- You feel accomplished. Being in a good healthy relationship is like getting accepted into an Ivy League school. You feel really special and secure, and you’re also promised a job {marriage} when you graduate.
- You learn so much about yourself. Every unattractive quality you never knew you had will surface and you’ll begin to understand yourself in a whole new way. This will allow you to make some necessary changes. Stable relationships are like crash courses in getting to know yourself. By the end of it, you’ll hopefully be a better version of yourself.
- You can go to a bar or a house party and take solace in knowing that you have someone who loves you. The pressure is off. You look around and see people dressed to the nines in hopes that they can spend the next eight hours with someone who doesn’t completely repulse them. You wore Uggs and have ketchup on your face because you already have someone who promises to love you forever and ever. You put away the sequined single girl dress a long time ago.
- Make up sex. It’s powerful and it’s vulnerable and it’s angry and it’s tender. It’s a cacophony of emotions and you can’t seem to get their body close enough to yours. Is there any way they can be more inside of you? Is there any way you can feel more connected?
- You can dip your feet in the Compromise pool and wiggle your toes in the Selfless waterfall. Learning to put someone’s needs before your own is a valuable life skill that can usually only be achieved by entering a relationship and/or having children. Instead of being a rigid control freak, you’ll have to adapt a little bit and be open to different things. This is a good thing! Being a control freak gets you nowhere besides having a potentially lucrative career and an all access pass to the Tracy Flick Alienation Hour. It’s beneficial sometimes to eat Italian when you’re craving Mexican food. It’s good for your soul to know that you can’t always get what you want. And if you love the person, you really shouldn’t give a shit about eating spaghetti and meatballs when you were ravenous for a burrito.
- You get the opportunity to become really good at sex. The people you have casual sex with don’t care if you’re a bad kisser or give terrible oral. They have no investment in the relationship so they just send you off to the next person. When you’re having sex with the same person, however, you get individual intense attention. You have the time to figure out what works and what doesn’t, which will definitely help make you a better lay. If you’re with someone indefinitely, you should have no qualms with telling them things like, “Kiss like this. I like it when you do it like this and I don’t like it when you do it like that.” Constructive feedback is the best gift a lover could give you!
- You can relate to your friends who have been in relationships. There’s no longer this awkward divide between you two. You get it! All those times they bitched to you about a poorly worded text message makes sense! You’re sorry to ever have thought they were just being a crazy bitch!
- You can know what it feels like to love someone unconditionally. To really know that you would do anything for someone is a great feeling. You want to make them happy. You love to see them smile. You just believe them in so much. It’s great. It’s what we were built to do.
- You can achieve the kind of happiness that only a lover can give you. You’ll be satisfied doing things that used to make you feel lonely. Spending all day in bed is a new adventure. Going to Kinko’s with your significant other to fax something can be a blast! OMG babe, we love Kinko’s!
- You can change your status to “In A Relationship” on Facebook, which is 60% of the reason why you got into the relationship to begin with. Acquaintances who lurk you can see it and know that you’re living a healthy well-adjusted life. You’re not one of the forgotten ones!
image – My So-Called Life