me, they know that it can take quite a while for me to make it out of my shell. I’ve only really just started to come out of my shell at work, and I’ve been there two years now. I struggle to become myself with other people and finally opening up and being completely authentic with C feels like taking a huge breath, and a huge step.
Seeing how confident C was around me definitely helped me open up. It was like after the first month he’d become almost completely comfortable around me (which is amazing and I’m so grateful for him), but it left me in a strange state of insecurity. Was I supposed to let loose and enjoy my time with him, or was I meant to hide the weird until I felt comfortable? My answer was wait until I was comfortable being totally crazy with him. There was no point trying to rush it, and in the long run it only took a few months to relax down. But I’m glad that I’m now settled enough to show C the weird. It’s about time, and it feels so good.
I think that once I was comfortable being myself around C, I then took a step back to look at everything that didn’t seem right with other parts of me, and I opened up. Welcome to my next point:
5) Opening up to C is the best feeling in the world
It was going to be almost impossible to be in a healthy relationship with C if I didn’t feel comfortable opening up around him. This includes not only the little parts of life, like if something happened during the day that I want to get off my chest, but also the big bits, like if we get frustrated with each other. Communication is important. How was I supposed to express what I was feeling, and resolve the problem, if I didn’t feel comfortable enough speaking to C about it?
I struggle with my mental health a lot sometimes, and I’m so used to bottling up my feeling that at first I struggled to just let C know when I was feeling upset. However, now it’s so much easier. I can tell him “hey, my mental health is a bit shit today” and he’ll give me a cuddle and help me understand why I’m feeling so down. He’ll make it his job to help me feel better (which is the cutest). Having someone who I can share my life with is the best thing ever. Opening up to C feels like a breath of fresh, cold air (like the air that you have early on an autumn morning).
I didn’t really have many friends growing up, at least not ones that I felt I could open up to, and having C just changed everything. I didn’t feel alone. Going from years of hiding how I feel, straight into being able to actually speak to someone without fear of them telling others is amazing, and I am so grateful because of this.
However, I think it’s impossible to always let someone know exactly what you’re feeling. Sometimes I think it’s more important to protect their emotions. Sometimes it can affect my mood, and C’s mood. This links nicely to point 6.
6) It’s not your fault (all the time) if your boyfriend is in a pissy mood
Granted, sometimes I can wind C up a little too much, or push him a little too far and he can sometimes say something that makes me stumble a bit, but I’ve started to learn that it’s not always my fault if C is in a particularly shitty mood. Just like me, he can have days where he’s feeling upset and he’s definitely allowed to – I mean he’s been through a lot in his life. Usually, even if I have upset him, there is almost always another reason amplifying his mood.
I think it was worse at the start of our relationship because I struggled to understand that there was more in his life than just me at the start (woah, I hate how this makes me sound, I am so sorry), which is why I struggled with his bad moods. We see each other almost every day after work, and usually spend the day together on Tuesdays when we’re both off. But I now realise that there can be problems within our families that can affect our moods, or we can be struggling with something at work that can maybe make us a little snappier than usual. The anger is never meant to be directed at each other, but sometimes one little thing can push us, and it can affect our moods. It would anyone, I think.
As long as we can work out what it is that’s upsetting us, then we can work through it together and be happy again.
C’s moods can be difficult to read, and he doesn’t always like opening up which is why this next point is just so important.
7) You have to listen to him, and give him the space he needs. He’s allowed to need space
Going hardcore with anything is probably going to hurt. Whether it be singing, dancing, or thinking (also known as overthinking – which at this point I could have a qualification in), there is most likely going to be a negative outcome. I love C, and I want nothing more than to spend time with him, but trying to ignore that he’s a human being with personal space needs is always going to be bad. Sometimes I need to take a step back and realise that it won’t hurt to not be so clingy.
Being nervous or scared of losing him – or even being jealous – is okay, but I now know that I need to make sure I don’t let this become overbearing. That can be too much for him, and for me. And ignoring his needs it just wrong. I need to listen to what he wants, and I need to listen when he wants to tell me something important.
Giving C space, and listening to him is just a sign of respect, and if you need to respect anyone, it’s your other half.
At the start of my relationship, after the initial awkwardness of getting used to each other, I was very very clingy, to the point where C was probably sick of me. I was a bit of a shit girlfriend, but mostly because I was jealous of his ex and because I didn’t want to lose the spark in my life. Listening to him, and knowing when not to push him was difficult for me to understand, and I know that sometimes I can still over-step my boundaries, but I’d like to think that I am learning.
Also, letting C be himself (not that I would ever dream of holding him back), is probably one of the best things I can do. It makes me happy to see him happy and himself. It’s one of the reasons I love him.
(But I never want to give him space like I had to during lockdown, that hurt my heart and my mental health).
The subject of space leads us onto point 8…
8) Don’t give up on your hobbies
With giving space, comes the anticipated spending time together. C and I spend a good chunk of time together, I’m sure that if you know us you know this simple fact. However, sometimes, spending almost all our free time together has its occasional negatives. For example, for a good year I’ve struggled with writing my current book, my work in progress. I’m not blaming C, anyone who thinks that needs to take a walk and come back understand that it is my fault. I haven’t made the time for writing, and I’ve been wondering why I’m struggling so much with it. I had given up my hobbies (which is probably one of the reasons that I’ve been kinda sad lately – the realisation that I’ve made my writing take a back seat for so long) and I’m not going to get my dream career by ignoring doing what I love.
So, I’m starting to make more of an effort again to write when I want to, and to plan when I feel like it. I’ll sit down with C and he can do what he wants while I sit and write. We’re still with each other, but this way I get to get some writing done, and he gets a moment to do something he wants to. You shouldn’t have to give up your hobbies to be with someone, in fact they should encourage you to follow your interests. C encourages and supports me daily, and helps with the dreams of my career. He’s here for me, and he never purposely holds me back.
Now this next point is something that I would consider super important. Some people will want to skip over it, and that’s fine, I’ll see you in my summary, but I’m putting it in here for anyone who might want to give it a read.
9) Consent from both people is super important
Being in a relationship, there are certain things you’ll want to do, especially as a teenager with messy emotions. Something to remember is that consent is really important… And consent doesn’t always mean when it comes to sex. Consent reaches outside of sex too, such as when I ask if it’s alright to have a hug, or when making sure I’m not being too overprotective. I think it’s important to normalise checking everything is okay, and that you’re not pushing things when going about your day. I think that’s how to avoid having serious arguments.
Consent is also important during sex. But I’m not about to talk about my sex life on the internet, and with people who I know are family and friends (that’s something you don’t need to read). As long as you know your limit, and your partner’s limit, everything should be good.
There you have it, a new blog! I planned on publishing this way back on the first of October, but I’m so glad that I didn’t because it means I’ve had the chance to review it all (it really needed it), and has let it reach a standard that I feel comfortable with putting out in the world. Hopefully you enjoyed it, it’s a little more personal than usual, and it shows C in a bit of a clearer light – without revealing much about his identity (so back off creepy stalkers).
Until next time *releases deep breath*.
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