I <3 you!

Well I haven’t had an update for awhile; I know I've been lazy.
Anywhoo now I have a plethora of things to blog about so let’s get
started.

Relationships. I'm no expert but I've been around the block a
few times and have been through a whole heap of poo. I'm not
talking about just boy meets girl relationships but all
relationships including friendships. They're harder than you
think. Here’s some of the wisdom I've collected thus far.

With regards to friendships. First, they are hard. One of my
favorite quotes is "An enemy proves himself once but a friend
must prove himself time and time again". Which basically means its
much harder to be a friend than an enemy. Its hard because when
it comes to times of stress a friend needs to put his own affairs
aside to come to the aid of his friend in need. But here’s the
rub, what happens if the friend doesn't reciprocate? Or what
happens if you're own worries cloud your ability to help others
with theirs? That’s where a friendship can break down, when one is
blinded by their own cares and cannot see beyond them to help.
That can lead to a breakdown in communication, especially if both
sides fail to see the others needs. That’s true also of a romantic
relationship. Sometimes we get too hung up in our own world and
cannot see that which is happening around us.

Don't get me wrong though, I'm not trying to say you should give
all to others and forget about yourself. This is where a true
friendship can be the strongest. You have to be able to trust
that your friend will, in turn, help you out in your time of
need. We can't take the world on our shoulders no matter how
strong we think we might be. Coming from personal experience,
once upon a time I tried to take the world on my shoulders and
ended up being destroyed by it. A balance must be achieved.

I hesitate somewhat to write on this particular point because I
know its somewhat targeted at two of my greatest friends. You
know who you are, and if you are reading this please don't take
it the wrong way, but feel free to punch me in the face if I've
overstepped my bounds.

Anyway, my next point is on the specific relationship that is the
roommate. The position of roommate first of all, in my opinion, is
a very honored position. It means the others you live with trust
you enough to share a living space with you, they entrust you to
protect and maintain it; and you in turn trust them with the
same. That being said, living with someone is always hard
because everyone lives their lives differently. Its the little
details of life that can become a huge point of contention, a
seemingly little thing such as washing dishes can become
magnified overtime to be a huge issue. This is where compromise
comes into play. One must accept, within reason, how the other
lives their live and not try to change that. Its important that
all parties recognize all the others in turn and their
lifestyles, however different or alien it may be to the way you
like to live your own. I'm a big fan of establishing a chore
list as well as an unwritten agreement to do general things that
need to be done. The biggest thing though is communication.
Take the dishes for example. Bob doesn't do the dishes because
he doesn't care if they stack for awhile, so Bill does them. No
big deal. Another couple of days goes by and Bob slacks off
again and Bill does them again, a little irritated but no big
deal. Rinse and repeat (pun intended) and suddenly Bill is
pissed off about, what is essentially a small thing. If the
situation was address when it was first encountered or at least
in the stage of minor irritation, the whole situation can be
avoided assuming that Bob is a good person, bites the bullet and
completes his end of the deal. Also, don't be afraid to accept
criticism, whether you feel you deserve it or not. The point is,
open dialog w/o fear of a huge fight is very important, so the
fires can be put out before they burn the friendships down.

Well, if I still have any friends left after reading that whole
paragraph we can move on to romantic relationships and pick off
the survivors of the last paragraph.

Romantic relationships are the hardest of all because you stand
to lose the most if one fails. At least that’s how it is to me.
They are potentially the hardest to maintain because of the
deeper involvement in each others lives. I'll start with how I
see relationships between people, and you're going to think I'm
weird or have been watching too much sci fi but I tell you the
honest truth. I see, lines or tendrils that sort of emanate from
a person, their different colors for different people, but I'm
not sure what that means yet. Anyway, these lines intersect with
those they come in contact with, and when in some kind of
relationship they touch and entwine with the lines of the other.
When I look at a couple standing near each other I can see these
tendrils deeply entwined. What that means is, if that particular
relationship fails, the violence of ripping those lines out is
going to hurt a lot because they run so deep. All of the things
I said of roommates and friendships also obviously apply to a
relationship with a loved one, but are even more important. In
addition to them you also have to deal w/ the differences in how
a man and a woman perceives the world differently. I don't
truly understand women, lol but I'll take a stab at attempting.

You're going to have to give me a bit of leeway here because I'm
going to make some generalizations, these obviously do not apply
to each individual but does hold true on average (at least in my
observations). Guys, generally assume all is well unless
otherwise noted. So, any girls who are reading this if there is
some problem you see that is so obvious to you no matter how many
little hints you drop, your guy isn't going to get it. Just tell
him what’s wrong, its not going to necisicarily start a fight, and
even if it does you're still going to be the better for it. This
seems to be the number one discrepancy between men and women that
I have seen in my 27 years here. Now, guys to reciprocate here
you need to actually look for those little hints and hopefully
pick up on that if your S.O. doesn't bite the bullet and just
tell you, you might have to ask what’s going on. Ladies, at this
point don't shut down the conversation, open up and just say
what’s going on.

Ok, now there’s the sticky situation of 'alone time'. In every
relationship this is going to become a problem of varying
degrees. I've been in relationships where my girl wanted to be
with me literally 24/7, when we weren't together she was calling
me 40+ times a day. This drove me batshit crazy, that’s way too
much. On the other hand, I've seen relationships that the couple barely wanted to be together, this is also unacceptable. A medium must be reached, and this is going to be different with everybody. Everybody is going to have their hobbies and
distractions they had before they were in a relationship and are
going to want to continue that, and it may be something that
their S.O. can't participate in. Be it playing single player
video games, or a game that you just don't like or perhaps
knitting or artwork or whatever it is you have to set aside time,
perhaps a whole day or more where you can go and do your own
thing. Now, on the flipside, you can't do those things too much
or it will hurt the relationship. Remember friends, World of
Warcrack destroys lives!


Ok, if you haven’t gotten pissed off at me in one of the paragraphs, you're now likely to die of old age from reading all
the way through, so I should quit now while I can. To sum up
this whole blog post though, communication is the most precious
and essential thing to any relationship, be it a simple
friendship all the way up to a loving relationship its the
single most important thing you can master. With any luck,
you'll be able to spend your lifetime improving that
communication with them.