Labels

Labels. What am I going on about today? You know how people tend to 'label' their relationships with others after a certain stage? You know, like....acquaintances, friends, best friends, BFFs, girlfriend, boyfriend, lover, friends with benefits, mistress, rival, enemy, and so on....

I think the moment you label your relationship, it starts getting messy and potentially primed for problems. Once you assign a label to the relationship, you start having expectations from it. But the other party may not respond the way you want..or feel the same way. Hence, the beginning of issues! It's like once you have expectations, you start to think, oh, they should treat you this way, or 'give' something to you. It should be a give and take thing..it does take 2 to be in a 'relationship' of any sort.

But yet, I kind of understand why we do label our relationships. We have this tendency to want to classify the things in our life. Pay attention to the things/people we value more, and kinda ignore the rest, since we're all fighting against time. So those people with the 'higher' labels would of course have more of our time. It's somewhat of a security thing as well. We want the label so that we are clear about what is going on between the 2 people. For example, the girl would normally ask, "So, are we boyfriend n girlfriend now?" She asks this because she wants to be reassured that she is the only girl the guy is seeing, or else she'd be thinking that the guy is playing with her or just wasting her time and invested efforts/emotions. But this usually results in 2 situations...either the guy sees her as a girlfriend...or not. Very loaded question with lots of potential of heartbreak.

Some people tend to ask, so who is so and so to you? Why do you treat them that way, why do you hang out/why don't you hang out with them? Why don't you work out what is going on between you guys? They find it confusing that I don't always have a label for all my friends. I think after many previous incidents, I've felt that it is usually easier and less messy to not label every single relationship. Of course, it's easy to label the clear-cut ones...like 'i don't like that girl, so she's not my friend'. But other friendships that don't necessarily fall under any specific category, why bother to crack my head over how to label them? I'd rather just enjoy the relationship/companionship as it is. No need to go and ask, "Hey, so what is our relationship? Friends? Besties? Best Friends Forever? Sisters from another mother?"

I think it's more important to look at the big picture than to worry about minor details like that. Like I said, life is short. For all we know, it could really be the end of the world this yr, and we're stressing ourselves over minor details like how do I refer to this person in my life. They have a name, so we just need to say, this is 'Top, my friend,' or that's 'Jessica, the girl I really can't stand.' (Using Kpop stars as examples here..haha!) Easier to just use the basic labels, that they are your friend/not your friend.

Life is already hard and complicated enough without having all these labels...we should just enjoy what we have and take it a day at a time. Just let things happen as they come...get to know the person well..accept them for who they are and how they help you grow as a person. Can't always look at people and think, so what can I get from them today? What benefits do I get from being their friend/girlfriend/bestie etc? Whatever benefits may come your way as a result, should be a BONUS, not the main reason of the relationship. I sometimes feel that I am so pampered by my friends, that I worry how I can repay them...I don't take care of them enough?

But once again, I don't expect everyone to agree with me. I may just be weird this way. *shrugs* Read this if you wanna know more

http://www.howtogetoverarelationship.com/relationship-advice/