Letting go, moving forward

I haven't been posting much due to the stress of exam finals and watching my relationship crumble. Now I seem to have grounded myself so hopefully I can get back into the whole blogging thing.

After all my confusion, as can be seen in previous posts about my girlfriend, I finally decided to break up with her. I've had horrible breakups in the past that took me months to recover, but thankfully I seem to have grown enough to avoid the pain that I thought had to come necessarily after two people go their own ways.

I feel a new sense of freedom in my life, and am excited for the opportunity to explore new areas. I've experienced sadness as well, but my main feeling seems to be one of freedom. For this I am grateful. I choose to enjoy this new phase in my life and the learn whatever I can from my previous relationship. I will not get overly dramatic about it - we were together about 9-10 months - but for me this has been my longest and healthiest relationships. All my other ones were in my pre-rehab days , which were not particularly healthy to say the least.

I do feel an urge to jump into another relationship immediately, especially being at a big university where there is no shortage of potential partners. I hope that I let myself process the experience and allow myself time to get over the loss instead of jumping into another relationship before I am ready, but who knows when the right time will be. Relationships can be such an incredible learning experience - but they are far from being easy.

I love the feeling of entering a new phase in life. I'm in summer classes now so my schedule is different, and I can't wait to see what awaits me! Life is always changing so I choose to appreciate the novelty of new experiences instead of dwelling on how things were before. Things just get boring after awhile when they are always the same. I choose to be open to whatever this summer time has in store and to grow from the experiences that are to come.

I hope to stay more in touch with this wonderful blog community, now that I have more free time. And thank you all for the advice that you gave regarding my relationship, it is much appreciated.

Love Love Love

I really am cynical when it comes to the idea of love that most people have. I don't claim to know exactly what love is, but one thing I do know is that most people who do think they know what it is have a very distorted view.

This brings me back to my relationship issue with my girlfriend who once again was upset because I have trouble with the word "love" and prefer waiting until I am not so confused about what it means before saying it. I understand why someone would want to hear it, but I've explained ad nauseum why it is difficult for me and yet the same issue keeps coming up over and over again.

Here is the conclusion that I have come to:

After repeating many times that I do care about her and that it is the definition of love itself that confuses me, she continues to see it as me being directly confused about how I feel about her. I am sorry that she feels this way, but I told her that if she is going to keep get upset over something even though I explain that she is mistaken, there is nothing else I can do and it is up to her to change the way she is looking at things. She has the right to be upset if she wants to, but I will no longer hold myself responsible at all for her feelings. If I hold myself responsible for own, I will not put pressure on myself to deal with other people's feelings as well.

I don't want to go through another repetitive discussion like this. It is draining, leaves me with a headache, and doesn't get anywhere. I'm going to try to keep pressing the issue until we come to some sort or resolution or she decides that she can't accept the situation as it is. I don't want to continue with a partner who is constantly suppressing unhappiness about an issue like this, only to have it brought up every once in awhile and have the same unpleasant discussion every time. Obviously issues arise, but if this is something that won't go away then something must be done.

I choose to be responsible for my own feelings. I choose to come to some sort of resolution to this situation.

What is love?

I'm pretty confused about what it means to love somebody. I've recently been having discussions with my girlfriend because of me being hesitant to use the word "love" to describe how I feel about her. I really do care about her and and am happy in my relationship, but I think I'm being cautious because of my past experiences and my previously distorted beliefs about what love is.

My past relationships were dependence and neediness. I was unhappy with my life and they filled the void that I couldn't fill myself. Especially my last one was more of an addiction than a loving relationship, and getting out of it was probably one of the most painful experiences of my life. This is why I'm hesitant to describe anything as love, I don't want to misuse the word like I used to.

A lot of what I have read described romantic love as a temporary "high" that wears off and later leaves room for the possibility of true love once reality sets in and you are grounded again. This is an idea that I lean toward now, but I'm not sure if this satisfies me. I like the spiritual teachings of there only being one real love that is unconditional and is not only for our intimate relationships. It is the love of God, or the universe, or whatever you want to call it, which we can access when overcoming all the fear that obscures it from our awareness. It is always there, only waiting to be uncovered. This takes away the idea of either being in or out of love with somebody, allowing us to sometimes be acting out of a place of love while other times it remains more covered up. This makes love a process of growth, where we can continue to become more loving beings without it having to be an all or nothing concept.

I just don't want my past experiences to make me cynical about what love is. I'm trying to be true to myself without letting fear decide what I feel.

If anybody else has something to share on this it is more than welcome.