What have you learned from 2020 and relationships?

Heya Singles. I wanted to throw this out there and see if anyone else wanted to share their story.

I'll say I've finally learned that I don't "need" a man around.  Of course I want one but it took me awhile to finally get in that mindset that I am okay without. I developed more skills this year,  got away from the city and have meet some awesome people doing this. My friendships are stronger and my confidence to get stuff done has grown.

Not really about intimate relationships, but just in general.

Give people some slack, to a point. You don't know what challenges they're going through. You don't know if they lost income, if they're terrified of not being able to feed their kids, etc. Be kind, stop judging others so much.

Comment retracted.  Let's just say that 2020 sucked!

Judson Carroll wrote:Comment retracted.  Let's just say that 2020 sucked!

Haha I hear you. A lot of it did.

Me in 2019: Well, I'm finally settled in one place, but it's probably best to get some of the most urgent work done around this absurdly derelict farm before I look for a partner... make a better first impression...

I mean, it's not like dating is is going to be shut down next year or anything...


Oops. No time like the past, apparently.

D Nikolls wrote:Me in 2019: Well, I'm finally settled in one place, but it's probably best to get some of the most urgent work done around this absurdly derelict farm before I look for a partner... make a better first impression...

I mean, it's not like dating is is going to be shut down next year or anything...


Oops. No time like the past, apparently.

I bet your farm is looking amazing though 😉

This past year was rough ( All the 2020 specific stuff was icing on the struggles, for all of us) and it would have been a lot worse without my friends (especially local community) and my family. I went through a painful break up, dealt with a medical thing, and made huge painful, slow progress on my house. I worked my butt off solo many times. But, I stayed sane and was also physically supported through all of that and more because of those people. And I was there for them with their own stuff.

This community, especially the staff, have also added so much.

This year was filled with blessings... I need my people....Life is sweet....

Sonja Draven wrote:

This year was filled with blessings... I need my people....Life is sweet....

I love it. It takes a village and I'm glad to hear you had one!
Thanks for sharing.

Ok I'm not single so I probably shouldn't answer but...I'm going to.

So first off I've learned that I do genuinely like my husband. It helps. I've also realized that time together on dates is incredibly important to our marital health. We used to do one a month and now that nothing is open we haven't had any and man oh man we need one.

I'm married but answering anyways, relationships are more than sexual right? But for that, we've been enormously blessed. Other than the annoyance of masks, fear of the future and how our children will live, our personal life has went pretty untouched. We added homeschool for two kids and I took a ten percent pay cut (but also a cut in hours ). We dealt with extended family emergencies left and right. But our day to day life only changed for our 15 year old boy. He was always happiest home anyways and has adapted beautifully.

Extended family relationships have been hard, at best. My only close by family members, our only true support system here is too scared to be that. While they smoke, sit in a dusty house all day, eat junk and go to WalMart regularly, we are too dangerous to be around now. We don't hang out with anyone outside of work, definitely no more dangerous than any cashier at Walmart. That has hurt my heart immensely. My view of them has changed, those that rely on others for support without giving back. While I am sad, it is overall their decision to stay unhealthy and afraid. Just won't be putting the extra effort I used anymore.
It has been a year of growth for many!

I realized that even though 2020 sucked, and I'm pessimistically predicting more of the same for 2021, things in my life became more "black and white" regarding relationships. The good got better, and the bad got worse.

I've been married 28 years, happily, and it only got better. We've always homeschooled our boys, and people seemed to "get it" now that we made the right decision for our family. Suddenly, we weren't the crazy, uber-religious hermits people thought we were.

However, difficult relationships with extended family have only become more strained. We've always been the "oddballs" in our families. I would have thought the idea of more self-sustainment/permaculture/"stick it to the man" mentality would have become more attractive to our extended family given lockdowns and closures, but unfortunately, we've become even weirder to most of them. They only want to talk on Zoom, but we don't have a way to join Zoom (no smartphones...weird crazy hippies we are, LOL!) So they think we're purposely ignoring them, which only feeds their negative ideas of us. They don't have an issue with calling Walmart for curbside delivery or ordering a meal for takeout, and they think we're weird that we don't eat out. We should be outraged that restaurants are closed, but we don't eat out!!

(Side note: You know you're a weirdo when a global pandemic hits, and life just doesn't change all that much for you.)

We had to cut all ties with some friends this year. They are anti-vaxxers (which I fully support for everyone to choose their own convictions, but it's relevant to the story here) and since my hubbie works at a hospital, they've specifically asked us to stay away...after all, he might give their kids cooties or something...sigh... As a previous commenter stated, who's to say the cashiers at WalMart aren't carrying some dreadful disease? Oh well, that was a "good riddance" to that relationship, in my opinion.

