Bad habits die hard. It’s something we are all aware of. Life gives us situations that leave us often bruised and broken. Once we heal, we only take with us the scars to remind us of what had once happened. So your relationship ended, and you were hurt. Now there’s an incredible person in front of you and you want to make sure it stays exactly where it is. In a way, savior it before it even begins to need saving. So what do you do? Or better yet, what do you not do?
1. Compare Relationships
No two relationships will ever be the same. We can’t compare different beginnings. Fitzgerald once said “there are all kinds of love in this world but never the same love twice.” We can’t chase the past in something new, so avoid it before even allowing it to even begin.
2. Bring Your Ex Along For the Ride
Everyone who comes into our lives remains as a part of us in one way or another. When we’re moving on, the past needs to stay in the past. Often, we talk about our exes. We don’t mean to..he/she is just kind of all we know. Talking about our exes keeps us from getting to know anything or anyone else. So keep your ex in the past.
3. Fast-forward to the Middle
New relationships are exciting. On the brink of something special, you can’t help but want the full dosage right then and there. “I want it all.” You look to run to the finish line. Too much, too soon is chaos. Saying I love you after your first date or wanting the future before the presence has even found its shoes becomes a lethal injection to the healthy beginning. Embrace it as it comes even if time isn’t our friend. There’s a magic to allowing things play out how they are supposed to. That magic is fate.
4. Getting too Comfortable
New relationships are like babies. They take time to develop. It takes time to trust, and let someone in. It takes time to get to know someone. Assuming your partner is okay with your single mentality can easily become walking on thin air. Be kind and treat your relationship like it’s new.
5. The Crazy Stage Four Clinger
Nobody wants to date someone who takes out their personal issues on them. Often we fail to recognize relationships as relationships. Trust that you put yourself into something that doesn’t require you to stalk, snoop, creep, and cling. Relationships aren’t defined by having your hips attached. Its existing independently and co-dependently.
6. Side Chicks
You’re in a relationship now. With that comes the responsibility of being an adult. There is no longer the need for the people you toy with when struggling to move on because you have. You don’t move forward with your side chicks, you move on with one person.
7. It’s Always on Me, Just Because
I think this happens often and I want to say it’s completely accidental. Maybe unconsciously we believe it’ll make the person like us more, crave us more, want us more. In the end, all it really becomes is a buyout. Affection cannot be bought. New relationships do not require you to empty out your pockets. You don’t have to go beyond your means to impress someone. You want them to fall for you, not who you pretend to be.
8. My Ex and I are Still Dating on Instagram and Facebook
Deleting the past from public display is one of the hardest tasks when moving on. We have the tendency to air out all of our good laundry on social media. If you want to see couples in love, go on any Instagram page of someone in a relationship. We display nothing but the good. We set up images for the world to know just how they should see us. You don’t remember the bad here. When you move on, you can’t keep those things around anymore. Someone else is in the picture.
9. Blame Your New Partner for Your Ex’s Mistakes
We’ve all been hurt at some point in our lives. Trails of anger leap within our veins when we remember the wrongs done our way. It hurts. When moving on, there can’t be room for blame anymore. It’s important to remember who you have standing in front of you. It’s important to recognize that it’s not your past in front of you but something, someone new. Don’t hate your partner for something he/she didn’t do.
10. Games
Relationships are not games. While it’s new and in the midst of becoming a relationship, brief moments exist where you forget, you are now in the real deal. Playing games are for amateurs. I was once told the only thing we have control over in this life is the amount of hurt we pass to another. Games hurt.
11. Shh, Don’t Tell Anyone
Maybe someone will think it’s too soon. Maybe you’re moving on with someone you’re not certain your friends approve of. It’s not up to them. You’re moving on and you’re not doing it for anyone else but yourself. Your life and who you choose to share it with should never be a secret. Good things never come from keeping hidden the things that matter most. No one wants to be someone’s secret.
12. Flaunting Your Relationship
There’s a difference between making everyone aware that you’ve moved on and literally shoving it into everyone’s faces. When your entire life becomes nothing but your new relationship, its questionable. Intimacy is a private affair.
13. My Walls of Great China
We are people who love to live within ourselves. Our minds and hearts, they belong to us. We don’t want to give too much too soon. Honestly, sometimes we don’t want to give anything but a façade. Honesty and communication is the key to anything successful. You feel something, say it. You never know the difference it’ll make. Your walls are meant for breaking, so let someone have the chance to do so.
14. I’ll Be Anyone You Want Me To Be
Relationships can never be forced. Attempting to change yourself is forcing something to exist that isn’t there. You’re moving on as you, whoever that may be. Don’t do things you don’t like just because the person you’re dating likes that. Be you and who you are. At the end of the day, you have to be conscious of yourself, no one else.
15. Giving Fear the Wheel
Relationships are risks, especially new ones. You’re allowing someone to become a part of your everyday. It’s no longer just you. Relationships are scary. Commitment is scary. Both are risks. Risks you must be willing to take when getting to know someone. You will never know someone one hundred percent. We’re always changing. A relationship is a commitment to try and accept those changes everyday regardless of what they may be. Fear of that makes us all sometimes run. Don’t.
Featured photo credit: Couple Hugging/Paulina Clemente via flickr.com
