The Single Girl Diaries is a new series where we explore the many interesting, unfiltered stories and experiences of Single girl’s everywhere. From the fun times to the hard times, we want to hear all about it! The stories range from experiences with sex and dating, money, self improvement, career and sexual health.
In this article, *Gloria dwells on her last two relationships where she realizes she constantly kept putting other people’s feelings above hers, causing both relationships to end awfully.
My realization happened in three stages and I’m going to break them down in this story diary.
Let’s call step one Denial. I had been dating my ex for almost 2 years when we broke up drastically and I’m happy to be telling this story because I’ll really appreciate women giving their 2 cents on the matter.
My ex is a really good guy, and when I say good, I mean good. He’s caring, protective but not possessive, kind to everyone around him and just an all round decent human being. The first year of our relationship was blissful and I really thought we were going to end up together, like get married, have kids and all that fairytale BS. However, the second year of our relationship wasn’t so rosey, as that’s when things started to go downhill.
Right before his 29th birthday I noticed our sex life had become very dull, and I had an inkling that he wasn’t too happy so as a proud Gemini I needed to spice things up, so I convinced him on a threesome. I didn’t think it was a bad idea because sex with the same person gets boring, its natural and not as insult to anyone, so I didn’t think it was a big deal at all. Everything was agreed and we set it up and finally the night came.
Please, never agree to a threesome with your man or woman, or anyone you deeply love.
We had agreed that the third person be a mutual acquaintance we both weren’t so close to but knew, to make it less awkward, and it was my first time engaging in a threesome so I was pretty excited.
The mood was set and everything was going so well until I watched my boyfriend fuck this other woman. I’m sorry, he didn’t even fuck her, he made love to her, in my presence. I felt so deeply hurt but I didn’t bring it up and neither did he.
You see the thing about bottling things up? it eats you up inside until there’s nothing left, until you can’t take it anymore and you explode.
So one day, we were invited to a dinner put together by his office to celebrate a long time colleague exiting the organisation when I had my biggest flare up ever. I noticed he had been looking at other women the whole night, while spending all his time on his phone and I felt so unappreciated and invincible, and when I couldn’t take it anymore was when he hugged a work colleague and had his hands basically touching her bum. I made a scene and I walked out.
That was the beginning of all our problems.
After that happened, I couldn’t hide my feelings anymore and broke down to him about the night we had a threesome and how into it he was, along with the fact that I catch him staring at other women all the time. He blamed me saying I was the one who instigated the threesome, and how I’ve suddenly become so jealous and insecure and this and that.
We made up but things weren’t the same. I eventually cheated on him with someone else and made sure he found out to get him jealous, but according to him he couldn’t handle it and ended up breaking up with me.
No phone calls, no break up sex, nothing. There was no communication after he broke up with me and till now, the only way I know he’s alive is through his biannual posts on Instagram.
Let’s move on to step 2: Realization.
I got into a situationship about 2 months ago until it ended drastically. Again, I’ll appreciate women giving their 2 cents on this issue. I met this guy at a friend’s party and we didn’t immediately hit it off, until we met again at another event and then began talking from there.
He was incredibly lovable; I’m talking breakfast in bed after amazing sex, food deliveries to my office and flowers on random days. I didn’t think it was more than it was, but I was loving all the attention he was giving me.
My apartment and office were a bit far from were he lived so one day he brought up the idea of me coming to sleep over on some days, so I don’t have to spend so much time in traffic, and I agreed because who doesn’t like convenience?
So that’s how it started; two days turned to a week and a week turned to a month. I was officially in the most entanglement of entanglements ever. In fact, I started going to work from his.
Please, never do relationship shit for anyone that can’t bother to define what you both are.
As you can probably guess, the wahala started when I began to catch feelings. This guy went from crying on the phone begging me to sleep over, to him basically chasing me out of his house.
After spending the night for almost 3 weeks straight, one day he casually asked me when I was going to be going home. I took it as a joke because again, I had caught feelings and stupidly assumed he was on the same page.
He wasn’t.
He made it clear to me that he was seeing someone else in the evening and would appreciate if I could leave and maybe come back the following week. This is when I realized I had a problem; I didn’t take that remark as rude. In fact, I went home that day and kept calling him non-stop while leaving a thousand messages. By the end of the night, I had sent him countless texts and calls, with messages that read “am I the problem? did I do something wrong?”
Thinking about it now, I’m like, why the fuck did I do that?
Let’s jump to step 3 – Acceptance.
I tend to put people’s happiness above mine, especially in relationships with other people. In my last relationship, I didn’t even sit down to properly think about if I were really comfortable with going along with having a threesome, all I cared about was making my man happy in one way or the other, and I successfully achieved that but I was left unhappy.
With the situationship, I played myself on that one. He made all the rules and I followed like a puppet. Again, I didn’t stop for a second to realize that I was inconveniencing myself just to please someone else that couldn’t be bothered to define what we were doing and that’s my problem: I’m a people pleaser.
I shove my feelings and emotions away and put other people above me. I’m doing much better now because the first step is realizing and owning up to your shortcomings, so hopefully I don’t repeat these same mistakes.
*Name has been changed
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I think what you should do is to stay off relationships for a while and focus on yourself. Not just focusing on yourself but really knowing yourself. It’s good that you’ve realized your flaw as a people pleaser, now you have to learn to set personal boundaries and not inconvenience yourself for other people. It’ll be hard because you will annoy some people but it’s for your own benefit.
Also be in touch with your emotions and intuition, once you know you’re getting angry, jealous or emotional, you have to learn how to keep calm and release your emotions later on OR how to gently excuse yourself from the situation if you know you can’t handle it. Be emotionally and socially intelligent.
I really feel deep down you’ve go be self aware. We need to walk away from situations we don’t add value or receive from. Reinvent yourself sis you’ve got this!!