A fleeting thought..

Bullshit. Whoever said time heals all has never been hurt. Time does not heal all.

Time does lessen the pain, though.

It has been years and years and years since I lost Jason and guess what? It still hurts. The day he died is still the hardest day of the year for me. Time has lessened the pain and made it more bearable. The first year after his death was absolute hell and on the first anniversary of his death I hid from the world and let self pity take over. And I cried a lot. To be honest, it was like that for the second and third and fourth years too. By the fifth anniversary of his death…I finally got out of the self pity mode. It still hurt like hell, though. On that one and in subsequent ones, I often times was useless on that day. As the years went by the more the pain lessened and the better I was able to manage each anniversary of his death.

Now? Now I can spend most of the day not dwelling on him and what we had and how much it hurt to lose him. Now it’s only in those moments before sleep that I think about him and mourn the life I should have been able to have with him.

Yes. Time does not heal, darlings; not at all. It will hurt until the day you die, but time will make you stronger and lessen the pain.

The effort that you put into a relationship should be the same as the effort your partner puts in. If you're putting in 100% then your partner had damn well better be putting in 100% too. If you are putting more effort into the relationship than your partner is then...

RUN! Get the hell out of that relationship because there is likely something wrong and it just ain't going to work.

Unless, of course, you like being treated like crap and constantly wondering if your partner wants to be with you. Then that would be a great relationship for you, I guess.

This is what I've learned thus far:

1. You shouldn't have to be the one who always makes plans to see your partner. If your partner wants to be with you they will have no problems calling you up and saying 'hey, let's do this'.

2. You shouldn't have to be the one who is always going over to the other person's home. It should be you visit them, they visit you, you visit them, they visit you, etc. Unless one of you likes being the one to always visit the other.

3. You shouldn't have to be the one who is always calling them or texting them or whatever. If your partner really wants to be with you and knows the value of communication, they will do their fair share of calling you up or texting you or whatever.

4. If you are always doing your best to make time to see them or at the very least talk to them, you have every right to expect your partner to do the same thing. I don't care how busy you and your partner are, you make time to see or talk to each other. If your partner doesn't do that, they probably don't care if they are with you or not.

I think all of the above is very reasonable. I know some may disagree with me, but that's the way I see things.

It takes two to make a relationship work.

Okay, this is where my paranoia tends to run rampant.

A couple of months ago I had the privilege of talking to some random guy I didn’t know. I say it was a privilege because he had this attitude that it was a privilege to be talking to him. He was a arrogant SOB to be honest. BUT. Once you got past that he was actually a very interesting person to talk to. He had a lot of interesting thoughts on various topics and it really did make for great conversation. I enjoyed that conversation with him more than I’ve enjoyed any other conversation in a while.

The conversation was normal for the most part too. Well, until the end when he started hitting on me and tried to kiss me. And then I had to say ‘whoa dude, back the hell off’ because I was just not interested in him that way. I didn’t like the arrogance he displayed and more importantly, something just seemed off about him. Well, sure as shit something was off about him. It came to light after the fact, that he had a girlfriend. What the hell guy. It pisses me off that he never even mentioned he had a girlfriend (in fact he did say he was single) and it really pisses me off that he was trying to hit on me when he should not have been. Don’t you care about your girlfriend? I don’t even know her and it seems like I care about her more than you do. Ugh.

This is not the first time I’ve had unavailable guys hit on me. And usually I just give them a piece of my mind and move on. This time, for some reason, just really got to me. I can’t figure out why either. Maybe he was the straw that finally broke the camel’s back. Maybe I’ve just gotten so fed up with unavailable guys hitting on me and thinking I’ll go there with them that I’ve just gone all paranoid.

By paranoid I’m talking about how now whenever I start talking to guy I don’t already know I’m constantly asking them throughout the conversation if they are single. Are you sure you’re single? Really, really sure? You’re probably lying. Hello Jamie. Neurotic much? Good lord. And that’s just when I’m talking to the poor guy with no other intentions whatsoever.

It really shouldn’t matter if a guy is single or not when you are having a perfectly innocent, normal conversation with him. But, let’s face it, it does matter. People can get so bent out of shape when you are talking to an unavailable person. Omg, he’s taken you shouldn’t even say hi to him let alone talk to him! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had people look at me all weird because I dared talked to someone. Just because I talk to the guy doesn’t mean I want to jump into bed with him. Get that straight you fucking idiots. Get over yourselves, you do the same damn thing. And yes, I’ve really already worked through my issues on this and have stopped caring about what other people think. Really, I have. I promise.

Or maybe I haven’t completely worked through my issues on that topic. I think part of the reason why I’m now so paranoid about talking to a guy that is already taken is because I do know what other people are thinking. Yeah, okay. So, I haven’t completely stopped caring about what other people think. I really need to work on that. But, the biggest reason is I’ve had so many guys lie about their status lately and then try to hit on me that it’s hard not to be paranoid about it all. Every new guy I’ve talked to since, I’ve kind of looked at him all side-eyed, wondering if he’s genuine or if he’s a slimy bastard trying to get something on the side. Surely, I won’t mind if I don’t know, right? Meh. YES I DO MIND. STOP IT ALREADY.

