disclaimer.

All I know about relationships are through my own personal experience and observation. I have not experienced everything there is in this world, but I have evolved from one of those 'crazy girls' (who do the things I will advise against in this blog) into a woman who's been in the happiest relationship I can imagine for over two and a half years now.

Since I was a teenager, even when I had very little perspective, I've lived for giving advice to my friends. Now, I have many friends, some of who I talk to quite infrequently, present their issues to me asking for my take on the matter. As I've matured, I've become more realistic, more honest, and (sometimes for the worse) more blunt with my advice. My friends constantly comment on how happy for and envious of me they are in regards to my relationship, and I find myself giving them honest, no-frill answers as to why it works so flawlessly. And I want to be able to give the same advice to the faceless masses.

I don't expect everyone to agree with me. I do expect people to doubt and ignore my advice, but I hope that the majority of whatever readers I get will take my advice into my consideration. If you do, I can promise you a happier and healthier relationship, regarding love or friendship or even roommate-hood.

As family relationships are much more subjective, and much harder to resolve when they are sour, I can not promise that I'll have many words of advice to spread, but I will try may hardest to offer good advice to anyone who presents their story and requests it.

lack of credentials.

So, what gives me the right to talk about what love really is (because that's what I plan to do), or how you know when your relationship is better off not being one? How the eff do I know what happiness is? Why do I think I'm so mature and wise and perspective-y?

Well, to be frank I have no professional credentials what-so-ever. I'm in no way a wannabe psychologist. I'm not really that old. I don't know anything about brain chemistry. I don't have a big-girl job making tons of money to tell people how to be happy. Maybe most importantly, I don't know you.

But I am a woman who has found her soul mate, her best friend, and the person she wants to share her entire life with. I'm a woman who, now, 24 years into her life, knows what is a big deal and what isn't. In the handful of 'relationships' I've had, I've seen how I acted, and how they fell apart. I've seen what leads to good times and what leads to bad. I know what I used to think was working, and I know why it didn't work at all. I know that what I thought was happiness when I was 18 is not what I'd consider happiness now, and I know that when I'm 30, what I consider happiness will be absolutely different than now, at 24. I learn from everything I hear and read and say, and I hate that I can't say to the random woman I'm overhearing on the phone that her boyfriend is doing what he is because he doesn't trust her.

Because I can't say that to a random stranger at the campus coffee shop, I figured I could say that one a blog.

beginnings.

As I was sitting on Facebook chat, talking with a friend about his hopefully-budding relationship with a different friend of mine (who I had introduced to each other with strictly platonic intentions), I found myself coming to terms with much more, and forgive me for the lack of modesty, perspective I seemed to have about relationships than other women of my age.

At some point in my life, I must have gained this perspective, this... ability to see through the, for lack of a better word choice, bullshit. I don't get fooled by people's defense mechanisms, and what they say to make everything seem like it's really all fine in the end. I always observe, pooling data from everyday polite and not-so-polite conversation, and use those observations learn about what makes people tick, and what disillusions they seem to have.

As I was thinking this, it occurred to me: I really should write something.

As my friend was also mentioning that I needed to write a 'handbook' or something, I cemented my decision.

It's bloggin' time.