The Struggle to Stay Happy: a Piece by Treasure Pinkston

I feel honored to write this blog about the struggles in my relationship. I hope that the people who read this will learn from my mistakes and grow from it. 

My relationship has been on and off for the past 12 years and we’ve had a lot of problems since day 1. The number one problem when we first started was distance. We communicated only through letters and phone calls. After a while, the distance killed us and we reached out to other people, rather than each other.  We didn’t last long, but love brought us together once again and we gave it another try.

Things were fine until people started coming into the relationship, mainly my friends. They eventually became problem number two. By this time, distance was no longer a problem. My friends judged my boyfriend for what he didn’t have rather than his personality. We, as a couple, struggled, because we were constantly fighting my friends. I grew tired of the situation and we just parted ways. I jeopardized my happiness for my friends. I wasn’t happy with my decision and neither was he. So, I came up with the idea to date my boyfriend secretly.  Eventually, he grew tired of my always lying to my friends and I had to make a decision to tell them or lose him. I told them and that’s when the real drama started.

The lying turned into fighting which resulted in him neglecting me. It really bothered me that he was neglecting me, so I turned to someone else and I cheated. That was one of the worst things I could ever have done. Yes, he didn’t pay attention, but I should have talked to him first and let him know what was going on before I went to someone else. Thank god me cheating didn’t end our relationship. It was a struggle to get past, still is, but we sat down and talked about our plans and feelings.  

Since then, we have worked through each problem by talking it out. Each time we ran into a situation, we could have let it end us, but we didn’t. No matter what the situation is, communication and understanding is the key to any relationship, along with compromise, quality time, and security.  I’m glad that my relationship has survived throughout all the struggles and hardships, but I know that it’s not over yet.

Treasure Pinkston