And, once again, that paranoia occurs when I’m just talking to someone. Can you imagine what my thoughts are going to be when I’m trying to find someone to date? I can imagine. Clearly, I’m really hung up on the dating topic lately. That’s just because I am trying to make up my mind about whether or not I should jump back into the dating scene or not. My indecisiveness needs to stop. I know this. And I know I tend to over think things way too much.

I’ll figure it out eventually. More on the actual topic of dating and my indecisiveness to come later.

I don’t always get people who have online romantic relationships with people they’ve never met. It’s the people who fall in love with someone online and have a relationship with this person for years without ever meeting the person that I don’t get. Why haven’t they met yet?

In this day and age with webcams and the like, you should be able to ask the person you’re dating online to prove they are who they really say they are and they should be willing to prove it. When you watch a show like Catfish you realize just how many people are out there that are in an online relationship and they don’t truly know if the person is who they say they are. These people have to be so trusting and naive to date someone who has excuse after excuse as to why they can’t meet them or someone who won’t prove who they are on webcam. I really don’t get how someone can be that trusting. If I was dating someone online I would want to meet them and if the person kept coming up with excuses as to why they couldn’t meet me, I’d be like bye-bye.

I really don’t understand how someone can fall completely in love with a person they’ve never met either. I know that it does happen to people and I’m not saying it can’t. I just don’t understand how it happens. Maybe it is one of those things that would have to happen to you before you understand it??

My relationship with Willie, 80% of it was online. It had to be seeing as he lived halfway across the country. We had met on a dating site. After talking to him for a while I did think to myself I like this guy and I’d like to meet him. I did meet him and hung out with him before I decided to date him and it was sometime after that when I fell in love with him. I sometimes wonder if I would have still fallen in love with him if I hadn’t met him when I did. Hmm.

I will say that I do know the one good thing about online relationships is that you learn so much about the person because all you can do is talk.

So, any of you been in an online relationship with someone? If so, how did it come about and how did it go for you? What are your thoughts on this? I’m curious.

There is a phrase I’ve heard a lot about cheating and I’m sure some of you have heard it or something similar before too. The phrase (as I phrase it, ha):

If someone accuses you of cheating on them (for no reason) it’s probably because they are feeling guilty about cheating on you.

I’ve heard that or something similar to it so many times that it almost seems cliché and that it couldn’t possibly be true. Sadly, though, in my experience it’s as true as true can be. Every guy that has cheated on me had at one point accused me of cheating on them. That’s just crazy.

I was talking about this with a friend yesterday and she asked me what I would do if a future boyfriend ever accused me of cheating on him. If someone accused me of cheating on him I would have to end the relationship. Past experiences have dictated how I would react to something like that in the future. I don’t think I could ignore that in the past when I’ve been accused of cheating on someone it’s been because they’ve cheated on me. I can’t forget that. And while I’m more than willing to trust someone now, I’m not willing to put myself in such a situation again.

Now, I do know that someone could think I was cheating on them and not be cheating on me. In that case, the person has a lack of trust in me. That would really piss me off. I am trustworthy. I am honest. I do not believe in cheating on someone. I would never do that. And if someone actually, truly thought I was, that would hurt me. I wouldn’t want to be with someone who couldn’t trust me either. I deserve to be with someone who I can trust and who is willing to trust me. If I can trust you then dammit, you had damn well better trust me. ;)

So, long story short. If someone accused me of cheating on them it would be the end of the relationship. No matter the circumstances, it would never be true.

Actions speak louder than words.

There was once a time when I did not believe that. Words used to always mean more to me than actions did. I think that was because writing is a huge part of my life and thus words are a huge part of my life. I placed more value on words because of that. But, I learned my lesson the hard way.

I dated a guy who knew all the right words to say. He was good. When it came to following through on what he said - well, there was no follow through. He couldn't show that he wanted to be with me. In fact, all his actions just showed me that he didn't really care if he was with me or not. The relationship didn't last long, thankfully. I spent many days during it, though; banging my head against a wall in frustration. It hurt to be dating a guy who acted like he didn't want to be with me.

I realized then that while words are nice and needed, there also has to be actions to back up those words. Now I'm a huge believer in actions speak louder than words. A person can say sorry a thousand times and 'I love you' all they want, but if they're not going to prove that the things they say are true, then they're not worth listening to.

If the person you are in any sort of relationship with treats you like crap, it doesn't matter what they say. They can promise they'll change all they want, but if they don't prove it through their actions, don't believe anything they say. They will just continue to treat you like crap and unless you like being treated like crap, get the hell out. Their words mean crap.

Live by what I live by: If someone wants to be with me they will show me. If they can't or don't want to prove it with their actions, then I don't need to be with them.