I guess 2020 taught me relationship-wise to keep my friends close, value their loyalty, be loyal back, and gladly let people leave your life if your time meant to be with them is done.

I'm so glad I've gotten to find other "weirdos" like y'all fellow permies. Y'all are weird like me.

Every time I try to type here, it ends up as a rant. My family is toxic. I'm not legally allowed to live on my farm until there's an actual non-mobile non-tiny house there, and I can't afford rent, so my options are a bit limited. (Wish I'd known about the legal quirks before buying, but I didn't know such restrictions were even possible on land that's THAT far from any city.)

Every day I get a teensy bit closer to making my escape. This year was harder, because there was literally no solitude. I couldn't even drive out to the farm alone, because dad would insist I needed his "help", and Mom would beg me to get him out of the house for a few hours.

If you've ever had to deal with toxic people, you know that it's important they not learn how close you are to dumping them. Hard to do with them looking over your shoulder 24/7.

After attempting a relationship for the first time in a decade, I was reminded of many lessons and learned some new ones.

I learned not to ignore "red flags." At my core, I have always believed a relationship was believing in someone despite their faults, and being willing to help them overcome them, as they do the same for you. Now, I think it would be best to just nip it in the bud at the first sign. It's not worth the heartache and depression.

I learned long distance relationships are probably not a good idea. I had never tried a long distance relationship until this year. I never understood how one should even work. I thought maybe I had been wrong all these years, and it could actually be a handy tool to use to find someone true, and with more similar interests than could be found locally. I now believe the distance just makes it less personal, and easier for someone who wants to hurt you.

I learned that a time when the world is in crisis is not a good time to attempt a relationship. At first, it was so nice just to know there's someone out there maybe thinking about you. No matter how bad things looked, no matter how bad your day was, just getting a text or thinking about the infinite possibilities of the future with someone made you feel like hope was not lost. Then that someone shatter's your dreamworld that protected you from all the negativity. Now, you have to face not only the chaos of the world, but also the emotional fallout of the betrayal of someone you had just fantasized about possibly spending your life loving. It just isn't worth the risk.

I was reminded that no matter who someone is, no matter how nice or intelligent they seem to be, no matter how much you like or respect them, they CAN still betray you.

I was reminded not to attempt a relationship with someone part of a workplace, group, club, etc. in which you would like to remain active. They will be a constant reminder of your pain every time you see them.

I was reminded not to allow myself to believe someone is a good person just because they like something that I believe is good. I really need to work on this one.

I learned something unusual; this is my first attempt at a relationship since having a dog. I had a friend in a group on facebook who went through a breakup and her sweet dog just sat at the door waiting for her ex to get home for weeks. I am so glad I did not have this issue. I don't know how I could have dealt with it. My dog is the most perfect example of non-judgemental love and faithfulness I have ever seen. To think of someone breaking his heart...and then having to deal with my own... I need to make sure I don't allow myself in this position if I ever try again.

Jenny Jones wrote:

D Nikolls wrote:Me in 2019: Well, I'm finally settled in one place, but it's probably best to get some of the most urgent work done around this absurdly derelict farm before I look for a partner... make a better first impression...

I mean, it's not like dating is is going to be shut down next year or anything...


Oops. No time like the past, apparently.

I bet your farm is looking amazing though 😉

Funny thing is, my friends who know what it started as tell me it's great... but without a basis for comparison it still looks like a disaster. Double oops..

Melonie Corder wrote:
Extended family relationships have been hard, at best.

I've had a similar experience.  Close family is scattered across the globe, and technology allowed us to become closer during the pandemic.  Extended family is largely rural, and bought in fully to the hoax/conspiracy sentiment.  Even as the virus burned through their community.  Even as it affected their family members.  I didn't spend any time with any of them in 2020, because that same technology and social media allows you to see they're not taking it seriously.  They're not keeping themselves safe.  And they're not going to keep you safe.  

For me, 2020 reinforced the idea of doing more than paying lip service to compromise.  You can take the 30,000 foot view of how we distribute scarce resources globally, or regionally, down to how many rolls of toilet paper or bottles of disinfectant you'll really need in a month.  Down to the mechanics of how two adults spend 20 hours a day with each other, for months, without going nuts.  

