When it comes to relationships, every woman approaches them in unique ways. While ultimately we all want to be happy, the dreamers have the tendency to cling tightly to the idea of a “fairytale”, while pessimists don’t even bother to start something that will inevitably fall to crap. When it comes to realists, they often hope for the best but still fall back on past experiences to give them a reasonable idea of how things may turn out. While this approach may prevent the chance of getting hurt, it also comes with other repercussions.
Here are some struggles realists face when it comes to relationships:
- People automatically assume that we’re anti-love. There is a fine line between realism and pessimism, and others don’t always understand the difference. In actuality, realists hope for the best, but expect the worst. Having a plan is key. If it works out, great; if it doesn’t, it’s not the end of the world because we were prepared for the chance of this happening. Just because we have realistic expectations doesn’t mean we don’t believe in love – we just don’t expect any cute guy that comes along to be our Prince Charming.
- It takes a while for us to let people in. Realists have often been hurt before, so we reflect on these bad experiences to guide our future actions. Unfortunately, having your guard up can be misinterpreted as being uninterested. We’ve probably heard the phrase “Are you not having fun?” before. This usually isn’t the case – we’re just too cautious to fall too hard and too fast.
- We believe in actions, not words – and some guys aren’t prepared for that. It’s easy for guys to tell us what we want to hear – and it’s just as easy for girls to believe it. We’ve all been there, but realists have analyzed these mistakes enough to know to change our ways. While some guys will try harder when they realize we’re more about “show” then “tell”, others will get bored and move on to someone a little more naive.
- Since we like to think things through, we seem to lack spontaneity. Realists often shy away from taking risks, and instead prefer carefully calculating our actions. At the same time, it doesn’t mean that we want to do the same thing every time we hang out with a guy. Once we get more comfortable with someone, we’ll be more open to being spontaneous – it just takes a little longer for us to get to that point than others.
- Our friends both love and hate our relationship advice. They always come to us for a straight-forward answer, but sometimes our bluntness can be overbearing. Most of us don’t even bother uttering the phrase, “No offense but…” because we know that we’re about to rip them apart with our brutal honesty. Sometimes we can’t help feeling guilty for being harsh, but we also know deep down that sugar-coating our words isn’t helping anybody.
- When we do find something good, you start inadvertently planning its end. Your friend asks, “So what are you guys doing for Valentine’s Day?” You respond, “I mean, I don’t know if we’ll even still be together then.” It doesn’t mean that you actually want the relationship to end, but you can’t help feeling that statistically speaking, this probably won’t last forever. Sad, but true.
