55.____Relationships.

Why can't we leave relationships to the people in them? Kate Winslet and Charlotte Church have both been on the receiving end of speculation this week for having friends who are male and whom they may or may not have feelings for. At the end of the day, why is it our business?

I heard a song which I haven’t for a while yesterday; one line hit me, which really applies to me right now; “Isn’t this the best part of breaking up, finding someone else you can’t get enough of?”

Then of course this leads into what constitutes a relationship, are you only allowed to feel like this if you are in a relationship, ignoring the question of who asked who and should it be a man’s job, what happens if you’ve known them a week? Are you a whore, or is it really a deep, heart stopping bond? Should you ignore it because of what people say, because of how you feel, because circumstance timed it badly, or do you do the teenage thing, throw all caution to the wind and follow your heart even if it’s damming you?

But then for doing this are you a whore or are you simply someone who is lucky enough to have found ‘the one’ even if they turn out to be temporary? How can anyone tell how anything is going to work out? They can’t. This therefore makes labels pointless; you definitely have to kiss a few frogs before you find your prince, allowing mistakes to be made, rectified and learnt from. Why have to endure times of pain through someone’s misjudgement of you, when at the end of the day at least you had the courage to try, did they? Think about it, the real reason people put labels on things are either because they are new and scary, people don’t quite understand them or simply they are jealous. They wish that when they were twenty four they had had the courage to go for drinks with the guy from work, not caring about the rumours or rules which could apply.

On the other hand there is always the fantastic part of any relationship; the prospect of giving yourself to someone completely is undeniably scary, letting go of every hang up, putting control not in your head, with its rational capabilities but into your emotions, the unknown. However scary it may seem the benefits of doing so outweigh the scariness, being with someone completely is thrilling.

Before throwing yourself into the chasm that is the unknown, one must step on eggshells over the ever thinning ice, facing a battle within yourself. ‘Is this the right thing to do?’ ‘Am I being stupid?’ The answer to both of these questions is: ‘Yes of course’, even if everything goes wrong, you tried it, you risked everything, for what you thought was right. For love.

Doing this is hard, giving someone else control, telling them your most intimate thoughts, giving them both your body and your mind. It’s completely exhilarating, but terrifying at the same time, the prospect of losing everything doesn’t seem so bad when you have the prospect of gaining everything if it works.

When it works, its bliss, there’s a smile almost tattooed on your face, suddenly you light up everyone around you, there’s a noticeable different in your composure.

Waiting by the phone is no longer desperate but exciting, hearing your ring tone makes you jump, panic slightly; “What if it’s him?” “Oh my God it is!!!” Seeing him pop up on messenger makes your heart skip a beat and a grin appear.

There is only one thing that annoys me about being in a couple, suddenly you morph into one being, one person, constantly being asked how the other one is, which is fine, but if you’re friends with both people, couldn’t you ask separately? Yes we’re together but we’re still the same people we were.

Some people claim not to be relationship people, they can’t deal with the closeness that a relationship requires, the truthfulness, the openness. They prefer their ‘space’ to be theirs, ultimately though, they are just scared. Scared of being that close to someone else, scared of having to think about someone else besides themselves, before themselves, they don’t realise though that that is the point. Relationships are there for many reasons, one of which to give yourself completely to someone else, to have someone who sticks out the bad times as well as the good and to have one person who you can trust with anything.