There are lots of fears that people develop in their experience in dating and creating friendships. There are people you’ll come in contact with that shake the foundations of your trust. However, this is normal. In order to succeed, there must be failures in your life. In order to develop an archetype of the type of person who is ideal to keep in your life, you must also find those who aren’t ideal. Without failures, you’ll never know what success truly feels like.

It’s easy to be closed off from people that you’d otherwise welcome into your life since you’ve been hurt so many times, and there are risks that do not ever pay off. The peril you put yourself through might not even pay off that often, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t worth the attempt. One of the biggest regrets that you’ll end up with in your life is never trying something. Without giving something a chance, how can you know what the cards might hold? Ever since I was a kid, I’ve followed the adage “expect the worst and hope for the best.”

I’ve tried very hard to be open and welcoming to people in my life, regardless of my past. I’ve always held faith that people are inherently good, and everyone should be given the opportunity to prove themselves to whomever they wish.

While everyone has their own story, I’m going to discuss a few of mine that I hope will resonate with many of you:

Long distance relationships are nearly impossible to successfully manage, but I believe that every relationship is truly what you make of it. The difference between 30 miles and 300 miles is irrelevant when the levels of dedication and trust are where they should be for the relationship to blossom. Long distance relationships also puts a person's need for physical contact to the test, as they must wait until whenever their next reunion is. Some people limit their pool of possible significant others to their geographical location, but there are also those (like me) who refuse to “settle” for a closer person and just go for it.

While distance can test the mettle of a relationship, that doesn’t inherently mean that it was the cause of the failure of the relationship. All relationships have the possibility of failure, and that doesn’t mean that a future relationship should be avoided because it has a similar variable in the equation.

The friends we make early in life help us grow, just as we help them. Friendships which are formed at a young age are frequently put to the test as people develop into who they are and who they don’t want to be. My best friend in middle school and I had a falling out which lasted longer than expected. We remained in the same friend group and ate at the same lunch table while ignoring each other’s comments in group discussions. Once we reached high school there was a different mindset within both of us which created room to go back to what we used to be. There was the possibility of one of us being stubborn and not letting it go. Luckily, we both gave each other the chance to prove that this was the desired outcome and I have never regretted this decision. I am so thankful that I have had someone like her in my life for such an extended period of time, even if some time in the middle was lost. She was worth the risk, just as so many people are.

My high school sweetheart will always be correlated with a multitude of lessons that I needed to learn. He was the type of guy who saw the negative in all the people around him, besides me, during the time we were together. There were many people in my life that were outwardly cruel to me, and I gave them chance after chance to redeem themselves. I became friends with this older man who was, for all intensive purposes, a mentor to me. While I was only 17 and learning to cope with my internal struggles, he was able to mentally manipulate me. While my boyfriend tried to reason with me for my own good, I kept putting myself into horrible situations.

This man pushed me to a mental break which also pushed away the first person I had ever learned to love. I knew that it was my fault that I lost him, but it wasn't my fault that I was mentally abused. Eventually there came a point where threads began appearing on forums discussing my private life and many things which I had once shared in confidence. They discussed and laughed at my panic attacks, my relationship life, and spread lies about who I was as a person. Having the people around you that you once held dear betraying you at that magnitude left me feeling so alone that it wasn't a situation I could recover from. Yet, later on, I reached out to my high school sweetheart. We reconciled and would go on to be the best of friends for a period of time. To this day we’re still close.

In both friendships to relationships, some conflicts are merely the result of bad timing. There are various situations which cannot be remedied just by letting time pass. That being said, many will be naturally resolved in some amount of time. When a person means the world to you or takes you into their life, it’s hard to forever forget that feeling, as the memories will always be there. Some people are worth the risk to see if a new beginning is possible, due to the original factors that brought you together. After a breakup with someone who also felt like a best friend or another half, it’s completely reasonable to become friends with them, as there are many factors that make any type of interaction with one another gratifying. While this may seem like an uncomfortable situation, the concept is rather simple. If you once spent all your time and effort on a person, it should be rather simple to gauge if giving them a chance back into your life is worth the possibility of failure.

Of course everyone has different situations which they are put in, and we’re all just people trying to get by in this world. Try to give people the chance that you wish you could be given.