Peace&Love&Rain

Since this is my very first blog on here I figured I should start at the beginning. I've blogged before but it was years ago. I've journaled before, but that was different. I have decided that my random musings may be good fun and so here goes nothing!

You may be inquiring about my use of title. Well rain is just awesome and that has always been my opinion on it. Love is what the theme of my first blog turned out to be, and the central problem of my life! haha... Peace happened because I was in my peacemakers class when I began my brainstorm for today. If you'd like, please bear with me as I procrastinate my way through my last set of finals as an undergrad student.


DRAMA: Girls thrive on it.
This is a claim some of my close guy friends made a few nights ago. Clearly, all girls love drama and we create it in order to drive boys crazy. Here is a reality check boys: we hate drama. Drama drives us crazy and that is all your fault. Because women are so involved and invested in everything going on in their lives, any conflict or overwhelming moment could cause drama. This doesn't mean we want it, because trust me, it causes wayy too much stress. In all seriousness, I think we long for simplicity but cannot focus past the complex. So guys, before you go on complaining about how girls never like the "nice guy", think about your audience. Also, just because someone doesn't like you doesn't mean she doesn't like a nice guy. I am so sick of sticking up for myself. It is as though I need to feel guilty for getting over a "nice guy" who was a jerk to me and now all of a sudden decided he has feelings for me 7 months later. Also, stop pretending you're such a nice guy. You are just as shallow as anyone else and don't deserve me if that's how you want to act.

So lets talk about me. Somehow I always end up falling for these boys who have been hurt. They say guys need to "fix things" but if they knew how many boys I have been with who were hurt by other girls and then come to depend on me, they'd be surprised. I am like the one they come to with all their problems, I make them all better and then I realize they really have nothing to offer me. It has happened on more than one occasion where I have discovered that the only reason I started liking a boy was because I felt bad for him and wanted him to be more confident in himself. These are those "nice guys" who seem to always have something to complain about. I think it is much worse for me to go through all of that helping and being there for him just to realize that he is not right for me and now he's going to think I am leaving him because I don't like him and his confidence goes right back down. Knowing I've hurt a close friend is the saddest thing that could happen. Since then I've tried to find those confident, great personalities that want to have fun and not talk to me about their problems all the time. You know what though? Those boys don't exist. I have searched and searched and the conclusion is that guys and girls alike are insecure. I just need to stop trying to fix him and love him for who he is, whoever he is.

So now the question is, how do I meet a guy and enter into a relationship with him? There are a lot of suggestions that I have gathered from my friends on this subject and I have gained a bit of experience in this area as well. I believe that the ideal way is to meet a guy, become friends with him, and then fall in love. Ideally, this is what would happen, but does it? No. Very rarely do we turn around one day and realize we are in love with our best friend. And when it does happen, it is very rarely returned and we are left with the pieces of a friendship that no longer fit together. The danger in this idea, aside from possibly losing a friend, is that when we are feeling lonely or like we finally want someone in our life, we turn to those friends who are already there for us instead of looking for someone new. As an aside, this reminds me of a FRIENDS episode where Joey sees how great Chandler and Monica's relationship is and has a dream that he is with Monica. He is told that his dream doesn't mean he wants Monica it just means he wants a relationship like theirs. He is told that he innately wants to fall in love with a friend. When he starts hitting on Rachel and Phoebe though, his friends tell him not to hit on one of his current friends, but to make friends with a girl and basically form a relationship. Now this is just a character in a show, but we see how we can struggle with finding the right one. This process of getting to know one another is also a long one and many of us don't have the patience for it.

I've had one experience where I fell for a close guy friend pretty early on in our friendship. We spent a lot of time together, got to know each other and were pretty close, he was my best guy friend at that point and I really thought I was in love. I had another experience where I started hanging out with a guy and we became best friends. I never thought of him as more than a friend until we had been hanging out about five months. At that point I thought I was in love with him. It was perfect and we could talk about anything and had so much in common, we basically spent all our free time together anyway. In both cases I got screwed over. It doesn't matter how, because they are in the past, but I got hurt and it was bad. After that it felt like my heart was breaking, but I've grown stronger and have been a lot more guarded, especially since the second one. I still felt that it would be nice to date a friend since we have so much in common already and have took the time to get to know each other but there is a danger in that. I guess what I'm saying is that we need to find someone to be our friend first as a basis for a relationship, but we can't just find a friend and suddenly like him. What I'm implying here though, seems nearly impossible.

So where does this leave us? This leaves us to begin to form friendships with the people we are interested in. It's not going to happen right away, but we need to have patience and work towards a closeness which will withstand everything. It is so tempting to just find someone we are interested in being with and starting a relationship based on physical attraction. This is a bad idea (and I should know, I am the queen of bad ideas). All it does is leave us feeling vulnerable and sulking in the drama of "waiting for him to call". As my grandma would say, a girl has to play hard to get - she can't make herself too available to men. This is a huge problem though because boys aren't kicking down the door! They are too scared. Yes, I've had my share of relationships and yes, I've been torn between more than one boy at the same time before, but there is no relationship I've been in, save my first relationship, where I've done nothing to get a boy's attention. Then to have his attention and keep his attention is even more difficult.

I've digressed from my main point though. To begin a healthy relationship there must be a time of "courting". These days we refer to it as "talking". "Talking" is problematic though because it is usually accompanied with "hooking up". I'm not saying physical acts are always bad, but it could create a false sense of closeness. Now I feel I need to make it clear that I am not condemning any way in which people choose to go about beginning relationships, I am merely making a suggestion based on my own personal experiences. Hopefully I will be able to take my own advice, but many times it is difficult. Unless you are a boy I was with, you don't know how I am in a relationship and how I tend to rush into things because I crave closeness. I am also easily swayed when I am tired, something I have been trying really hard to work on the past few days since it tends to cause a lot of problems.

So now, the problem is what to do about situations we are already in. What if we have blindly entered into a relationship where we hardly know each other and want to get to know each other but when together all we do is fall back on the physical? It becomes so difficult to form a real friendship from here but we need to make an effort because that is what's going to last. We need a solid basis in friendship because if we can't talk to each other, it really wont work. So I'm going to set some guidelines for myself and try to face my situations the best I can. I can't make promises because I am a creature of habit. I can only try to break my bad habits and live the way I want!

Sending you all much Peace&Love&Rain!
Leave your ideas or suggestions ;-)