Six reasons living together DOES work

A friend of mine just posted an article titled "Six reasons living together doesn't work" on facebook which popped up on my newsfeed. She says she "agrees with everything and thoroughly enjoyed" reading this article. So naturally, I clicked on it and I've come to the conclusion that my friend is mad. Be warned now, this blog post is going to be a full on rant and probably quite opinionated, so sorry if I'm coming across a little rude.


First off, I'll just link the article here so you can read it. I'm pretty sure this website is a kind of online community for Christian women (my friend's father is a minister) so perhaps a lot of ideas in the article stem from the Bible? In no way am I Bible bashing (is that the correct term?) or criticising the readings or people's beliefs bla bla, we all know that disclaimer, but what I'm going to write is what I believe. Essentially, I'm going to quote the article and then say it's all crap.


Point number one: "You can't try out commitment". Actually, you can. The author of this article is suggesting that "marriage at its core is all about commitment" but, um, so is a normal loving unmarried relationship. In fact, I'm trying to write more about this point but I can't because THE WOMAN'S ARGUMENT IS SO ILLOGICAL. "Couples think they can 'try out' this marriage thing by living together, but that doesn’t work because marriage is about more than sharing an address, or expenses, or a bed.  Marriage at its core is all about the commitment." It sounds a lot like she's suggesting any relationship other than a marriage isn't committed? Isn't it a million times better to live together for a bit and then see if this person grates on your nerves so much that you actually can't take it, than to "court" for a year or two before getting married, and then move in together only to find you can't deal with being with them 24/7? It is.


Point number two: "Your needs are important too". Okay, so learn to compromise like any normal person would. I honestly don't understand this argument. Who said anything about giving up everything you want? The author says that a guy's top relationship needs are "physical responsiveness, companionship, domestic support" and that "a living-together relationship is more likely to meet his needs than yours". Isn't she contradicting herself? Marriage is about equality, happiness, bla bla, so why is living together before marriage a bad idea purely because it might make him happier than it makes you? The hypocrisy is mind blowing. (Also, what if it's a same sex relationship? Her theory here suggests that these couples will have exactly the same needs, because, you know, the dynamic of every relationship is dictated by gender. NOT.)


This brings me on to point number three: "It sets a norm for selfish living". The lady says you need to "be willing to make selfless decisions" and that "this is not the culture created in most living-together relationships." Can we take a moment to let that sink in? It seems like she's made a pretty huge jump from you need to be selfless to living together will make you selfish. But, please, do tell... how does it make you selfish? You're sharing a home, making decisions together, letting them into your life. I don't know, call me stupid, but what part of that sets a standard for selfish living?


Points four and five are essentially the same so I'll just lump them together: "You shouldn't have to earn the ring" and "you are more valuable than that". Alrighty. Who said a couple who are living together have any obligation to marry each other? What if they just like spending time together and have some level of commitment to each other? Why can't that be enough? Like I said previously, perhaps living together for a few months has shown a couple that they don't want to be together for the rest of their lives. Why does marriage have to be the be-all and end-all of a relationship? Some people don't agree with the idea of marriage anyway. You're allowed to explore your feelings within a relationship and - shocker right here - YOU'RE ALLOWED TO BREAK UP IF YOU WANT TO. Holy crap, living together isn't some automatic pass to marriage. It's a trial period, if marriage is what you're after, or two people might just want to hang out more and living together is a nice convenient way to do that.


Point six "if you want God’s favor, you’ve got to follow God’s ways" is kind of irrelevant for me because, while I do believe in God, that belief is not what I base my life around. I don't go to church or read the Bible or not get drunk at parties or never swear ever. The way I see it is that God wants y'all to be happy. (I just said y'all, I've been watching too much Ellen DeGeneres!) If you're living with someone who, oh my god, isn't your husband or wife, He's not going to hate you. Hell, He's not even going to disapprove because you're probably a good person and you're happy and you're making someone else happy by compromising (not that the author of this article gets what that is) and you really like - or maybe even love - each other. God loves love, yo.


If I find someone who I like enough, and who likes me too, and we're in a happy relationship, we can move in with each other. We don't have to get married and our feelings are allowed to change. We don't have to stay together forever. Living together is going to help me see if I could spend the rest of my life with them and if they actually want me in their life forever. We're going to "try out our commitment" to each other (yeah, I said it!). And it's going to be pretty great.

