I have a Facebook account. I have had one since 2005-ish, I think. Thanks to the new timeline feature, I can see exactly when I created my account, but I care little about my birth into the world of social media.
One of the staples of Facebook, other than completely indulging people’s narcissistic and voyeuristic tendencies, is to point out to the world that you are, in fact, in a motherfucking relationship. Pointing out indefinitely to all those relationship-less losers that you found someone who thinks you are at least semi-attractive enough to be associated with on the Internet. Boo-yah, asshats.
I have never been a proponent of publicly displaying my relationship status on said social media platform. There is no real logic to it, just not my style. If someone on the street asks me, “Do you have a girlfriend,” I would think they were crazy, but answer with the affirmative. So, no logic, just not my thing to post relationship statuses on social media.
However, I was the sappy asshole who would post videos to love songs and quote ridiculous lyrics or lines from songs, poetry, books or whatever I thought inclined me to believe I was with “the one.”
And I am not talking about “the one” as is Neo kicking Agent Smith’s ass up and down the street for days with an over-inflated and relatively ineffective Kung-Fu fighting style. I am not talking about “The One,” that awful Jet Li movie. And I am not even referencing “the great one, Wayne Gretzky.
See, the implications of a relationship are many. But the one thing that always happens is everyone mistakes infatuation for attraction and attraction for interest and interest for respect and respect for love. This is a stripped down version of the mess we call “a relationship” but I feel it to somewhat close to the truth.
And that is the thing. relationships are never simple. They are never clean and easy. They can be fun, they can last a long time, but they take work. They take effort and sacrifice and compromise. They take arguments and love-making. They take every idea of the human condition, all the ones you are good at and all the ones you are bad at, then make you try to share those things with someone else.
And it isn’t your family, people who have known you since you were born. It is someone you have an idea of, you barely know. They present their best intentions to you and you to them.But you haven’t been in the trenches with them. You haven’t had those knock down drag out fights where your love is truly tested. You haven’t grown with the person at all.
Which is why I get so fucking annoyed when (usually is just) women, and these women seem to handle relationships like a turnstile, post crap about being the “happiest I have ever been” and “my life is so perfect” and “my boyfriend completes me.”
Little secret ladies, odds are none of those things are true. And, considering your tendency to implode your own relationships frequently enough that no one knows it you are ever truly single or with someone, you should know it is true by now.
No one should complete you but you. No one should have to make you happy but you. No life is ever perfect, and that is the way it should be.
Your significant other should compliment you, assist you, guide you when you are lost. They should offer suggestions, not solutions. They should never be your everything, but always something that is there.
If you have been on this planet longer than 20 years, you should get head out of your ass about love. Love doesn’t last forever, nothing does.
What does last forever is realizing you cannot even love someone for a month if you do not love yourself. And filling the void of self-hatred and loathing with someone else’s time and energy is selfish, idiotic and insecure. Once you do that, then you have the ability to love someone until you cease to be. Which may not be forever, but it is good enough for me.
