As I mentioned yesterday in my post, I spent time on Christmas being alone and reflecting on some things. I think reflecting back on the year that was is a pretty common thing to do and I’ve been doing it more and more each year. I think having posts on here regarding goals and monthly challenges has helped me think more about what happened over the past 12 months. And I usually can put things into a single post when reflecting back. But I feel like this year had too much and I wanted to split things up. So over the next few posts, I will be doing reflections of the year that was and goal setting for the year coming up. And I’m starting with the relationships I had this year.
I know many people think of relationships as romantic and dating ones. That wasn’t what came to my mind originally, but it is a part of what happened. And since it is the smaller portion of the relationships I wanted to reflect on, I’m going to start with those.
I continued my crazy journey of online dating this year. I would have loved to have ended this journey during the year, but that wasn’t the case for me. Fortunately, even though I had a ton of bad dates, they were bad dates that were funny. I left so many dates filled with stories to tell my friends about how bad the date was, but I was telling them with a smile on my face. I also learned to be a bit pickier about who I met in person and how to stand up for myself better so I think that the idiots and creeps I encountered online were easier to deal with. I didn’t hesitate to end a conversation that made me second guess things even if it was going fine before that moment. I also set the new rule/restriction that I didn’t give out my phone number until I met someone in person. Somehow that seemed to help me filter out guys I met and I didn’t have to worry about the scammers getting my number.
But while most of the relationships I had with guys this year weren’t bad, there were some situations that hurt me. I felt betrayed by some guys and that’s not easy to get over. I tried to think about how I didn’t do anything wrong and it didn’t really have to do with me, but that’s not the easiest thing to keep in mind. But as the year went on I got better about dealing with it and it is hurting a bit less each time I feel hurt or blindsided. I don’t necessarily want that feeling to go away completely since I do want to still keep my heart open to the possibility of meeting someone amazing. And when your heart is open you are at risk for feeling hurt.
I’m still staying as active as I can with online dating and trying to be more thoughtful about staying active and trying to get beyond messaging on the app and going out for a drink or something with the guys I meet on there. And while that didn’t result in me meeting anyone incredible this past year, I am trying to stay optimistic that doing it again for the coming year will bring better results.
While finding a romantic relationship is important to me, while reflecting back on the year I realized that I had the biggest and best gains in my relationships with my friends. I thought from time to time that I might be a bad friend and I let some friendships drop for one reason or another. But when I thought about it more over the past few days, I discovered that while I might have turned some friends into acquaintances the friendships I kept grew so much stronger.
Building and strengthening friendships can come out of the good times, but I had so much growth out of the more difficult times. When my friend told me he wanted to kill himself and I was able to convince him on the phone to go to a hospital, I had to be ok with the idea that my friend might want to end his friendship with me. I am so grateful that not only did they want to stay friends but I feel like our friendship has grown quite a bit. We have been able to be more open and honest with each other and that is incredible. I was worried about telling my friend things in our friendship that were hard on me, but they listened to me and we were able to fix things and make our friendship even more mutually beneficial than it ever has been.
I’ve had multiple friends go through the end of romantic relationships this year and their breakups weirdly brought us closer. I think when they thought about having to date again, they came to me asking for my advice and stories about online dating. I don’t want to scare anyone off, but I was honest and shared my tips and how I stay safe. And putting that honesty out there helped to make my friendships with those people more honest in other ways too.
But of course, I was also able to build my friendships from fun things that I do in my life too. Even just going to a movie with a friend gives time for us to talk one to one without the distractions of other people trying to get our attention. Having those 15-20 minutes before a movies starts can be better than 3-4 hours at a party where there are so many other people. I’ve been trying to be better about doing fun things with other people instead of just going alone so I have those chances to talk to someone and have a real catching up talk.
I thought this past year was really a year of me being selfish. There were several monthly challenges that were all about me and putting myself first and I thought that meant some of my relationships would not be able to grow. It was such a nice surprise for me when I was reflecting back and realized that I was wrong with that assumption and that I really did have growth with my friends over the past year.
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