LABELS

In the summer I, um, "dated" a guy. I'm not really sure what to call it but we spent a lot of time together and were verging on having it become a proper relationship. I don't know if I've mentioned it before but I'm a commitment-phobe. I'm fine until it becomes official and then I freak out and want to end it all. I don't know why. As Taylor Swift puts it, it's "a tendency to run from love" but as we all know, I don't believe in young love. Ah, how cynical. Anyway, in the shower this morning, I came up with a little analogy:


When you meet someone is like when you see a lovely dress in a shop, and when you get to know them and decide you like them is when you think to yourself, yeah I really want to buy that dress. So you buy it, which I've likened to beginning to "date" this person. You begin to wear this dress and spend a lot of time wearing it but you realise that you haven't taken the label off. The label itches you and it all becomes a bit uncomfortable, and the more time you spend wearing this dress, the more you realise you want to take the label off. So, you rip the label off and suddenly things become a lot better. You want to wear this dress all the time, especially now that it's become so familiar and and comfortable.


I hope this is all making sense to you because I have a feeling I haven't expressed myself properly here. What I'm trying to say is I hate having the label of "boyfriend/girlfriend" applied to me and whoever I'm with. So I spoke to this guy a couple of weeks ago and we decided that we should just be friends (oh hello cliche) because we'd sort of drifted apart and there wasn't much point in trying to force a relationship.


Except he and I went out for lunch on Tuesday. Table for two please, oh yes, and we'll have the sharing platter... where you, you know, share a plate. I think it was probably a bit more than just two friends going for a meal. And yesterday, we were meant to meet up with some other friends and all of them bailed so he and I spent the whole day together. He taught me to play pool (I'm crap but that's besides the point). It was so comfortable and relaxed and I think it's because we've taken the label off. There's no pressure, none of this so what are we to each other, and I'm a lot happier. Except I don't have a clue what he's thinking.


In short, there is one very confused Kate Green bumbling around. Help.

What is love?

Maybe this post will be a bit controversial and offend some people, and I'm sure I've blogged about similar things before, but I'm in the mood for getting this all out today and attempting to articulate myself properly.


I have a pen pal from Ohio. He's a year older than me and we've been emailing almost everyday since May this year, so about five months. I'm so pleased we've managed to keep in contact. I love emailing him because we talk about everything from our favourite milkshake flavours, to the meaning of life, to his relationship problems. Today, we got onto the topic of young love. This is something that really gets me going. I think I'm pretty cynical about love in general, especially teen love, so I was able to fire back a response to him in about a minute.


Part of what I said was:

"I think people in their teens are trying to find themselves and it's a good time to be on your own so you can work things out. You don't want to be tied down to one person. I'm not saying go off and be really promiscuous and launch yourself at every guy you see, but being young is about meeting new people and figuring out what it is you like, what it is you want from a future partner. And if, in your teens, you do find someone you want to spend a lot of time with, I bet it's not love. Yeah, it's probably really strong feelings and you think it's love because that's the most powerful feeling you've known. But I think you have to be in love twice to know what it is, so you can compare, you know?"


Then I was like, oh perhaps this could be good blogging material. Except I already said everything in that one paragraph. I've never been in love, I can tell you that now. There's a scientific study conducted by actual scientists (would you believe it?) which stated that a crush only lasts for four months, and if the feelings continue past that time period, it's love. Complete and utter rubbish. I had a huge crush on the same guy from when I was ten to fourteen years old. Forget four months, what about four years? No ten year old is in love. I liked him a lot but I was never naive enough to think it was love. Am I coming across as cynical enough yet?


I think the strongest feelings I've ever had for someone were for a guy I met online and later met up with in person earlier this year. Feel free to read the whole tale here. Like I stated in that post, I was definitely not in love. I'm not a huge fan of teen relationships and have never been in one but I've (dare I say it?) dated guys for a while. Everything I felt for those guys was eclipsed by what I felt for the internet guy, and everything I've ever felt for anyone since him has been overshadowed by my crush on him. I know, I know, it's not healthy. I was scared that nothing and no one would ever match up to him for the rest of my life.


Then I told myself to get a grip and get over myself. Yes, by the time you're sixteen, there's an 80% chance you'll have met the person you marry, but I read something really great once. Really truthful too, I think. It was something along the lines of "the person you end up marrying isn't your soul mate and it isn't because you're in love; it's whoever you happen to be with when you're thirty years old".


Why am I worrying about marriage at the age of seventeen? I don't know, but I hope true love is a real thing because I want it. Don't most people? I'm certain that I don't want to find it now though, because I don't even know who I am right now, let alone knowing what I want from someone else. Maybe that's a cliche, something that everyone says, but maybe that's because it's true. Right now, love is a bit of an elusive concept to me, a bit of a mystery, but it's also something that seems entirely desirable.

