SoapNights / Kristin Nicole

I'm not in Love Anymore...

The Question:

Dear Kristin Nicole;

I’m 27. I’ve been with my girlfriend for a little over 3 years and we recently bought a house together, last year in fact. I feel like I don’t really love her anymore. not in that way at least. she’s a great person but she’s more like a best friend then my girlfriend. we don’t really have an intimate relationship. when I met her she was a virgin so nothing really happened for a while which is fine with me. but I think because we waited so long it killed those types of feelings for me. I tried to fight through it but it didn’t work and now I’m stuck in this position. I know life is short and I shouldn’t waste my time or hers if I’m not happy, I just don’t know how to go about it. thank you so much for listening I really do appreciate it.

~ Confused

My Response:

Dear Confused;

I don’t have to tell you that it would have been wise to really think about buying a home with someone if you were already feeling that you didn’t love her anymore. What’s done is done, now you have to think about the options you have to take. You are still young, don’t settle just because you just bought a house with your girlfriend, if you aren’t in love, you aren’t in love, and it isn’t fair to yourself or her you keep living a lie. The worst thing that can happen is that you lose your home and go into foreclosure, your credit gets messed up for a few years and you rebuild it. But let’s try to avoid that…. First you need to sit down with your girlfriend and really try to explain to her that you don’t want to hurt her but you are just not in love with her anymore. At the end of the day, those words are going to sting right through her. I’m not going to lie, it’s going to hurt her but at the end of the day it’s for the best. After talking to her you need to figure out what you want to do with the house. Did you go into the house 50/50 or did you buy the house alone? If you bought the house alone, then you have the rights to the house and you need to let her know that she needs to move out. Give her a deadline because if you don’t, sometimes the person will try to linger in order to rekindle the relationship. If you went into the house 50/50 you have two choices, either you buy her out or she buys you out in order to keep the house, or you try to sell it. Since the economy still isn’t doing too good and you just bought the house you might not be able to sell it, or if you do you might have to take the lose and move on. If you don’t want to sell, which I recommend you don’t, and hold on to the house until you can make some money off of it, then you can rent it out where the rent can cover the mortgage and taxes etc, so that neither of you really have to worry about paying for the house. I would definitely put away at least two to three months just in case you can’t rent it out. I know this is a lot to handle on top of breaking up but it’s something you need to think about. Be honest with yourself and your girlfriend and tell her how you feel. It is better to do things now then later down the road…..
Good luck.

xo,
kristin nicole

Communication is Key

Relationships can be difficult. They can include a boyfriend and girlfriend, husband and wife, friendship or even a relationship between you and a family member. No one ever said relationships were easy, so how do we try to fix a relationship we feel is irresolvable? The number one rule to having a healthy relationship is simple but you have to be willing to meet the person half way. Are you ready to hear what it is? Communication! That’s right; it’s something we learn from when we were born. We learn to talk and ask our parents for things that we want; this is the first step into communicating your feelings. After that it should be a breeze, right? Many people do not know how to communicate properly, either they don’t know how to speak to others without being rude, they might be too shy to speak, or they might feel scared to tell the person they love how they really feel.

Have you ever tried telling someone how you feel, only to find yourself speechless? This is normal, many people have felt this way and sometimes not saying anything at all, is worse than actually coming out with how you feel. If you don’t talk about your feelings, it is only going to eat away at you, and eventually it will only lead into an outburst of frustration, which will later lead into a fight. There are all types of ways to communicate your feelings; I have listed the top five ways I found it easier for me to communicate.

Five ways to communicate your feelings:

5. Write a letter or a note. – Don’t email the person or text; this is a little more impersonal. Give the letter to the person face to face so that they can read it in front of you, you can then later discuss what you are feeling, but the letter will at least break the ice with bringing out what you have been feeling inside. Trust me this works (this is actually how I started communicating better; it gave me the courage to really say what I felt on paper.)

4. Choose the right time and place. – Sometimes we are scared the person we are talking to might retaliate and start screaming or acting a little crazy, so choose the right time and place to talk about your feelings. Don’t ever try talking to someone when they are having a bad day, they aren’t in their right state of mind and this may through them off, they might not understand where you are coming from because they are focused on their own problems at the moment. So make sure to choose the right time to talk. Choosing the right place can be essential too, if you want to make sure to keep things quiet, pick a place to talk where they can‘t get too loud with you. This will help keep both emotions inside and talk like two normal people.

3. Think before you speak. – Sometimes we want to talk about how we feel right there in the moment, but this may lead into fighting, because we might just say things we really don’t mean. In the heat of the moment we are all guilty of saying things we don’t really mean, or we do mean them, but it’s just not the right way to say it. Before talking to someone, try going over in your head what you want to say, cool off a bit and then sit down calmly to talk about what you are feeling.

2. Listen to the other person. – Sometimes we are scared to open up when the other person is talking to us. Listen to what that person has to say, if they are talking to you openly and telling you how they feel then push away the fear of talking back, take a deep breath and answer them back. More than likely it was just as hard for them to tell you how they felt, so don’t be scared to return the favor.

1. Stop being scared about what the other person may be thinking and DO YOU. – What do I mean by ‘DO YOU’, well at the end of the day the only person who is going to be there for you, is YOU. Stop being scared to open up and tell the person how you feel. The worse thing that can happen is that it leads into an argument, but so what. We sometimes have to argue in order to figure out a way to fix things. If we never argued in the world, then life would be too boring.

We can change the world with total communication ~Sharon Sullivan