Lessons Learned.

I once knew a guy who was more indecisive about relationships than a girl would be when deciding between two pairs of shoes. He was all over the place, and I never quite knew what to expect. One day he'd tell me I was all he ever wanted, and the next I wouldn't hear from him at all. I put up with it for months. People used to always say, "Why are you still holding on to this relationship? It has gone up in flames." And I'd just look at them and say, "Well, you don't know how I feel."

And the truth is, now that I look back on the situation and everything that was occurring at that time, I didn't know how I felt either. As females, we have the tendency to idolize members of the male gender when we are not spending enough time with them. This explains why we, as women, tend to fall in love with a guy we've never talked to only to fall right back out of love as soon as we actually start getting to know him.

In this particular case, I got to know the guy that he wanted me to know. He put up a false front and I bought every word of it. He wanted me to know him as a sweet, sensitive, caring guy. So I did. But in all reality, he pushed those characteristics to the surface whenever he was around me just to hide everything else he was beneath them: whatever we had, it wasn't healthy. 

He wouldn't spend a lot of time with me, but he'd text me constantly. Because I wasn't around him all the time, my thoughts went wild and my imagination morphed him into some sort of prince charming who had come to rescue me from the dull monotony of every-day life. 

Ladies, don't let your mind wander. Don't let your thoughts morph the guy that's been on your mind a lot lately into something he isn't. It's good to really get to know a person before you jump to conclusions about the kind of person they are.

That's why I believe it's extremely important to be friends first- you get to know people in a very different way when you begin a friendly relationship as opposed to a romantic relationship. I've experienced the differences, and I promise that when you begin as friends first, there is so much more to love and it is the basis of a much healthier kind of relationship.