40 Days of Dating: Review

I found out about 40 Days of Dating today. Click the link to read more about it. Perhaps I'm a bit behind on the times because it's been around for a few months, but better late than never, hey? I gather the last four days of the tale have only been released recently anyway so maybe I'm not that late. Anyway, I sat down for three hours today and read the whole website. I was glued to my laptop, totally enthralled. So I wanted to write down my thoughts about it, and I suppose it will turn into a review of sorts.


Two friends named Jessica and Timothy live in New York City and have been friends for four years. There's always been an attraction between them but they've basically put each other in the friend zone and have never really been single at the same time - until earlier this year. Jessie tends to fall in love quickly and demand too much too soon from a relationship, while Tim is a bit of a commitment-phobe and dates around a lot. They wonder if, just by spending every day for forty days with one person, you can start to feel romantically attached to them. So they decide to put this theory to the test with each other.


They come up with a set of rules: they have to see each other every day, they'll see a therapist every week, they'll document the whole thing for their blog, they'll go on three dates a week, they'll go on a weekend trip together, and they won't be romantically involved with anyone else for the forty days. I'll say it now: for me, their seeing a couples' therapist every week ruined it. What normal couple sees a therapist right from the word go? I'm pretty sure it's because Jessie has her own private therapist and Tim has had one before that they felt it necessary to have every thought and move of theirs analysed by a "specialist". And I got the impression it tore them apart. Whatever, anyone reading their website could have told them what their therapist did. Anyway, I digress.


Right from the beginning, I can't say I warmed to either of them. I thought Tim was, essentially, a bit of a dick, really bossy, and pushed Jessie into a lot of things she wasn't necessarily keen on. I thought Jessie was obsessive, jumped to ridiculous conclusions, and - I'll say it - weak. But I loved the project and the whole idea they'd come up with so I kept reading. For three hours. It takes a lot of time to read both Jessie's and Tim's account of each of the forty days and watch all the videos, but I'd say it's definitely worth it.


Their affair begins as you would expect - they're just two friends spending a lot of time together. After a week, they actually begin to see each other in a more romantic way, both admitting their feelings for the other. Is this because they actually like each other, or is it because of how much they've been seeing each other? I'm inclined to go with the latter but feel free to make up your own mind. About two weeks in, Jessie's already-frequent headaches take a turn for the worse and it negatively impacts on her relationship with Timothy. Don't worry, they get things back on track (or there would be no website dedicated specially to their affair) and start acting like a real couple.


I loved that stage of the project but, just like any chick flick film, you know the seemingly perfect period can't last forever and something bad is coming. And, well, they don't end up together. I would like to say it's a shame, but you know what, Jessie can do so much better. Although it wasn't her decision to end their relationship, things turned out best for her. She's only twenty six; she still has plenty of time to find someone and settle down and, while I resent people who jump too quickly into relationships, I resent thirty two year old men unable to commit to a relationship even more - Tim. If he couldn't make it work with Jessie, and hasn't made it work with any of his previous girlfriends (he's dated 64 or 65 women, I think) then I don't really think he has much of a shot. Maybe I'm being harsh, but I really didn't like the way he came across.


Let me know if you've heard of it, or read it, or are reading it now. I'd love to hear your views and what you thought of Jessie and Tim. Happy reading!

Relationships

I know next to nothing about relationships, having never been in one. I help out at a Brownie pack where I go by the name of Ladybird because all leaders "must" have a woodland creature name. I'm not sure a ladybird qualifies as a woodland creature but anyway, I digress. One of the girls, aged seven, said to me "Ladybird, do you have a boyfriend?" and I said "no, Amelia, I do not". She looked a little bit surprised. "But how old are you?!" she asked. "Seventeen" I told her. And then said said "what?! You're seventeen and you don't have a boyfriend? You should do by this age". And then she ran off to play British Bulldog with the other Brownies. I was left standing there like, oh my god, what has this seven year old just said? I was kind of shocked.


Shocked mainly by the fact that someone who's only been at school for two years already has this preconception that by seventeen, you should be in a relationship. Where do young children get this idea from? I suppose it's mainly television programmes which create the impression that all teenagers have a boyfriend and it's abnormal not to. It was her use of the word "should" that surprised me. Why "should" I have to be in a relationship? I think it's a little worrying that such young girls already have this idea in their heads. Are they going to be under pressure to get a boyfriend, just because it's what's expected from them?


