it works the way it works

Excuse my lack of posts on the state of my relationship and the emotional and physical ups and downs thereof. I’m chalking this one up to school work and good ol’ fashion laziness, but I am also excusing myself in part by saying that my relationship is pretty damn good.

I’m not going to lie and say that the boyfriend and I don’t fight anymore, or that we don’t have disagreements and spats, but things are a lot different from last year. During the summer I wrote about how scared I was that our relationship was going to be different, less significant, because there wasn’t going to be the same unease at being away from each other. What with the sorority and increased workload, I didn’t know if I would have the same time and energy for my relationship.

I’m still a little surprised to be able to say that this is not the case. Something about how our relationship evolved has made us particularly susceptible to talking about potential sources of tension between us. Routine “how can we improve” conversations also help and bring light to issues before they blow out of proportion. Most of all, even when we fight, we’re at a point where we’re often more upset at the situation than we are at each other.

Removing the double standard was a big part of this change. After we realized that demanding time and attention without making an equal effort to return the same affection stressed us out the most, we’ve been more apt to think twice before complaining. As much as we’d like otherwise, we do still have relatively separate lives, with different exam schedules and deadlines.

I’m glad that we transitioned into sophomore year as smoothly as we did. We’re not perfect, but we’re a lot closer to that than we were last year. Have I changed, too? Probably, but in a definite good way. For one, I’ve found that I’m not above apologizing or compromising. Yep, surprises me every time we have an argument, too. Who would have thought? I’m either getting old, or growing up.