The last few years of my life have been rough, and they all culminated into a sort of break down (or explosion, I don't really know) that drug out my entire spring semester of my freshman year of college. I have spent so much of my short dating years either in unhealthy, even dangerous relationships or deep in a relationship with myself and my friends, and those relationships and friendships were mutually exclusive. They did not coexist in the space-time continuum. I think back to the year that many of my friends remember marked by the enormous purple hoodie I wore all the time that belonged to my then-boyfriend. Anytime someone mentions that hoodie, I think about how conspicuously depressed I was, and how nobody noticed. I learn about healthy relationships in my job training and come to the epiphany that the stories my friends and I whisper in matter-of-fact, cold tones are not stories of consent, and though we remember the details that aren't fuzzy from fear, those boys have easily forgotten us. Dating was not a time of self-discovery for myself. Dating was a time where I was buried alive. It only takes a short time (20 minutes if you ask a privileged white man) to destroy the security or confidence of a person's ability to be in a relationship.

I've learned something from the way I've been treated in the past versus now, and I've worked really hard to learn to be a better person these last five months as well as a better partner.

1. Always think before you speak. It took one beautiful woman six weeks to patch up the disaster that six years of male-inflicted scarring had left me. Some days I am not okay, and many days I have to fight myself to be better for her. I hear spite and manipulation forming on my tongue from the hundreds of times it has hit my skin and I have to swallow hard to keep it down and away from her. I am hypervigilante in my mission to never reflect on her what I have absorbed so deeply. I fail sometimes. I say something that makes her feel guilty. I can be spiteful. I can be jealous, but I tell myself that words are never easily erased and I try my hardest to filter out the erratic emotions in the base of my skull.

2. Never have too much pride for an apology. When you love someone, there is nothing you should let come between you in an argument. When you refuse to apologize, you're refusing to move forward with them. Sometimes I have conversations with myself where I wonder if I should be firm and not apologize first to make the point that I am hurt as well, but my friend told me something a few months ago that I always remember: even if it's their fault, if you apologize, then you can forgive them, because you know that they recognize that they're wrong. If your S.O. snaps at you and you apologize to them, they will calm down and understand in their heads that they were wrong even if they don't vocalize it, and following that you realize that you don't need an apology, you just want the other person to recognize that they made you upset. If you do owe your partner an apology and you're too upset or worked up to give it, remind yourself that you also owe them love and respect and kindness- those kinds of reminders really deflate your pride and allow you the softer perspective to want to be on the same page again.

3. Always be honest. Always tell the truth. You can't be on the same page with your partner, they can't understand you, if you don't tell them the truth. As long as you both care about each other and work hard to maintain that love (with honest communication) there is no truth you cannot handle together. That is all there is to it- tell the truth. Trust is hard enough from where we are all coming from, broken as we are. Don't give your partner another reason to be insecure, that's not fair to them at all.

4. Insecurity doesn't help anything. I was in the middle of telling my girlfriend about this ridiculous message I got from a guy because she is my girlfriend and I wanted to feel her protectiveness, and also because she is my best friend and I wanted to rant. It occurred to me that she probably gets messages from people all the time. That thought sent my heart rate into overdrive, but I took a breath and realized that other people's actions do not affect our love for each other. Jealousy is a real, natural emotion in our brains. It can make us sweat and cry and scream. Rationalize with yourself. Other people are not part of your relationship so you don't need to worry about how close they are getting. Trust your partner, and if they mess up, it is not your fault. Insecurity dances with your anxiety because you know what has happened to you before but don't let that stop you from holding a person's hand without the need to look behind their back. It's blind, it's terrifying, it's hard but you can't be on the same page with your partner if you don't trust them. It would suck to find out they were doing you right all along and you didn't have faith in them.

5. Forgiveness is all or nothing. Tiny things to big deals, if you say you forgive your S.O. you have to mean it. Bringing it up later is not forgiveness. Using it against them is not forgiveness. Using any person's mistakes as an edge is a manipulation tactic and you are hurting them maybe more than they hurt you. You can't heal without forgiving. You can't move forward without forgiving. When you are hurt, ask yourself if you love this person, do you want to let them go, do they deserve a second chance (or a third or fourth etc.)? Forgiving your partner can range from the smallest things like them not putting the dishes up when you asked them to, to bigger problems that cut a lot deeper, but it's up to you to decide whether to continue the conversation until you're ready to forgive (it has to happen eventually), or let it go and give it all you have. Pride gets in the way of forgiveness just like it gets in the way of apologies and you have to have the same conversations with yourself to get rid of that pride.

6. It is okay to say you need something. A relationship is about you, your partner and you as a couple. You have bad experiences. You have insecurities. You have fears and doubts. You have wants and needs. They cannot meet you halfway and help you in the process of loving yourself if you don't tell them what you need. Maybe you're used to it always being about the other person, or you've been trained to be silent about what you need, but if they care about you they will listen and make it happen. All you have to do is ask. There is so much power in positive communication.

7. This is not the same as the hurt before. Its okay to fall, trust, be blind. This person is not those people that hurt you. This relationship is not those periods of hell. There is no comparison. There are no parallels to draw between the two. This is something new and different and good. It's okay to feel it. It's okay to go all in.