The Downsides to Relationships

Relationships are great, most of us know. Being in love is a great thing, but sometimes it can take over you. You start prioritising your partner over your friends and/or family, and you might not even realise it.

I've done my fair share of being with my boyfriend more than my friends, and I’m trying to balance that as much as I can. I hangout with my boyfriend for an hour during a day and in the evening, and I don’t do this every day so that I can hangout with my friends.

I still go to my salsa society, eat out at restaurants, and just generally hangout with friends as it was very important to me.

But seeing other friends going into relationships, I’ve noticed how some of them started to distance from our group of friends. An example was when a friend of mine who goes to my salsa class brought a girl he was dating, but didn’t even come to say hello to our group. I noticed it straight away. I wasn't jealous or anything, I was just annoyed that he would just be with her and not hangout with our group. I wasn’t like he couldn't bring her over and introduce her, that would have been great. Although I can let this friend slide as he’s only been dating this girl for a month.

However, for a friend that has been in a relationship for nearly six months. He has begun to drift off and has a hard time to make plans with our group of friends, which has become really annoying. I’ve heard from other friends that he hasn’t been acting the same, which sounds really odd. I feel that you should never neglect your friends as friendships in most cases last longer than relationships.

Relationships aren’t perfect, I’ve had a lot of downsides to my relationships and personal struggles. They are easy to start in the beginning, but very hard to maintain, because liking someone is simple and doesn’t take that long to do (only if you are trying to convince someone to like you or playing hard to get), but maintaining a relationships takes a lot of patience.

I’ve had a lot of struggles of being in a relationship, letting my jealousy get the best of me and wanting to have my boyfriend all to myself. I’ve also had a hard time getting along with my boyfriend's friends, not that I don’t like them but I don’t seem to fit in. My current relationship is the first time I’ve hung out with his friends multiple times. I’m still in the mindset that I don’t feel that I fit within his friendship group, even though he has told me that they like me. I’m my biggest critic, I always try to do my best, and to try and be liked by people I’m around.

I think the best thing for any relationship is to be able to balance everything, with your bf/gf, with your friends and your family. You don’t have to worry about what your bf is doing if you are busy having fun with other people. You don’t need to worry if you have trust in your significant other. That is one of the many things you need to have a healthy relationship.

The last thing I would like to say is that the balance can also be associated with how much you share about your relationship. At the beginning of starting to date guys, I loved the idea of sharing my moments to the world. But I also don’t recommend keeping your relationship a secret to others only if needed.