Your Relationship Experience!

[Levusti]

Hmm. Just wondering.

I am as virgin as you can virginly be. Never had a single relationship. Never held hands or hugged in a romantic way. :P People get surprised though when I say I haven't been in a relationship before and they wonder if I'm weird or depressed or socially awkward and I sometimes wonder that too.

But I'm not any of that. I think I'm normal. I think I will be ready for a relationship when I know I'm ready and when the time is right. There's no need to rush, in my opinion.

It'll all fall in place with time.

What about you guise though? What is your dating experience and how do you feel about it? For those who have yet to make their debut in the dating foray, do you feel like you're missing out or that you're not growing fast enough? For those who've had dating experience, do you think you rushed into it or were you ready?

 

[Gwazi Magnum]

If you count online relationships I have about 2 years of dating and relationship experience.
If you don't count online relationships, I have about 2 weeks of experience.

 

[Minibit]

I love how it goes from 30+ to "pretty old" :P

/me scoffs at the first brackets because she doesn't think something you couldn't feasibly drive to can be classified as more than a playdate.

I'm 24 and have had exactly one boyfriend. We dated for four and a half years, but about a year and a half ago it stopped working perfectly, and recently we had to stop beating a dead horse.

It was probably one of the chillest, most polite breakups in human history.

I think I wanna be single for a while now, but ya never know.

 

[Kagayours]

I often feel like I don't even have enough free time to be in a relationship.

 

[LunaValentine]

Unfortunately I don't get out much. I have one friend outside of the internet and she's currently in the Navy. So yeah.....*sighs* I suppose it's not all bad but yeah. No real experience because near shut-in.

 

[Halo]

18 coming up 19. A couple of years of online dating, and maybe a year of dating people near me. The past 18 months has been a relationship dry spell, with just occasional flings, partly because I wanted to be single for a while to get myself sorted after all the drama of long-distance, partly because of unreciprocated feelings for a friend of mine back home I've had a hard time getting past, and partly because my university is like 70-80% male (yay for science and technology unis...). It was only fairly recently I really felt ready for a relationship again, so hey, maybe this summer will yield something.

 

[Koschei]

If long-distance relationships count, I've got about four years, give or take. With the same guy. We did hang out during summers and holidays and shit like that, but 98% of the dating was online.

If we count real life only and exclude that one relationship, I've got zero experience. Being social isn't my strong side, and I feel that my asexuality makes dating way harder. I'd have to deal with coming out every time, and try to get my man to understand. Which, quite frankly, just gets bothersome. And I have issues with physical contact and being touched, along with trust issues.

Dating also feels like it'd gobble up a lot of my time. Time I'd rather spend doing stuff I want to do, like surf the webs.

Naw, I don't understand romantic relationships and I can very well do without em.

 

[feelingchimpy]

I'm 24. I've had a bunch of online relationships (I do count them) and a couple irl ones. Right now I'm in an irl relationship of four years.

 

[Zen]

24, married for about four months. I dated several people before I found my husband. We met online, and it was long distance for four years before we finally got together. It will be our 8 year anniversary this August.

 

[Jorick]

My answer depends on whether or not online things count. I've never done the IRL dating thing because I've never met someone in person who I had more of a connection with than basic lust, and just wanting to tap that ass is no good basis for a relationship. Online, however, I've met a few people that I really clicked with and internet dated one of them. Also internet dated another person who was just a friend but aspired to be more. Both of them ended rather poorly, but that seems to be common for all sorts of dating relationships, so whatever.

I guess I'll answer yes to the dating experience because fuck it, 1/3 US marriages nowadays start with online dating, so clearly online dating is a reasonable equivalent to IRL dating. I didn't really rush into it, first internet dating thing happened when I was... 20? 21 maybe? I can't recall for sure. Anyway, I waited until I found someone I actually cared to date, didn't go trying to date whoever I was physically attracted to, so I'd call that not rushing into things.

 

[Diana]

I have had "relationships" and relationships since I was little. O__O From "That guy in the other 4th grade class that I pass notes to during lunch and see at recess is my boyfriend." to long distance online, to in person, to casual to live-in situation. Ones that lasted a couple weeks and ones that lasted years. I've had ages of being single and ages of being in a relationship! I lost my virginity at 24. >>

I am currently married and have been in this relationship for 11 years. 8D

I have always, always, always just FELL IN TO every relationship I was in. o____o They would just happen.

 

[Temet Nosce]

I started dating at age 15.

IRL exclusively because I feel like I've never really 'clicked' with anyone online despite the fact I signed onto my first forum at 13.

So I guess my experience is the polar opposite of most people here.

 

[Mu]

What's a relationship? Can I eat it?

Joking. I've come close to one but... let's just say it died before it could get to the next step.
Also I'm a romantically awkward poop so there's that.

 

[redblood]

1 un-serious relationship in kindergarten, another un-serious relationship when I was 7-8, got back together with my kindergarten crush into an un-serious relationship when I was 10-11 and had my last un-serious relationship when I was 14-15 which only lasted for less than a week. The only one I feel that I rushed into was the last one at 14-15. People had been bullying us, saying we were together, that they had seen us kiss etc, etc. We were best friends and everyone seemed to think we must be a couple, so eventually I asked him out, and after the first kiss I realized that I regretted it, but I didn't tell him before one week later. Instead I acted sick for a week so that I didn't have to see him >_> (And no, we didn't do anything else but kiss on the first day)

I've had one serious relationship when I was 19-20 I think. A long distant relationship with a person from iwaku. I don't know if she's still on the site though. We met on skype through another person on iwaku and it lasted for around 4 months before we broke up. While I do think I did rush into it a bit too fast, I think the experience was good for me cause it helped me realize my limits. Like that I can't handle my girlfriend calling me every single day and wants to talk for hours most days. It was way too much for me o_o When she went away for over a month and didn't have internet, I finally got a breather and could think it through and I realized we wanted way too different things out of a relationship to work together. (Not to speak of our extreme differences like her being in the military and me being anti-military and anti-war. Bit of a mishmash there.)

