What is up, everybody?
Welcome back to the Young and Love podcast.
A podcast for being young and love has absolutely nothing zero to do with your age,
but has all to do with your experience and your growth and love over time.
My name is Darius Covington.
I am the host of this great podcast.
And today's episode, I'm about to expose myself a little bit.
Can you all see this light?
No, I guess you can't.
I'm about to expose myself a little bit on today's episode.
So fun fact, I was actually just filming some videos for TikTok.
And I was like, well, I already have the setup here.
I might as well just film this episode right quick.
So I went ahead and popped out the camera or, you know,
shifted the camera on the tripod and hit record.
And so as you can tell by today's, listen,
I'm not wasting no time with this video because it is a little bit embarrassing
because these next couple of videos are all going to be on the same topic.
And I'm about to embarrass and expose myself a lot.
So
we're going to jump right into this episode real quick before we do.
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We'll be talking.
It is almost like if you know what Patreon is, the same thing as Patreon.
I was just trying to find an avenue where I wouldn't have to charge all anything
because Patreon, there is a free option on there.
So go ahead, click the link in the bio and join that family group chat.
Anyway, you'll see me stalling a little bit, right?
Before we start this podcast, let me hear what your highs and lows of the week were.
We do a game here called Roses and Thorns.
Your roses are what were those good moments?
Those smell good moments, those feel good moments of your week.
And then the thorns are what were those moments that, like,
you know, won't really that feel good?
My rose for this week, I will say
actually, I have pretty good roses this week.
I have a few friends coming over.
I had a friend come over yesterday.
We had shot something for her business.
I have two friends coming over today, actually, in about 30 minutes and
went out to brunch lunch after church on Sunday.
I was in Jersey last week.
I got to see my people in Jersey last week.
So those are some rosy experiences.
The thorn is this to do list that I have
on this computer that I just feel like is never getting done.
I just like to keep adding stuff to it and I keep doing things.
But like,
I don't know, it's just too much going on.
That's that's my thorn for the week.
Anyway, getting into a comment down below,
let me know what your rose and your thorn,
what your rose and your thorns were, excuse my tongue,
what your rose and your thorns were for the week.
And I try to respond to them getting into this episode.
Episode five, I think it is single after seven years
of a relationship.
Now, I do want to say I'm not going to say any names.
If I do, we're going to probably throw
a fake play name in there so that I don't get confused.
And I did reach out to this person before
I filmed these videos and said, just so you know, I'm not talking about you
in these videos, I am more talking about myself and my experiences and how
my experience can probably help somebody else.
Because honestly, I did.
Somebody when I was in that relationship,
there was somebody who I knew who was in a relationship for 10 years
and their relationship ended.
I want to say it inspired me to end my relationship,
but it definitely inspired me to understand at that time
that just because we had dated for all these years didn't necessarily mean that
we had to continue dating if we didn't like or if I didn't like
where the relationship was going.
And so and so that is a lot of the reason why I'm doing this video.
I think that there might be other people and people do me all the time.
Other people who have been in long term
relationships that they're feeling that these relationships aren't necessarily
what they want to do long term.
But once you're in a relationship for all
those many years, that seems like the best option.
Like leaving or staying in the relationship seems like the best option.
And in my experience, leave run has nothing to do with the other person.
I think it has more to do with the fact I would rather leave a relationship after
10 years and start all over if it means that I find a person that I could be
everything that I wanted to be to that I couldn't necessarily be in my relationship.
Anyway, let me give you all the back story of this relationship, how it began.
We're going to make this three part series.
So I'm going to talk about how the relationship started,
my experience a little bit before that relationship, how that relationship started.
And then we're going to go all the way up until I felt like
this relationship probably isn't what I want to do anymore.
And then we might we might devolve and it might be a part two.
There will be a part two.
We might dip up there and then pick up on part two because I only have my friends
are coming. I only have 30 minutes to do this anyway.
So that relationship started when I was 14.
I was 14, which means I was in eight.
I was in the eighth grade when that relationship started.
So from obviously from kindergarten,
since they're kindergarten to eighth grade, obviously I had I don't even want
to say relationships because.
Are they really relationships when you're that young?
When I was in fourth grade, we used to go to gym and we used to have weddings.
That is embarrassing.
They used to they used to literally play and like we would be in class
and they'd be telling us we're getting married today.
And then during gym, we would go outside.
We would go to this area and I don't know.
We were different as kids back then.
I don't know. It was crazy.
But so I dated I didn't want to say dated, but I I was a kid.
I could dated at that time.
You know, so obviously those are more play relationships.
They weren't anything serious.
And I'll be honest at 14 when I got into this relationship,
I didn't know that it would become as long term or as serious
as it became because this is just somebody at that time.
And I said this many times and I don't know that she received it the right way.
But I had said many times that at 14, when you're dating a girl,
you're not really dating because I like your mindset.
You're not really.
Or at least I wasn't dating because I like to mind set.
I wasn't dating because your future plans are they they align with my future plans.
Your desires line, my desires at 14.
I was like, you cute.
Listen, I'm be real transparent.
I am not I am not a person who I'm not afraid to expose myself or my thoughts at all.
And so at 14, I was like, you cute, you got a nice body.
Cool. This is great.
Obviously, it grew into more than just somebody being pretty and somebody having
a nice body, but at 14.
In the church or not in the church, I'm a guy.
That's what I was looking for at that age.
And so we met at.
My church.
Trying to make sure that I'm not like exposing anything here,
but we met we met at my church, we were in the same youth department.
And honestly, we were different age ranges.
