In this day and age, millennials are told that you must always make your relationship a #1 priority if you expect it to work. Yet I have a problem with this consuming view, it only fosters the idea that if you have a boyfriend then nothing else matters. If you choose to be in a relationship with someone you need to make them A top priority, not THE priority. Sometimes life gets in the way and may not be possible to do that. It is okay to choose yourself over a relationship, here is why.
1. Relationships take time.
Whether you are in a long distance relationship or you live with your S.O. time must be given to them. What you put in is what you get out. You cannot water a fern once a month and expect it to grow. It will wither and die. Relationships are the same way. If time and attention is not given, then there is no time to grow as a couple. I was in a long distance relationship, with 4 hours of separation, and as time drew on I found myself having less time to devote to my S.O. I did not think it was fair to him if I was so busy with school and my sorority that I would only be able to text him a few times a day until I inevitably fell asleep on him. To this day he is upset that I convinced myself what he deserved when that is his job. But that is not what this is. It is me saying that I don’t have the time that I actively want to give him, and at that rate it isn’t fair to me either. I simply end up feeling like rubbish for giving him the short end of the stick.
2. Relationships take effort.
Relationships are hard, but sometimes life is harder. If you are a busy college student, like me, then you know how it feels to look at your planner and wonder when you will have time to breathe in the next week. There is always a meeting to attend, an email to send and an assignment that takes longer than you plan on. Not because of procrastination of course… but when you’re constantly going from one thing to the next there isn’t always a lot of effort left over to devote to a relationship. Unfortunately, you cannot put 110% into everything and remain a sane 20-year-old. This was so true with my relationship. I could not give him 100% of my time or effort. He hated that when he was so willing to put all the effort in, I would not let him do it. A relationship cannot be one-sided. And I have obligations that I cannot forget at the drop of a hat for a spontaneous 4-hour road trip. I will take the fault for that but I will not apologize.
3. Priorities can change daily.
Since you have to choose what percentage of effort to put into your daily and weekly tasks, some days your priorities will change. Because I made my best friend a priority on Monday when she needed me, I didn’t get that extra homework done for Tuesday morning. Suddenly that assignment gets moved up on the list before bed because it needs to get done. Other days I make napping or getting to bed before 1 am a priority. Let’s be real, sleeping is my favorite pastime. I had to figure out my top three priorities: my sorority and family, my academics, and my mental health. When I couldn’t put my relationship in the top three on a daily basis, then I didn’t feel as if I was putting my all into it. I truly wish I could have.
4. Mental Health is a struggle.
When you are busy and juggling so many to-do lists, mental health can start to suffer. At such a small liberal arts college we seem to take pride the moment someone says “I didn’t get to bed until 3am because of x, y and z” and the unstoppable response from another student saying “At least you got sleep, I pulled an all-nighter!” It has been proven that student performance suffers from lack of sleep, and worse after an all-nighter. So why do we give such praise to activities that put us through the wringer? Have you ever pushed yourself so hard for so long that you didn’t know which way was up? Have you ever put your mental stability to the side in order to help a friend in need? If you are suffering to keep control of your mental health, then it can be extremely difficult to be in a relationship. I am the type of person who puts the people I love above myself. What they need will almost always come first. When I struggle to keep a good grasp on m mental health, putting everyone’s needs before my own can become a detriment very quickly It is okay to need time to focus on you, outside of your relationship. It’s not that you’ve lost your way, it’s simply that you need to stop and begin to enjoy the journey, to start off on the right foot again. You are going to struggle to fulfill your own needs if you constantly turn away from them. You’re going to trip at some point along the path if you keep walking backwards
Choosing yourself over a relationship may seem selfish, especially when your S.O. has done nothing wrong. Yet why is the culture so focused on needing to go through some dramatic reason to break up with someone for it to be valid. Not having time to devote to someone or be able to make them a priority is something that calls for a reevaluation and redefinition of the relationship. That should be socially acceptable. My relationship was not a bad one, I have no grudge against my S.O. and I actively miss him. Yet it became clear that I wasn’t putting my all into your relationship and, more importantly, I was not putting 100% into the relationship with myself. So I had to make hard decision to choose myself over the relationship, and I will forever stand behind my choice.
