Top Lessons Learned From a 5 Year Relationship

From the highs and lows from being in a 5 year relationship, here are some of the biggest lessons that I've learned about myself. (I will try to minimize the amount of sensitive info out of respect for her and our relationship

1. I've learned that I didn't really know how to love someone.

I did love this amazing woman as much as I have ever loved anybody and I think that she was also madly in love with me as well. Going from talking stages to talking about life's next stages together, things were pretty intense between us in the middle of our relationship. One of the biggest things that happened in my relationship was an eventual shift in the dynamic between us. I talk about it more in this post. Since that shift, I focused my attention on the lustful things as means of showing my renewed feelings and attraction towards her. In doing so, I mistakenly didn't place as much focus on repairing the connection and love. I think that our relationship was grounded too much on the physical things of this world instead of the spiritual and soul ties that come from a deeper and genuine connection. I take 100% responsibility for things falling apart. Especially because I was the one that initially the poison of "getting to know other people" into our relationship.

One of my buddies has phrased this very well to me from his experience in his long relationship and I couldn't agree more for my relationship. He said that "it never would have worked because I wasn't the person I needed to be to make it work." That is about as accurate as it gets for me too.

We broke up in January of 2023 and since then things have changed like crazy for me. Like someone was looking out for me from above, I got a call from an old baseball coach a couple weeks after we broke up and he said that he was starting some life coaching and he wanted to see if I wanted to be his first client for free at the start. Since my time working with him, I really started this arc of self-development and improvement in my life like I have never experienced before (He's got a killer podcast too that you should check out). These coaching calls have been everything from a therapy call, dating coach, accountability session, business coaching call, and everything in between.

This journey of improving myself ultimately highlighted many of the issues I had. From the negative sides towards the end of our relationship to the

My personal development journey seemed to have hit a wall at a certain point in my life and I felt like I continued to fall into a negative and cyclical journey of self-destruction and falling back onto old habits in the realms of dating, drinking, complaining, complacency, and confusion.

One of the largest lessons that I pray everyone can learn in their life is the lesson of self-love. I was asked a question by my parents that showed how empty I was inside. They asked me if I loved myself.

2. I learned the difference between not giving up and giving it your all.

I will forever be grateful for her involvement in my life and also for her exit. I was nowhere the man I wanted or needed to be and I put too much pressure on her to help me become that person. Near the end of things between us, we both became versions of ourselves that we weren't proud of and I know I burnt her out beyond a certain point to where she just gave up. I had this notion that I was always going to fight through the tough times and fight for us. The one issue with this approach was that I didn't give 100% of my effort 100% of the time.

3. I learned that I unknowingly became a p***y and a crappy leader in our relationship

I read a book that I would recommend to any man who wants a better relationship with themself and their partner. Many of the lessons in this book are absolute gold. The book is called Way of the Superior Man. I honestly don't give a crap what you think about gender roles in relationships because there are some things that will stand the test of time. I believe men should be the leaders in their lives and in their relationship. Masculinity is such an amazing thing and a woman that can bring out this side in a man (by understanding her femininity and using it)

4. I learned that you need to re-assess you and your partner's desires in your relationship periodically

One thing that I wish we would have done was re-assess our relationship to see where we both were, what we both wanted, and to work through the hard parts where we didn't align. As people grow and change, what they want in their lives changes too.