Sorry in advance, this is a downer post. But not all life lessons are happy, right?
I went home for the weekend for Halloween, to spend time in Marquette with the boyfriend. If it hasn’t already been made aware, the boyfriend lives in Marquette and I in East Lansing, a good seven hour distance. We’ve been doing the long distance relationship thing for over a year now, and that really impacts who I am and who we are as a couple. Obviously I was a bit tied up, hence the absense in daily posts (I’m already breaking one of my own rules… dammit).
This weekend I learned that I’m becoming too obsessed with our relationship.
For a long time I’ve blamed it on the fact that our’s is a LDR. Mentality: “Well, I get to see him now, but I won’t get to see him in the near future. Better spend as much time as I can with him now, and make the most of it, since I won’t be able to very soon.” But now that the plans are changing to hopefully have him living in Ann Arbor this time next year, I wonder if living with that mindset for so long has permanently affected me.
Normal couples aren’t with each other 24/7 unless they’re married, and this allows them the opportunities for dates and update conversations and the like. Boyfriend and I talk daily, and when we’re together it’s for all hours of the day — running errands, watching movies, going out to eat. And I’ve noticed that after a while, we stop having real dates (it doesn’t feel like a date when you go out to dinner after being with your “date” for eight hours prior to that). And it’s not like I ever get sick of him. In fact, it’s kind of the opposite.
Initially, that sounds like love, and it sounds all happy and perfect. But after a while, I’ve realized, it becomes rather… unhealthy. Whenever time with him gets delayed by the demands of friends or family, I start to freak out a little bit. This past summer, I caught myself neglecting my friends on numerous occassions and it shocked and horrified me. The last thing I want is to be the girl whose world revolves around her boyfriend. Unfortunately, I might already be that girl.
The obvious next step is to somehow become less obsessed. But I haven’t yet learned how to do that…
