Tag: relationships

On moving in with my boyfriend

~ afledglingadult ~ Leave a comment

Hello, so in the last week I packed up from my family home and moved six states away and in with my boyfriend. This post is just about living with my significant other for the first time.

So we have been together for a little over two and a half years but spent the last year or so completely long distance. Living together is change. We were together so often in college that it seemed so easy but also now we need to be adults too.

It’s nice miss someone so much and want to spend so much time with them and have a whole week before work begins. (At least for him) I still have to find a job. We can relax and spend much need time hanging out and watching TV (currently Brooklyn 99, Madame Secretary, and The Expanse).

The Cons: we have unpacking to do and job prep. A lot of cleaning to do and getting my partner used to my cat. He is not a cat person and the cat creates a little bit of a mess with the hair and kitty litter. We don’t always like the food the others make. We both are introverts to both like and need alone time. To ask that from one of the people you love most in the world is awkward.

The Pros: I am living with one of my favorite people on the planet. I don’t have to deal with figuring out everything on my own, like utilities, cooking, the trash, how often to clean to be like not a gross person. It doesn’t take time to make it feel like home I already feel like I’m there.

Wish us luck.

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In Defense of Dropping People

~ afledglingadult ~ Leave a comment

So recently a friend of mine tweeted that he hated when people bragged about being able to drop people. They held it akin to not being able to communicate or maintain relationships. This made me frustrated and angry. However, knowing the person I also know that if I said that I needed to drop someone he would be super agreeable and supportive.

For me dropping people is a feat of social endurance. It is infinitely easier to stay friends with someone to keep a crappy person in your life than to take the step to remove them from your life. It is not a lack of social skills but in fact a leveling up. For so long we just fall into habits of expecting so little from the people in your life. I remember when I started hanging out with a group of friends my sophomore year of college I found one of them to be kind of abrasive and selfish. When I brought it up they just all went “Oh that’s how he is” or “oh that’s how he’s always been you can’t expect him to change now.”

These mentalities to keeping friends is detrimental to someone’s social and emotional well being. Thinking you don’t deserve to be treated well or that you should have friends that aren’t good wears on a person. A friend is one of the only connections a person truly gets to choose. You don’t pick your family or your neighbors or co-workers. If you don’t say this is not what I want than you are settling.

So yes a friend break up suck and it sucks that those connections don’t always work out. But it’s far better to be able to drop someone than to be stuck in a situation where you feel that you owe your friendship even if it’s not the friendship you want,

Making friends versus being professional

~ afledglingadult ~ Leave a comment

I and, I think many people, have a pathological need for people to like me. Partially, I think because my natural instinct is to assume that no one on earth likes me and it’s a miracle when people do. I try, really hard. However, I also am attempting to be a working professional. I really want to be productive and work with people to reach a common goal. However, when I work with others I often get distracted by wanting to become friends with who ever I was working with.

You know when you are working in a group project and often end up hating those who can’t hold their weight in a project. It’s so easy to let professional feelings mess with personal feelings and vice versa. Just because a person isn’t your favorite doesn’t mean they aren’t good at their job.

Sometimes I feel like I take that mindset with me into my work life. I take on more work than is fair so people will like me more. It’s hard to find a balance between effectively doing my job and befriending those in my new job. It is a lot harder than I had initially anticipated. I want to balance my life, but being liked in my job is important cause you know politics and stuff.

Wish me luck.

Long-Distance Relationships

~ afledglingadult ~ Leave a comment

Happy Valentine’s Week! I hope you are spending it with anyone who makes you happy. This week I will be spending Valentine’s Day on Facetime. My S.O. is 500 miles away finishing up his degree. To be fair last year we celebrated at the hours I had off from stage managing the Vagina Monologues but we were at least together.

Long distance relationships are a pain in the butt. I am in a long distance relationship with everyone I care about S.O. and best friends.  With best friends it’s easy we’ve been together so long. My best friend in the world lives another couple hundred miles away in Arkansas. We keep our connection through weekly newsletters, filled with what we did this week, what books we read, annoying things people said to us, etc.

With my partner things are a little harder. Technology helps. Snapchat allows for a daily viewing of the face you miss. The Showgoers extension on chrome allows you to watch Netflix at the same time on different devices. So date nights can still continue as long as your partner does not pause every other second like mine does. We have found that it’s important to keep up communication while far apart to make sure the other person still feels like they are a part of day-to-day operations. Developing traditions around the long-distance like saying goodnight every night and making sure the other person ate lunch.

Anyway long-distance sucks but love rocks and it has become easier to make it work.

Spend this week with people who make you happy.