I have only had one relationship, and I'm proud to say it went well. In short, my friend became my girlfriend, and then became a really good friend. It was beautiful while it lasted, but eventually my insight became reality and we were separated by distant colleges, and the fact that neither of us were really ready for something serious. Considering our lack of experience, and in comparison to the relationships of my peers, things worked out. Knowing what I know now, after my recent self-realization, I can look back and see exactly how I could have proceeded differently and increased our bond ten-fold.
It doesn't change the past, but now I know that I'm mature enough to entertain a serious relationship if one should appear.
I feel the need to brain dump, so here's a glance (if a bit blurry) at the whole thing through my eyes, that chilly November evening...:
Someone who I'd known fairly well for seven and a half years, seemingly unprovoked from my side, sent me a text message late at night after we'd been playing video games at my youth pastor's house. Essentially it said,
"Halo is fun- Especially blowing people up with rockets! You're really good at it, a lot better than me. Maybe we could play at your house sometime, and get to know each other better... " I was falling asleep when I got the message, but I woke up as if someone had both dumped ice water on my face and lit my chest on fire. Only weeks previously I had resigned myself to having relationships only once in college (I saw little point in starting something that would likely end when each party went to a different university). Now, I faced the daunting prospect of redefining my life or rejecting and possibly hurting a friend. So I went to bed.
The next morning (at zero dark-thirty) I tried not to think of the message; I had to keep my mind clear, for that day I was competing at an NJROTC drill meet. After my events (which I had won!), I had long hours of solitude before the bus ride back home. I pondered my position, playing each option out in my mind. Eventually, I asked my best friend/soul brother (an ENFJ, if you were curious) for some advice, and he told me that clarity was of utmost importance in my reply- that I had to make it clear to her that I was either in or out of the relationship.
On my way home, I realized that I could see the relationship actually going somewhere. Within my heart was an insatiable desire to get to know her better. I thought of her and noticed all of the little things to which I was attracted. So I composed a smoldering poem of love on my cell phone and bounced it off of a tower into her hand.
In hindsight, I realize that I probably caused her a lot of stress while I took my time to reply. Thankfully, it was never an issue.
Soon we were exchanging a flurry of words that in the next week, likely exceeded the entire number of messages I had on my phone previously. Intellectually, we had opened the floodgates. Physically, however, we were like a glacier carving mountains.
I believe that this was the main problem: Our emotional and mental relationship was growing at a blazing rate, much too fast for either of us to overcome our physical barriers in pace. In the first two months, I think we had held hands once- and the hugs were in the single digits until mid-spring. Our vast desire for affection in the physical world, unsated, was painful for both of us. Eventually we reached an emotional high, and when we realized that the physical bond wasn't there, progress began to scale back to the same level. When the time came to leave for college, we both decided to go back to being friends (Albeit good ones. I still skype with her a fair amount.)
Presently, I am much more confident in myself. I will be wary about holding back when my feelings tell me to go- but this must also be reciprocal. Hopefully the relationship will not have gotten that far without both of us being on the same level.
Thank you for reading my little story, and I apologize if it is a bit jumbled. That's just how it translated.
Here's a little about my fem-friend: Before I really got to know her, she was always the expressionless person who I saw sitting in the back of the class (frequently near me) who drew doodles during lessons. She was usually quiet, but when we were with our group of friends playing games like 'Zombies' (a game I made up involving pool noodles, fingerdarts, darkness, and lots of brain munching), she became excited and spontaneous, beating down and consuming humans with a passion. I had her take the MBTI recently and she scored ENFJ. I have a feeling that the result is incorrect because I
never saw her talking comfortably with any number of strangers, and she's not like my strongly ENFJ soul-brother whom I know very well. I don't yet know enough about other types to define her as one. I can only express my suspicion that she saw the test the wrong way.
Wow! That took a long time to write... I suppose pulling certain emotions from my head and writing about them for the first time does that to me. I kinda forgot about dinner!