Pretty much every single AF woman has at least one almost relationship story, especially considering they seem to happen without us even realizing half the time. In fact, I just got out of one myself and I seriously wish I knew these things before I got in this position:
- Things are never going to get better. The beginning of an almost relationship is crazy confusing since it’s unclear if it’s the start of a legit thing or not. I used to think that the guy I was dating was just taking things slow with me or trying to get to know me. Eventually, it became clear that we were never going to be a real thing, but that took a few months. I wish I knew that when things feel off from the start, they’re going to continue in a negative direction and they’re not going to get any better.
- Forget mixed signals — we’re talking mixed emotions. I was that girl who was a slave to her iPhone, wondering if this guy would text, if he would magically commit, and what exactly I was doing. I never felt sure about him and every move he made and every word he said made me even more confused. I felt conflicted every moment of every day and it was pure hell.
- It becomes impossible to trust the next guy. It can be tough to figure out if a guy I’m into is for real or is playing the same almost relationship game as the one before him. Trust should be a given and yet it seems like something that is super elusive these days.
- There are so many ways to run scared. I had no clue that this guy was freaked out about actually being in a relationship with me because we spent so much time together. The chemistry was crazy, we talked all the time, and he even drove over to my apartment the very evening he got home from a work trip. But I learned that there are a ton of different ways to run scared. Sometimes guys are scared of truly being together even when they seem super interested.
- Going super slow is a bad idea. There’s going slow… and then there’s refusing to commit. Sure, it doesn’t make sense to meet each other’s parents right away, and every relationship moves along at its own natural pace. But I will always be suspicious of guys who want to go slow from now on since in my case, it means something is up.
- The other shoe is going to drop pretty fast. Almost relationships generally last anywhere from a few weeks to a few months. In the two months I dated this particular person, I spent every day waiting for something bad to happen. That’s honestly no way to live or date and I will never let it be my reality again.
- It’s impossible to place blame. It’s easy to blame the guy because it seems like he led me on or at least pretended that we were something that we definitely weren’t. But I don’t blame either one of us. I thought things were going to work out differently than they did, and that’s not my fault. It’s not his fault, either, since maybe he wasn’t sure what he wanted.
- It can be hard to tell what’s real and what’s fake. One of my BFFs said if this guy didn’t become my official boyfriend, she would basically give up on dating because she would have no clue what anything meant. I agreed… until he didn’t become my BF at all. Sometimes it’s hard to tell what’s real because it honestly seems legit.
- It will happen again. I told myself that I would never be in another almost relationship because I knew the signs and I could get out before things got super confusing. That turned out to be easier said than done when I found myself in a similar situation recently. Now I know that this will happen again (and again). and that as long as I stand up for myself, it’s okay.
- There’s no point wondering “What if?” I could sit here and lament the ways that my almost relationship went south and never turned into a real one, but that would be a total waste of time. There’s no point wondering what happened. The truth is that things didn’t work out and that’s okay. I’m going to take the lessons learned and hope that the next time around, there’s no almost about what is going on in my love life.
