Don't You Forget About Me

         I have read this quote on Pinterest a few times which talks about how the relationships that happen unexpectedly are sometimes the ones that change us the most. Well, I cannot think of a truer idea when it comes to my relationship with my friend, who we will call Jack. Jack and I started talking about two and a half months ago and immediately hit it off. We would stay on the phone for two or three hours, and the conversation was never boring. Something he said to me one of the first few nights has stuck with me, in particular. We were talking about childhood friendships and I made the remark that I tend to forget about people when relationships go sour and die off. He said to me "Well promise you won't forget about me?" I promised, even though I thought that was a rather silly thing to say when we had only been talking for a short time. Little did I know, that it would become the theme for my relationship with him.

          I feel I must give you a little of my background before I go further. I come from parents who divorced when I was eight years old. I have at least four other divorces in my family. While I have always relished in the thought that my marriage will last, I must admit that having divorced parents does have an effect on me and how I deal with other people. This effect is mostly seen in my tendency to walk away from relationships when bad things happen, no matter how small they are, and then forget about people as if I never knew them. I never saw how much this habit was engrained in me until I met Jack. After about a week of both of us thinking the other was perfect, we began to come down from the clouds. Both of our flaws started to show more and more, and our conversations would sometimes involve less laughter than they did at the start. In many ways, this is like every other relationship I have ever had. Here, though, is where he differs: no matter what happens, Jack and I always come back to each other. 

         There have been times when I have done or said something that I think "Oh he probably hates me. I'm destined to live alone on a deserted island for the rest of my life with no friends." There have also been times when he has said or done something that has hurt me, and part of me wants to just run away and not talk to him anymore. No matter what, though, we always come back. Neither of us has ever given the other one the "silent treatment," and our arguments never last long at all. I am convinced that this is because both of us make a concerted effort to work through things, and not ignore issues until they become bigger and end up hurting us more. My friendship with Jack has taught me that the small fights we may have are never worth walking away. The fact that we can work through them only makes our friendship stronger. 

          This has all made me think a lot about the idea of commitment. We talk about the commitment to someone in marriage, and how serious that is, but what about friends? What says that we cannot work on skills we will use in marriage with the friends we have now? You see, I believe that if we want to be the type of person who is committed to marriage when it comes, we have to practice that now. I understand that not every relationship is the same, and that some relationships do simply die off; however, I have come to the realization that just because I will be married to a man doesn't mean that the relationship will be fail-proof. I must work on how I react to situations, and more importantly, whether I choose to walk away or stay and fight to make things better. I am confident that working on my habits now will only make my marriage stronger when that day comes.