And after my relationship experience I have realized that relationships are too suffocating for me and I prefer not being in them. :D I just wanna live with a best friend who understands that I won't talk to them every single day and that I might shut myself inside my room for two weeks straight without talking to anyone just cause I dun wanna interact with humanity at the moment outside of the internet. I'm not very social o_o Social interactions makes me tired. And touching skin to skin makes me uncomfortable.

 

[Hana]

This has been bothering me for the past week, so I guess this is a good place to say it. No one I know IRL would know.

I've had quite a few chances to start something with someone, but to my own regret I have never told or accepted him up to this day. He's my first love, and things never really ended clearly defined between the two of us. Right up to graduating high school and then onwards we still have some tension between us. It's somehow embarrassing to be seen talking or standing with him - I actively try to avoid him, but why does he keep on ending up next to me? It doesn't help that all of our mutual friends keep on hinting at something else. He's a friend, and even if some feelings linger I don't want to set myself up for disappointment.

What's more is that one of our friends told me that he had been interested, and I probably hadn't helped by clamming up whenever he was around. Am I supposed to blame myself for acting so closed off? He had always been easygoing and a jokester, so I didn't know whether to take him seriously or not. It was already hard to read him back then that it was hard to know if he was implying more than just hanging out or not and I just didn't want that. Maybe it was both our faults that we never really tried to step forward for the other or something.

But what's done is done and I'm in college now. I can look at others, but why does it always end up coming back to him?

*headdesks*

 

[Windsong]

I first plowed/placed my beef in a girl at 15.

Now I'm married at 25. Going on four years married and eight together.

Know what I learned? Never love someone more than they love you. Be skeptical, but be honest about it. If they don't share it with you it better be for a fucking surprise party. Back scratches are a must. Get to know their friends (if they have any...).

Also, online is where I met my wife. We began as roleplaying partners no less.

 

[Jerelin]

Met my boyfriend when I was 14, so I don't have any dating experience except from him because I don't count things before high school or online. We started dating at 15 and we were each others first everything. We're both 22 now and just moved in together a year ago. Things are going swimmingly and we're currently thinking about whether we want to wait until after I am out of college to tie the knot (got about 2+years left thanks to freshman mistakes and adding some years), or just do it next year.

 

[Laggy Lagiacrus]

Here is an accurate visual representation of my dating experiences:




You may notice that there is no image there. That is because of an incredibly long list of reasons that sounds like a Simple Plan song I am simply too fabulous for any mere mortal to handle.

 

[King]

I've been in one proper relationship before.
I'm in a current Long Distance relationship.
I haven't ever met someone online and dated them surprisingly, they've all been IRL.
Then I've seen a couple of people, but nothing serious.

 

[Gwazi Magnum]

*Notices some people are bothering with the details*

Eh, I might as well join in.

My Online relationship was actually on the Guild, and started when I was 15 (Few months away from 16) and lasted until I was 18 (for a month).
But it wasn't consecutive/straight through, it was a very on and off relationship, break ups sometimes happening on a weekly basis.
In retrospect/reflection it honestly just wasn't a healthy relationship for either of us, we both messed up, made mistakes, did things that ended up harming the other etc.

If I asked my friends from High School about it though they'd probably take a "She was cruel and awful Anthony" stance, which I don't personally agree with.
There was a decent amount that happened in the relationship on my part that they never ended up seeing.

Ultimately though it ended with me just outright cutting off contact with her pernamently, it was the only way I could remove myself from the situation and not come crawling back a week later.
Though an unfortunate side effect of that was me adopting a very "Logic > Emotion", "Relationships just don't work", "Depression is just people making excuses" (Her reasoning for breaking up for the last time was "It's not me, it's my Depression". Something teenage me took completely the wrong way) mentality for some time (it passed).

Granted a year later I ended up losing a grandparent, and basically something my Mom told me at a Funeral had me re-open contact with her (Briefly) just to make sure she was ok, because when I had cut off contact I had done so rather cold and brutally. She seemed fine, we got to awkward talking terms, and then the Guild crashed a week or so later. Hadn't seen her again since. :P

--------

Then the RL one, was a really just a 2 week fling that happened a little over a month before said funeral mentioned above.

What happened there was one of my High School friends had moved to a school in a neighboring city for an Electrician program.
While there he made a new group of friends, A few years after making said friends I was a college student and one day meeting up with him he had some of his other school friends along.
We got along, then we clicked, and then the very next day we started dating.

It didn't end up lasting long though, we were two very different kinds of people.
Me being a gamer who mostly sticks of hobby games and video games, and she being someone who prefers doing stuff like welding, fishing, electrical work etc.
So 2 weeks in we ended up breaking up.

We don't ever talk with each other today of our own initiative (though we did for a few months after the breakup), but if your mutual friend ever ends up inviting both of us to the same thing we'll still get along.