It can be said that in my 27 years of life, I have almost never had a serious relationship with another person. On some occasions, there is puppy love, but it never reaches a good ending (either abandoned or rejected), which makes me think twice to start a relationship.
Finally, there was a dating app. New method to find relationships in this digital age. It should make it easier for me to find a partner there, but it’s easier said than done. For multiple right swipes in there, it filtered to a few matches, and it filtered again to make it a real date, after the date sometimes she doesn’t want to reply to the chat again. So, the chances were limited to some people (especially when you don’t have a good-looking face or you aren’t wealthy).
In my case, I only successfully reached the dating phase two times after numerous attempts. The first one she doesn't want to continue in a serious relationship, the second one is still lasting until now, and I hope it continues onwards.
As tech-bros that have jobs in digital industries, making a relationship is like you create a new feature for your product: where you create an opportunity when starting to build the feature, which is symbolized to make the first move in a relationship. After that, you release the product live, which is the same as saying “i love you” to your partner. Finally, you retain users to keep using your product, same as you retain your relationship with your partner.
Those three phases, it has the same difficulties, but I think creating and retaining is a difficult one. In creating, you need the courage to make the first move, you need to research her hobbies, her favorite foods, her likes, and dislikes in order to keep your talks moving forward, to keep her attention towards you. Finally, there is retained, the most difficult part in a relationship, in this phase I think there is no fixed way how to do it successfully. It’s dynamic and has various cases, you must try and learn to make your relationship last long. Sometimes there is an error that can make you two quarrel a little, but the most important thing is how you recover from that error.
At the beginning of my retain phase, it was wonderful. Love is always in the air, we always take video calls after work before bedtime, and we are still doing it now. I think it’s good since her love language is “quality time”, she wants me to allocate time for us to just say hi or ask about conditions in the workplace, and another interesting chit-chat. Because of this pandemic situation, there aren’t many options available for us to do it together, sometimes I get around to watching Netflix together or playing some games to retain our relationship. The first time, it was easy and made me think “OK, I can do this”. But it’s easier said than done.
As I said, we live in this pandemic situation. There are not so many chances for us to meet directly, so the communication was made online, via Whatsapp, or sometimes Zoom. Because of this type of communication, sometimes we get into a little fight, for misunderstandings or mistakes that she or I made. Because of that, I am starting to look into bigger perspectives. From now on it’s not only me, I have another person to look at. I can’t just leave casually when we are in the middle of a debate or fight, it makes our relationship wane. I started to be more empathetic towards her, I tried to listen to her when she talked about something, and this little but meaningful gesture, I think it’s powerful enough to keep our bond stronger.
In Natasha Lunn’s book: Conversations on Love, Sarah Quilliam a relationship expert said: In relationships so many couples get irritated with her/his partners because they lack self-reflection. For me it’s important to have self-reflection, it helps me a lot. Previously, when my girlfriend was angry with me, I sometimes did self-defense, I tried so much to prove myself right and she was wrong. Because of self-reflection, I can refrain from my self-centered side, it helps me to calm myself down and think before I speak to her. It helps to reduce the tension.
But sometimes my girlfriend does something wrong that makes me angry with her, and from the book, I learned the interesting part, Sarah said our partner can’t make us angry, it depends on our feeling how we respond towards it, we have the ability to control our emotions. I think she’s right, we can’t rely on our partner how she behaves or make us always happy. Our partners don’t have an obligation to fulfill our expectations, no one in this world can meet all of our needs. If this was the case, I tried not to judge her first by saying, “You’re lazy if you don't want to wash your utensils after lunch”. It will make her angry. Usually, I try to talk from my perspective. I will use the “I” perspective instead of judging her, plus I will add some negotiation phrases to her, for example:
“Hmm, I don't like it if you don’t wash your utensils after eating, because it will make the kitchen dirty. How do we solve this problem?”.
I invited her to do a brainstorming session, we both owned the problems, not just her. It helps me to have healthy arguments and less tension.