Toward the end of April, after...six weeks or so in lockdown, a colleague confessed they were keeping me on a Zoom call because they just needed to talk to someone other than their wife or their children.  I'm an introvert at heart, and I think some of those traits have made the past year easier on me than it's been for others.  I'm also terrible at checking in with people- I tend to work under the assumption that no news is good news.  If 2020's been good for anything, it's made me better at recognizing more people than I ever realized face struggles I know little about, and they may not know you're there for them unless you actually tell them.

I've learned being cynical and snarky is tiresome.  It's easy, it's lazy, it isn't particularly constructive.  It can feel gratifying in the moment, but it doesn't move the ball forward.  

Ellendra Nauriel wrote:Every day I get a teensy bit closer to making my escape.

I hear you and I feel for you, Ellendra. Hang in there and keep inching closer to your goal. I also escaped a toxic family (try to always keep at least one continent or ocean between us at all times) and this year I cannot count how many times I have said "thank goodness I am so far away" as the craziness went to entirely new levels. Distance stops a lot of things from being my problem, and I set the limits. I wish you progress in 2021 on getting closer to the exit.

I've been single for about seven years now.  I find myself looking for reasons not to connect with another human more and more.  This year has been really great for that!

When I do think about making a connection, it's purely for utilitarian reasons.  Sometimes I think to myself, "It'd be nice if someone else could preserve the food I grew, and maybe even prepare it."  Then I come to my senses and realize I can do it all (and have been for quite a while).  It's really not that hard, I have plenty of spare time even with doing everything myself.  In fact, I think I'm pretty lazy and should be capable of twice the output I'm currently doing.  That being said, I enjoy reading the profiles in the personals section here.  The problem is I have much higher standards of others than my own personal standards for myself.  I need to work on that.....maybe next year I'll work on that.

This whole pandemic thing made me realize I'm not living in a very good area as far as "sustainability" goes.  It's probably not impossible, but damn, if the water ever got turned off, it'd be close to impossible for me to live here.  That's not something I ever really gave much thought to until now.
Now I'm looking at land in the east.  Maybe around TN or thereabouts.

I think this year I also became one of them a-holes that considers themselves "spiritual".  Gosh I cringe when I hear the term, but I think maybe I "get it" now.  I never liked calling myself an "atheist" because I always felt like there was some kind of "creator", but I did call myself that for the reasons of simplifying a conversation.  Now, I'm thinking there's something to paganism.  No, I don't believe in paganism, but the simple definition of it seems to be the most reasonable thing I've ever heard.  (at least the quick definition I read on a google search)  

I'd also like to say my life has had almost no change since the pandemic started.  I work in southern Utah, and my workplace requires masks, but doesn't enforce anyone wear them.  So about fifty percent of the people I interact with on a daily basis don't wear them.  A lot of them don't even believe covid is a real threat despite the fact that two of my coworkers had to go to the emergency room due to breathing difficulties after having contracted it.  I have had chronic bronchitis since I was a kid, so I always wear a mask for other people (and myself), but it is quite mind boggling to me the same people who'd love to be drafted to fight in a war to protect their fellow citizens feel as though wearing a mask is a step too far to help protect their fellow citizens.  People, they sure have some quirks about them!  lol  That was a big lesson I learned from this year.  A mix of age and politics being the reason for not wearing them from my observations.
I'm not perfect by any means.  Like I said, my life has had almost no noticeable change because of the virus other than I wear a mask now.  Really, it's nice to not have to trim my nose hair, or shave my face as often, and I can freely talk to myself right around other people (quietly).  Hell, I don't really even need to brush my teeth, or worry about my runny nose anymore!  lol  I might still wear a mask after this whole thing is over just out of convenience!
In the last 300 days, I'd guesstimate I've gone to the grocery store more than 250 times (I shop daily after work and also on the weekends).  I just buy a couple of items at a time.  Fresh fruit, and beer mainly, lol.

Well, happy new year to all the happy single folks out there, all the happy couples, all the miserable couples, and all the miserable singles too!  Hopefully 2021 will be the same, or bring in the thing you were wishing for to bring you joy.

Did someone say there's a pandemic.... Haven't really noticed much different here... Sure would be nice to have a partner to share all this with, I guess are type are few and far between... LOL

[quote=Tom Berens]Did someone say there's a pandemic.... Haven't really noticed much different here... Sure would be nice to have a partner to share all this with, I guess are type are few and far between... LOL[/quote]

Well I like how this thread opened up to family and personal relationships as well as us singles!

Joshua Bertram wrote:
In the last 300 days, I'd guesstimate I've gone to the grocery store more than 250 times (I shop daily after work and also on the weekends).  I just buy a couple of items at a time.  Fresh fruit, and beer mainly, lol.

