Road Less Travelled

As Robert Frost says:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 

We are filled with decisions every day of our life, some small decisions (like what to eat for breakfast), and some big decisions (like what career pathway we should take).

Being the second child in the family, I'm not sure if it's a good thing or bad thing.
Actually, I think it's neither. It's what you make out of it.

What I mean when I say about whether it being a good or bad thing is how it affects my ability to make decisions between different paths I want to take in life, my ability to take risks.

I have an older brother who paves a way for me to walk on. I could follow him and everything would be (quite) foreseeable and smooth. Or I could risk it and take 'the one less traveled', the unknown.

Boys are Boys

I think I finally understand the reason why my mum has always told me not to date anyone until I'm old enough.
Boys are boys, confused and stupid.

Stupid in a way that hurts us girls instead of themselves.
They just don't know what they want, what they need and how to go around finding out the answer.
In their confusion they just end up playing with us.
They flirt intensely with you, you think they like you, you think they want something out of it.

But it turns out they don't know what they want from you. So it just stays in that awkward stage of uncertainty resulting in an emotional mess.

Vika IV

by *YuliaSpesivtseva

I'm starting to really respect guys who just know what they want. Who would just tell a girl he likes her and wants her to be his girlfriend. Just straight up. Instead of playing around, flirting, then doing nothing. A boy did that to me once (told me straight up), I got angry that he did it. But I shouldn't have been angry. I was angry at the fact that I gave him no signs at all that I liked him back and he just went forth to tell the whole world he liked me, ruining our 'friendship'. But now I respect him for that. Unlike some other guys, at least he was honest and forthcoming.

Why is it that the guy I don't like is the honest one and the guy I do like isn't. It just can't work out perfectly can it. It's the issue of timing. Obviously this guy I like is not the destined one.

He's confused, he's young, he's flirty.
All that thinking, I thought he wanted me. His signs, confused signs from a confused boy.    

Expectations & Betrayal

The thought finally entered my head. The point of 'dating' is not to make it impossible to fall apart. It's a trial, to see if two people really are meant to be together forever. Otherwise why don't people just get married once they have feelings for each other.

unempty

by ~wendy-in-neverland

By going through the 'dating' stage you find out if two people are really meant for each other. If things don't work out, they can go off on their own ways and continue on the search for someone that truly is compatible with them. If things don't work out, it shouldn't be a sad thing. The sad thing is when you are betrayed. As Shontelle sings:

Falling out of love is hard
Falling for betrayal is worst
Broken trust and broken hearts

That's why you should think before you fall. I'm starting to overcome my fear of falling after realising this. The mindset to be in at the beginning of a relationship is not to be 100% sure it will work out but be able see a high possibility that it will work out but still know that there is that small percentage that it won't. When you don't expect it to fall apart, that's when it really hurts. So to expect it acts as a safeguard.

Here's where I disagree with some people's opinions. They believe that 'dating' will allow them to find themselves, that's why they encourage dating a lot of people. B*tch please, find yourself on your own, don't use other people's emotions to find yourself.

In Shontelle's song Impossible the reason it hurts so much for her is because she thought it was impossible, she didn't expect it.

I started analysing this by applying it to the tragic love stories I've witnessed, that has given me this phobia of being in a committed relationship.

Cousin 1 who lost her boyfriend because he listened too much to his parents. They were about to get married but his parents didn't like her. He split up with her and within months he was getting married to a girl introduced to him by his parents. Betrayed that's why it hurts. It wasn't predictable that the loyalty to his parents would come off as a negative thing, but the true cause behind this tragic split was not his loyalty to his parents, but his merciless trait to be able to split up with a girl like that. An ending like this couldn't be foreseeable by anyone. Nothing could have prevented this, unless there were signs she, herself, should have been able to see in him which I highly doubt. When a boy loves a girl to the point of wanting to marry her, it's impossible to see that he is capable of unloving her so mercilessly. That's why we should take caution when it comes to love. On the optimistic side, she was lucky to have split up with him sooner than later, the pain would be even worse if they had married and she found out about his horrid side then.

Cousin 2 who lost her boyfriend because he fell out of love with her. She still loved him when he unloved her. What probably hurt her was that she didn't expect him to unlove her when he intensely pursued her in the beginning. Then there's the betrayal, the fact that now that he 'has' her, she gives him her love and he suddenly doesn't want it anymore, but also the fact that she gave him her precious youth and he threw it away. Seven years. Seven years of a girl's youth. Gone. He obviously didn't understand the preciousness of that. Chinese girls aren't like Western girls, their value plummets to nothing when they hit 30. He should have made up his mind whether they were compatible in the first few years. Try not to not be yourself when in a relationship because there is only so long that you can not be yourself. I guess seven years was the time for him to finally realise he either doesn't like the fake him or the real her. Always saying yes to everything she/he wants, pretending he/she enjoys something just because she/he likes it. That's the pursuit stage when you force yourself to be compatible with someone just to 'have' them, but the thing is... this stage won't last long and people will be themselves again and whether you like this real them or not is the deciding factor of the success of the relationship. That's why relationships that start off as two people being true friends have a higher chance of succeeding, you get to know the real them.