I've never really felt pressurised into being in a relationship. I have seven, what I would call, close friends. Only one is in a serious relationship and has been with his girlfriend for nine months, and another is with a guy, but it's only really casual. Is this representative for every teenager in Britain, that only one in seven is in a serious relationship? Because when I think about it, hardly anyone I know has something serious going on. This brings me to another point. What's the use of being in a relationship if it's only casual? To quote from my favourite book Adorkable by Sarra Manning, "whether it's football or A-level Physics or dating, what's the point of doing anything if you're going to do it in a half-arsed way?" If you're going to be totally committed to someone, then great. If not, why are you wasting your time? 


One of my closest friends is currently "seeing" a guy. He's a total commitment-phobe and hates the idea of being labelled as someone's boyfriend. He's slept with a lot of girls and likes to play around and - here's the kicker - wants to keep it that way. This friend of mine is fairly traditional in her values with regards to relationships. She wants to be official and totally exclusive but he's having none of it. They're actually out right now as I type this, and she's asking him if she can call him her boyfriend even if he won't say she's his girlfriend. It's all a bit ridiculous but I think she wants the label to make herself feel better about it. But having the label doesn't really change the dynamic of your relationship. It doesn't make it any more serious if it's not what both of you want. I kind of want to tell her to just leave it, stop wasting her time.


A different friend of mine said "all relationships now start and end because of uni". Never has a truer word been spoken. Perhaps this can't be applied to every school, but it can definitely be applied to ours. Our sixth form is just an extension of the lower school and I've known 97% of the people there for six years now, therefore it's highly unlikely I'll suddenly be madly attracted to anyone. Any relationships that begin now are likely started with the thought "oh, we have uni next year, better get together while we still can". People then think it will last forever but inevitably, a few months into being at different universities, they'll be like "well, being a hundred miles apart isn't working" and end it. I'm not trying to slate or devalue anyone's relationship but I just don't see anything starting at this age working in the long run.


Two friends of mine have now been together for over three years. They were thirteen when they got together and are now seventeen. A lot of people say they don't know how they're not bored of each other and I'm kind of inclined to agree. Of course this isn't to say there should be a cap on how long you can stay with someone at a certain age, but maybe it's not healthy to spend that much time around someone while you're still so young. Again, I'm not criticising anything, these are just my thoughts. I'd like to reiterate that I'm a total relationship virgin and these are just discussions I've had and observations I'd made. Please feel free to add your own thoughts in the comments, particularly if you disagree with something in here! I'd love to hear other people's views.


Song of the day:

Lovers - The Good Natured
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oapf04VUcZ8

(This has been on repeat for nearly the whole day and it's very fitting for this topic, so enjoy!)

Pressurepressurepressure

I feel like there's so much pressure on teenagers these days. Haha, I sound like an old person. I don't know, maybe it's always been like this but I'm only noticing it now that I'm in the middle of my teenage years. There's pressure to perform well at school, pressure to not let yourself get obese (but I don't think the media has anything to do with that), and heeeeeell, there's even pressure to get in a serious relationship. Like, people always ask about my 'past relationships' and I'm like "well, my longest one lasted a week, sooo.." I'm not afraid of commitment or anything but I just think it's not worth getting serious unless you can see it lasting for ages. Uh oh, I sense this post is leading somewhere completely different.


There's pressure to have sex, pressure to dress provocatively, and there's actually pressure to get your first kiss. I'm not going to lie, I got mine, what would be considered by some people as, 'quite late' and people are like "what, you haven't got off with anyone yet? Are you, like, frigid?" dadsdkjsgljklhsfhs it just annoys me a bit! And what also irks me is the perception of youth today. I was doing some charity work a little while ago and I heard this horrible woman say "well it's good to see you young people actually doing something good for once". I wanted to slap her. You only see the bad stuff in the press like "TEENAGERS SMASH SHOP WINDOWS. EVERY TEENAGER IS SCUM". You never ever see "Lovely teenagers do charity work and raise thousands of pounds". Sorry, this is totes irrelevant.


All I was trying to say with this post is a lot is expected of people like me and it's not too fun. Also, I'll just put it out there: people have got it so wrong when they say anorexic or bulimic girls are influenced by images of skinny people in the media. Not one person I know feels like this. I reckon it's just a good "reason" for lots of girls becoming skinnier and that they need something to pin it on. Again, totally unrelated, I'm sorry! Lol, I just read this back - it makes practically no sense at all so I apologise!