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| Photo by alebonvini |
It was an awkward conversation, for both of us, but one piece of wisdom stuck with me all of these years:
“It’s no fun being in and out of serious relationships.”
Here’s the thing. We underestimate how hard break-ups are. At worst they are traumatic and at best (at best, people!) they are extremely unpleasant. Ending relationships causes wear and tear on our minds and emotions. (Someone once told me that you need to take the amount of time two people are in a relationship, and then divide it in half – that is how long it will take to fully get over it.)
We all know that break-ups are hard, but we don’t always consider this truth at the front-end of a relationship, when it matters most. It’s kind of like living as if you’re dying; if you thought honestly about how a relationship might realistically end (happy marriage? slow fizzle? world war 3?), it would likely affect your choice in whether and how to move forward. And it is much easier to see clearly before you've invested a lot of time and energy with someone.
Break-ups - and getting involved with the wrong person - fiddle with your confidence, eat up your energy, and can even cause depression. Most importantly, they take up time that could be spent enjoying life with the right person.
No fun.
It's possible to save yourself a world of trouble by choosing relationships wisely from the beginning.
