A Quick Note About What Relationships Are Like
This is for all the guys who haven't been in one yet. I've tried to keep this article as short and general as possible. I want to make a simple point about relationships with it, but I also want to be careful because every relationship is different. So try to read everything in the broadest terms possible.
I remember when I was young and hopelessly single I had these really intense, melodramatic feelings about relationships. There was a thick, palpable desperation in my brain to be in one. I constantly fantasized about meeting my dream girl and becoming involved in a passionate, consuming romance.
And then there are the occasional messages I read on forums. They're from people who have never been in a relationship before and they'll say something along the lines of, "Well, I don't want one at the moment. I don't know if I could handle it right now." The context of what they're saying is that they see relationships as being these intense, emotionally draining affairs.
From my own experience with relationships, they're often much more casual and like being with any other good friend than you'd think
Of course they're not exactly the same, and at times they do veer into more movie-like territory, but here are some examples from my own life to illustrate what I'm trying to say:
Time spent together day-to-day
I remember thinking about being in a relationship in an abstract, disconnected kind of way. I'd imagine myself cuddling in bed with an anonymous, prototypical 'perfect girl'. Or I'd picture myself and a girl I had a crush on walking through a field on a warm summer evening as fireflies flew around us. In hindsight, more than anything such scenes were visual manifestations of my strong, though vague, feelings of wanting to be with someone.
99.99% of the almost two years I've been with my girlfriend have not been spent watching meteor showers by the ocean. Most of the time we spend together is fairly similar to the time I'd spend with anyone else I liked and got along with. We chit chat about what's going in our lives, we joke around, we talk about nothing, we watch t.v. for too long, we stay in and rent movies, we wonder around downtown, we sit around her apartment with nothing to do, we meet our friends for dinner and chit chat with them, we go out to bars and have some drinks, we buy some beer and watch sports all afternoon, we go on day trips, etc.
There are some boyfriend-girlfriend touches thrown in as well: If we're watching t.v. we may be cuddling. We share corny in-jokes and have cheesy pet names for each other. And we'll randomly get kissy and affectionate with each other. But even the physical stuff isn't really accompanied by the same strong feelings I had when I fantasied about them. It's all more nice, than intense and passionate.
Sex
Most of the time when my girlfriend and I have sex it isn't a cosmic, beautiful, melding of souls or some lustful, fiery, true-selves-laid-bare free-for-all. It's more like we're sitting around watching t.v., and we're both a little bored and horny so we start messing around a bit. Before long we're both out of our clothes and we've moved to the bedroom. Some fun, sweaty sex occurs, we have a shower, then go back to watching t.v. Or she'll have stayed over and we'll wake up in the morning and cuddle and joke around a bit, then have some good, fun sex before we get up to get ready and have breakfast.
It's more of a mutually fun, physical activity to share more than a magical, intimate, fairy-tale experience that makes the planets shift out of alignment. It does help bond you together, but I've found it's more in a 'something feels like it's missing...' way if you can't have sex for a week or two more than anything.
The start of the relationship
Some couples do start off really passionately and romantically. In the past, when I was obsessed with having a girlfriend, this is the kind of start I fantasized about. So about two years ago I met my current girlfriend. It didn't feel like we were reconnected lost souls whose love had been cruelly cut short in a past life. We just liked each other and got along really well and the conversation came easily. We saw each other about once a week for a month or two, then slowly started spending more time together. Our seriousness about the relationship followed a similar course. It was fairly casual at first. I was hardly drained from the experience. When she wasn't around I largely went on with my life as normal. It's more or less the same now. Being with her is hardly siphoning away huge portions of my psychic reserves.
The feeling it gives you
Back when I was single and desperate I equated being in a relationship with a girl with constant, intoxicating happiness. So what's it really like? I'm more less unhappy than I am happy. To put it another way, I have more an absence of bad feelings than a presence of extra good feelings. If anything, I feel more contented, calm, and balanced. I feel like I'm resting comfortably at normal. When I do feel happy about the relationship it's more of a sucky, goofy feeling rather than a drugged-out, euphoric one.
So that's my take on it. Again, your mileage my vary. I'm not trying to say that your relationships will be exactly like mine, just that on a day-to-day basis, they often feel more casual and down-to-earth than you may imagine them to be.
I think what happens to people is that they confuse their feelings of wanting to be in a relationship, or their general feelings about them, with what it's actually like to be in one. Just because your feelings of wanting to escape your lonely, single life are strong and melodramatic doesn't mean relationships are all melodramatic themselves.
Like the virginity articles in this section, I hope my little expose helps you more easily get into a good relationship in one way or another.
Related Articles:
Being A Virgin After High-School Is Not the End of the WorldFor Guy Virgins: Basics Things No One Told Me About Sex
How To Get More Comfortable Talking To Strange Girls
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