5 Things to be Careful of in a "More than Friends" Relationship

     I have a confession to make. I had a relationship that I had to let go of this past year. It was really difficult and I felt awful the whole way through the process of giving it up but it was good for me. 

     I saw a lot of things that I need to work on. I'll give you 5 things that I did wrong in the relationship:

Problem #1) Be Best Friends First.

     We weren't best friends before we became serious about each other. 

Problem #2) Giving in to Parent Pressure.

    Before figuring out whether I even could stay friends with this guy in a realistic manner I was asked if I was interested in marrying this guy. This put me in a lot of stress and didn't help me to look at this guy as a friend first before looking at him as more than that. (It's hard to tell when you've only known this guy for at most a couple of months and you've pretty much only seen him in ministry situations). 

     A wise woman from my church pointed out that when you see someone in ministry you are seeing them at their best. People are multi-faceted and so if you are only seeing them in one situation all of the time it's hard to get a good view of who they are as an individual.

Problem #3) Rose colored glasses syndrome. 

     OK, maybe this is Jr.High feelings all over again but you start out knowing that you think someone is cute and not being able to cut it out, then you find out that they think your pretty cute too and then you really can't cut it out, and before you know it everyone notices you spending more time together and then you start saying that you are in a serious relationship together. 

     Your rose colored glasses are affixed and you have a hard time seeing any of the negatives in the relationship because all you can see is someone who thinks you are special and all you want to do is help them feel like their pretty special to you too. You tend towards focusing on how this person makes you feel rather than on what they are like as an individual. 

     Unfortunately I thought that I was above this syndrome and would never fall for it. Boy was I wrong. God really helped me to see that even in this I was weak where I thought (all too proudly) that I had it and I was strong enough and smart enough never to fall into this kind of thinking until it was with Mr. Right. Ah, yes, it is true that pride comes before a fall (in this case it was probably a face plant). 

Problem #4) Being too nice doesn't help. 

     I tried to be better about speaking my mind towards the end of the relationship but it was too little too late. You tend to be nice to someone because you want them to like you but if we had been best friends before we started "dorting" (it's a mixture of dating/courting since I'm not sure that what we were doing was straight up courting but it wasn't straight up dating either) then this wouldn't have been as big of an issue. 

Problem #5) Facebook factor. 

     I was stupid and allowed and encouraged a sort of online dating through Facebook messaging. When I recognized what I was doing instead of quitting and saying "you know what I don't think that this is a good thing for us to be doing because......." I decided that it wasn't doing that much harm. People used to write letters to each other, what's the difference between that and texting? 

     The problem with texting back and forth all of the time is it builds a very shallow relationship. Shallow relationships don't last. They either turn into strong relationships that do last (but this is a rare case and more the exception than the rule), or they fall apart because it wasn't deep enough to begin with, or they always stay surface relationships because that's all you either have time for or care to have with a particular person.

     These were only 5 of the problems that I decided to write about. 5 problems that I think people should try to avoid in relationships. I'm not perfect and so I can see the flaws of my mistakes and do my best to correct them next time.

     I think that being that I was there I can say that I understand what it's like to be blind. I know what it's like to feel so depressed that you feel like every breath you take is painful and keeping back the tears is something that you fight minute by minute. But I made it through, I still live and if you are going through something like this, it will take time, but there will come an end, as long as you don't give in to the feelings completely, you will eventually make it through. I did. 

     This is why I say these things. Not because I like saying them but because if anyone is out there who needs to know that they aren't the only one who's felt this way or to help others not to make the same mistakes. 

     I don't have all of the answers and (I don't think that anyone does) but I do have some experience and can tell you where I messed up.