So it is just not me...funny how bananas keep better than beer :)

I have been single for 7 years, in my early 30s, and this past year has gotten me wanting to be in a relationship.

I've gotten into a bit of a situation with dating apps in the city I'm in - I'm not where I want to be, but the pandemic has brought me back to the city I grew up in.

I want to meet someone special and have never used dating apps so much as I have now (not for hookups but in seeking a partner).

It's been tough on the emotions and I ought to stop but for better or worse I am matching with men who, on paper, seem to share lots of the same visions and values for community and the environment.

I usually am the more open-minded party however and pursue and have had the reality of not fitting in with the dominant culture of the city slap me in the face a few times.

Ellendra Nauriel wrote:Every time I try to type here, it ends up as a rant. My family is toxic. I'm not legally allowed to live on my farm until there's an actual non-mobile non-tiny house there, and I can't afford rent, so my options are a bit limited. (Wish I'd known about the legal quirks before buying, but I didn't know such restrictions were even possible on land that's THAT far from any city.)

Every day I get a teensy bit closer to making my escape. This year was harder, because there was literally no solitude. I couldn't even drive out to the farm alone, because dad would insist I needed his "help", and Mom would beg me to get him out of the house for a few hours.

If you've ever had to deal with toxic people, you know that it's important they not learn how close you are to dumping them. Hard to do with them looking over your shoulder 24/7.

Someone I know got a shipping container for a permanent structure on their land for the same purpose, if that helps. He got a porta potty too because the county didn't like his out house where he's located in Crystal River, FL.

Jenna Lion wrote:

Someone I know got a shipping container for a permanent structure on their land for the same purpose, if that helps. He got a porta potty too because the county didn't like his out house where he's located in Crystal River, FL.

I looked into that. Where my property is, it would be nearly impossible to get it delivered. And even without delivery, shipping containers around here are more expensive than mobile homes and house kits.

[quote=Tom Berens]Did someone say there's a pandemic.... Haven't really noticed much different here... Sure would be nice to have a partner to share all this with, I guess are type are few and far between... LOL[/quote]

Yes I was in the same boat: being offline and doing my usual thing of staying in my little corner with all my winter supplies, I didn't know about the covid until Mar 15 when I arrived at 5am for the Woodstock Ontario fur and feathers swap meet. I met the police -- a paddy wagon and 3 cars: they saw bouncing lights: on my head and a windup flashl8ght while I was ousting cages to grab an hours sleep in the back of the vehicle, Nunavut played, offered to move.

They didn't know about this event: it's outdoor, but they left me in peace, and when the grain guy showed up at 6am I found out why they swarmed me lol

Other than that, the only thing that changed was I watched the neighbours unloading supplies by the truck full stolen from anglophones not permitted to check on their vacation homes. We had no covid: almost no people, no stores, no gas station, and even the post office became out of jurisdiction/ road blocks.

At least with Nunavut plates they couldn't get rid of me: Nunavut was shut down. Jan 1 2021 they were partying it up. I think there is a lot to day for isolation. Once you get used to your own company... Internet is nice though. At the homestead I have no TV, no satellite,  no internet,  and very scratchy radio with one rock station in English.

[quote=Tom Berens]Did someone say there's a pandemic.... Haven't really noticed much different here... Sure would be nice to have a partner to share all this with, I guess are type are few and far between... LOL[/quote]

Yes I was in the same boat: being offline and doing my usual thing of staying in my little corner with all my winter supplies, I didn't know about the covid until Mar 15 when I arrived at 5am for the Woodstock Ontario fur and feathers swap meet. I met the police -- a paddy wagon and 3 cars: they saw bouncing lights: on my head and a windup flashlight while I was ousting cages to grab an hours sleep in the back of the vehicle, Nunavut plated, I did offer to move but they told me I could stay.

They didn't know about this event: it's outdoor, but they left me in peace, and when the grain guy showed up at 6am I found out why they swarmed me lol

Other than that, the only thing that changed was I watched the neighbours unloading supplies by the truck full stolen from anglophones not permitted to check on their vacation homes. We had no covid: almost no people, no stores, no gas station, and even the post office became out of jurisdiction/ road blocks.

At least with Nunavut plates they couldn't get rid of me: Nunavut was shut down. Jan 1 2021 they were partying it up. I think there is a lot to day for isolation. Once you get used to your own company... Internet is nice though. At the homestead I have no TV, no satellite,  no internet,  and very scratchy radio with one rock station in English.