Regardless of your current relationship status, it’s practically guaranteed that you have heard unsolicited tidbits of love advice throughout your life. Whether it be from your nosy Grandma or your well-meaning friend, everyone feels the need to offer relationship advice. Sure, you appreciate their input, and yeah, it doesmake sense, but nevertheless you can’t seem to heed their warnings. Why is it so hard to take love advice? Some lessons you just have to learn the hard way! Here are five of them.
1. “He Won’t Want the Cow If He’s Getting the Milk for Free!”
In our day and age, the majority of college ‘relationships’ are actually just friends with benefits situations. What’s a girl to do if she actually wants to date someone? Granted, it’s almost expected now that you will hook up with a guy beforeyou date him – gotta see if there’s chemistry, right? Yet sometimes these casual hookups start moving in a different direction than towards a relationship. While you are caught up in ‘making it work’ and ‘seeing how things play out’, your friends and family see what’s actually happening: he’s just not that into you. Sure, he likes to hookup with you and probably even likes spending time with you, but why should he start a relationship if he has the best of both worlds? He has a guaranteed booty call, a good friend, and is still free to play the field. While this all makes perfect sense from an outside perspective, you can’t truly understand this phenomenon until it happens to you.
2. “Keep a Healthy Balance of Relationship, School, and Friends”
Yeah, yeah, we’ve all heard that one before, but it’s so easy to get caught up in the early stages of a new relationship. It’s exciting, and to be honest, you really aren’t interested in anything else. So what if you slack on a few homework assignments? Is it really a big deal if you don’t go to your BFF’s birthday dinner? I mean, your boyfriend planned a special date night for the two of you! It’s hard to take this piece of advice until it’s already too late. Once you realize that you’ve sacrificed important parts of your life, it can be tough to get them back. If it makes you feel better, this happens to almost everyone at least once in their lives, which is why this advice has been passed down from generation to generation and you’ve heard it a hundred times. And aside from affecting everything outside of your relationship, it’ll affect your relationship, too. Your boyfriend doesn’t want to date someone who isn’t interesting, and soon he’ll move onto someone who actually has a life outside of the relationship…. and you will be left with nothing. Of course, you won’t understand or necessarily believe this until it happens to you. Don’t say you weren’t warned!
3. “Once a Cheater, Always a Cheater”
Being cheated on is perhaps one of the worst things that can happen in a relationship because it’s a sudden end to everything that you have created together. Or is it an end? Many girls choose to forgive and forget, as guys are crafty with their excuses: “it was just one time, I was drunk, it was the biggest mistake of my life, she came on to me,” etc. And while maybe it really was the first time, it probably isn’t the last. That’s a hard realization to come to terms with, as you usually aren’t ready for the relationship to end when the ‘cheating’ bomb drops. In fact, you probably thought things were going pretty well, so you wantyour boyfriend to give you a good excuse, and you choose to believe it so you can salvage your relationship. Unfortunately, sooner or later, you’ll have to learn the hard way that your friends and family were right when they told you to end things: once a cheater, always a cheater.
*Granted, in some circumstances, it really was just one time, but for the purposes of this article, we are speaking for the majority.
4. “You Can’t Change Him”
Every girl can name a few things that she’d love to change about her boyfriend. Maybe it’s how he snores in his sleep, or he’s always late for important events. Sometimes, though, it’s bigger things, like he has a tendency to lie to you, or he consistently talks down to your family and friends. Regardless, you think that after a few months together, you’ll be able to mold him to your liking. As only time and experience will tell, you really won’t be able to change him. Sure, he might get the hint and change his ways for a few weeks – he does want you to be happy, after all – but eventually he’ll forget and revert back to his old ways. From sayings like “a leopard never changes its spots” to “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” this piece of advice is nothing new. Realizing that your boyfriend will generally stay the same, no matter how badly you want to change him, is one of the most important love lessons you can learn; otherwise, you will only end up disappointed.
5. “You Can’t Force It If It’s Not There”
Typically this piece of advice comes from a worried mother, looking out for her daughter. Why, you ask? Because she’s been there, and so has nearly every girl in the world. As women, we have a hard time hearing ‘no’ or even just accepting that something isn’t going to work. This is especially true when it comes to relationships; after all, us girls put a lot of time and effort into romance, and we can’t help but feel cheated somehow when it doesn’t work out. Maybe your boyfriend has seemed standoffish lately, and less interested in spending time with you. Your friends notice the change, and warn you to back off a little – give him some space to miss you. Instead, you hold on tighter, trying to force your way back into his life. Maybe if you’re the perfect girlfriend, he’ll change his mind. Usually, however, once a guy is gone, he’s truly gone, and there’s no saving the relationship. Granted, he may come back later, begging for forgiveness, but you have to give him the freedom to realize his mistake. This is one lesson, however, that you can’t learn unless you learn it the hard way: if you hold onto something too tightly, you will only push it away.
Keep your ears open for these pieces of advice, ladies, because you’re sure to hear them at least once or twice throughout your lifetime. My best advice to you? Make sure you actually listen to, not only hear, these warnings – if you don’t have to learn it the hard way, then don’t! Let us know in the comments section if we missed any tough love lessons – we love to hear from you!