vows

photo courtesy of thisrusticlife via therusticarchives

As you may remember, I dubbed 2012 "the year of the Allie," meaning that I would take care of myself and my needs and really enjoy and live my life and thus far, I think I've done a pretty good job: trying new exercise classes, getting my hair done without caring about what other people think, concentrating on this blog, volunteering, trying new foods, camping, quitting my job... and so on. But another thing I've really made a conscious effort to do is to put myself out there in the dating world. Though I complain about being perpetually single, I don't do much about it. I will admit that I have romantic and probably unrealistic expectations for dating. I want to be fought for and I want to feel loved and of course, love in return.

Through this newfound and semi-forced confidence, I've met some cool people. Some I've hoped would turn into a romance but mostly, the encounters have just been friendly, which is wonderful. New friends are always fun and I enjoy learning about people and their life paths.

But anyways, that's not what this post is about. In one of my bold moments, I gave my number to a guy, we'll call him Bob. Bob and I texted for a while and then it kind of fizzled. When I bumped into him at his place of work a month or so later, we starting chatting again. Things were looking up until one of his co-workers informed me that Bob is, in fact, married. In typical "the year of the Allie" fashion, I called him out and he responded, "but things are bad and I'm on the fence."

Dear "Bob," it just doesn't matter how bad things are.

I'm no expert, but he vowed to love this woman and to be true to her and if things aren't going as planned, bailing and texting a random girl (me) just doesn't seem like the right thing to do. This small and seemingly insignificant encounter kind of shattered my hopes. Bob and I never hung out or went on a date; just casual get-to-know-you text messaging. But putting myself in his wife's shoes just broke my heart. Of course this is an extreme example but I think that we see this type of carelessness in everyday life as well.

One of the reasons I started my love stories series was to foster my vow to take care of myself because love is definitely the number one thing I get down about. I feel like all I hear about is failed relationships and cheating husbands/wives and it makes me sad. Keeping the faith and vowing to yourself to not settle is a constant struggle. And besides romantic relationships, it tears me apart when I witness people being downright rude and terrible to complete strangers... in my opinion, no one deserves it. You don't know what battle that person is fighting and you don't know if their day was, gasp, worse than yours.

I think what scares me the most is that cheating on your significant other, getting frustrated too easily with your loved ones and being a complete jerk to a perfect stranger is becoming the norm and even worse, widely accepted. But it doesn't have to be that way.

photo courtesy of meggielynne

I don't know what the goal of this post is but I just wanted to say: treat people how you want to be treated. Whether they're your best friend, your significant other or the barista at the coffee shop who might be going a little slower than usual, be kind. It's as simple as that. If we could all just adhere to that, I think we would be a lot better off.