It's Official

Now we had officially started our relationship. I sent my friend EG a text some days later. She called me back at once. Screaming her head off. She was so surprised and happy. She was like "Wow!! The guy I introduced you to! How did you start a relationship with him right under my nose and I didn't suspect a thing all along!!" On and on she went, until I told her how it happened. She hung up and called our other friend, who also called me at once. More screams. We were due to resume for our final year at uni in a week, so we agreed that I would spill the beans when we met after resumption.

The next week, we went back to uni and they dragged me out. Over lunch I told them the whole story. Over the summer, "Mr" had graduated from our uni, so we wouldn't be seeing him around campus anymore. But that afternoon, he came to pick me up after lectures. EG was there and she told him, "You have just come to take my friend from me!". The guy just smiled at her and told her that he had his eye on me all along and he only used her connections to get close to me. (But till today she still takes the credit for hooking us up).

From day one, I knew this relationship was different from all my previous ones. So this called for a different approach from what I used to do in the past. For one thing, I had to define the relationship in my mind. Was this a "let's just see how it goes..." relationship or a "this is going to work out" relationship? In the past, I was involved in "let's just see how it goes" relationships.This meant that if it became inconvenient for me, then I would just end the relationship and move on. However, if I wanted this relationship to work out, I must be prepared to stick with it, even when it got inconvenient for me.

Another thing I did was, I stopped taking relationship advice from my girlfriends. Why? Not because they were bad people or I didn't trust them. But because I knew that they had the same level of knowledge and experience as me, so they could not give me better advice than I could give myself. I decided to start taking my relationship advice from people who had gone through this stage of life successfully and were now happily married. At least they could speak from experience, and their experience counts! So I appointed two married couples in my church as my mentors, and my happily married aunty as my relationship adviser. Over the years of our relationship, I gained wisdom from them, until I could learn to spot my past mistakes and avoid them. I remember one instance. At the beginning of our relationship Mr and I had a quarell. I asked my girlfriends for advice. I took their advice and things got worse. Then I asked my aunt, and took her advice. Things got sorted out! Go figure.