Changes

This thought has been reoccurring in my mind for some time. It first came up during a conversation I had with a male friend about his girlfriend.

Long story short, she gave him the trick question of, "Out of all of the girls you loved, who did you love the most?" Just to state, this is unfair for any woman (or person) to ask a man(or anyone you love) this question (and this coming from a female perspective). I don't mean that this is unfair because how can he simply choose which person he loved the most from whatever number of women he actually, legitimately loved, but it's unfair because those women were in different parts of his life in which he was a different person.

I don't believe anyone can truly say that they are in love with their current partner more so than they were with an ex. We all grow and change, so the people who you were friends with, the person you were in a relationship with at one point in your life, are no longer the same...just as you would no long be the same.

I guess the best example is (if you older than eighteen), the high school sweetheart. There are many exceptions or people who have stayed with whomever they were dating in high school and ended up marrying them (with both good and bad results); but the majority of people who have a relationship in high school, idealize the actual person and relationship during or even years after. But the fact remains that you are a different person now than you were in high school. You have different likes, dislikes, new perceptions on the world and on people. Your mind (supposedly) is more open from the experiences you've had between then and now. That is just you as a person. Then you take that ideology of growing and changing and expanding your knowledge of the world and people in it and you apply that to every person you knew extremely well at whatever point in your life. Your experiences will differ, your thoughts are no longer the same. If they were your childhood best friend, they no longer find the same things funny. If they were your significant other, they are no longer the person that you fell in love with. This happens over months or years.

Either way, our experiences cause us to follow different paths, allowing us to meet people who are more like the person we are turning into. Which is why I could never understand people who are divorced (or if a couple broke up), finding out their ex is doing something "unlike them". It wasn't like them at the time, perhaps it was just an urge that they wanted to fulfill; either way, it's wrong to assume that you truly know a person just because you're close to them. Even a person who has been in your life for a multitude of years can surprise you.

~Alicia