She was a little bit literally a little bit older than I was.
And in that little bit amount of age,
so if I met her in eighth grade and she's older than me,
that means she was in high school.
So, you know, high schoolers are with the high schoolers where the seven, eight
or six, seventh and eighth graders, the middle schoolers with the middle schoolers.
And so our friend groups in church were very different.
But because we met and we started dating
in eighth grade, that that split was short lived
because eventually we were both in high school.
And so we were both now, you know, like the experiences that we had
in the youth department were both in the same places.
I for a long period of time at that church, I did not know anything about her.
I just knew that she was some some girl that went to my church
because she wasn't in the group of people that I associated with.
But again, I knew who she was.
And I had friends who were in high school.
Eventually, when I got to the eighth grade,
somehow I don't really know, but we started we started talking on the phone and.
I was like, oh, you know, you're actually pretty cute.
And we were talking, we were talking, we were talking, we were talking, we talk.
And then eventually I had this thing when I was younger,
we're like, I'm probably not going to if I like you,
I'm not going to tell you that I like you.
I'm just going to tell your close friend that I like you
because nine times out of ten, your close friend, a girl's close friend,
if you tell a girl's best friend that you like her,
her best friend is bound to tell her that the boy likes you.
So I told her best friend, knowing that her best friend was going to tell her.
We eventually started dating.
I don't even want to go through the whole story.
We eventually started dating.
I was 14 in the eighth grade.
We started dating.
I went to ninth grade.
We were still dating.
I went to 10th grade.
We were still dating.
And I think from eighth grade to 10th grade,
actually, I want to say eighth grade to 11th grade.
It was fine.
Like, you know, we weren't we weren't we weren't adults dating.
So there wasn't much of responsibility to be people like who were adults dating.
We went to the same church.
So obviously we saw each other every Sunday.
We had youth group at our church on Friday.
So we saw each other every Friday as well.
So the dynamics of our relationship, I feel like for a long time.
We're fine.
You know, we got to see each other, whatever.
I think in 11th grade is when
things just started to change.
I think that I.
Let me be honest, I think that I started to weigh the fact that.
I think I started to weigh my options, you know,
I think that I started coming into more of who I was,
and I think the options, not that there were like 20 girls lined up trying to
talk to me, but I think the options that I had, I started realizing, you know,
we're more than just this one person,
and I really started to want to experience other things, never pursued that.
But it was always it became started to become a thought in my mind when I was
when I was in 11th grade and also noting the fact that she's two years older than me.
So by the time I went to 11th grade, she was going to college.
And so she's having her experiences in college.
I'm still in high school at home.
She was dorming at college.
So the dynamics of our relationship started to change a little bit or a lot of it.
She would come home, you know, for church on the weekends.
And I would obviously have an opportunity to see her then.
Um, but the dynamics started to change once she went away.
The dynamics started to change once she went away to college
and once I started to come into who I was a little bit.
I definitely think that at the time and I have said this not to her,
but I've said this in conversation with the people since this relationship has ended.
When you're 11, you're broke.
There's not really much you could do in your relationships.
And so we did hang out.
We did go out on dates.
But obviously, there's nothing like the dates that I'd be going out on now,
because at that time I didn't have any money to be going out on dates with her.
And so there was a part of that that does feel a little toxic.
We weren't we weren't also I would go over her house sometimes.
But we weren't people.
We weren't people like who had the ability.
Thankfully, actually,
weren't people who had the ability to like, you know,
I know people who go to their boyfriends and their girlfriends houses every day.
They be in a room with the door closed.
I need the covers.
See my eye twitch underneath the covers.
You know, really just chillaxing, just relaxing.
We didn't really have that experience that was not our experience.
Her mom was a very devout Christian or is a very devout Christian woman.
My mom, my mom is not a very devout Christian woman.
She just don't play that.
And so there is there is a level that I'm like sometimes I imagine
that I think sometimes I credit that to be like a toxic trait for myself
that I didn't really make time to go out with her or go out on dates with her.
Or at least I did have that mindset.
And then I got older and I realized, like,
you didn't have any money, you didn't have a job, you were in high school.
She was in college.
And although people do all the time.
I didn't do it and I OK, I didn't do it.
And if I'm wrong for not doing it and I, you know, I just didn't do it.
But we definitely had we definitely saw each other every week.
And if it wasn't every week, we definitely saw each other every two weeks.
But I want to see every every single week for sure.
But as time started to progress
in that relationship.
I think some things started to happen.
So for full transparency, she never cheated on me.
I never cheated on her.
But I think that there were some other things that happened in the relationship
that kind of make you.
Or that kind of made that just change the way that I showed up in the relationship.
So there were things that happened that, like, you know, killed my trust a little
bit, there were things that happened that killed my liking this to her
a little bit or a lot of it.
And I think that I think that.
I think that when that started to happen,
if I knew what I know now, if I knew then what I know now,
I would have probably ended the relationship at that point instead of just
holding on and holding out or being afraid to end the relationship.
Because I think that once
knowing myself, it's hard to rebuild trust.
And so I think that once the trust started to go out the window,
I didn't set us up in a good way in our relationship because I really should have
just ended it knowing that that trust probably isn't going to come back anytime
soon. And now the way that I respond to things, the way that I act around you,
it's all going to be based off the fact that this trust
is kind of draining a little bit.
And there might have been some instances
where she might have felt that I did things to her as well that made that trust dwindle.
And so I give us both responsibility for not ending the relationship.
If you ask her today, did I treat her great in that relationship?
She would tell you no.
And I would say to her in response, why didn't you end the relationship?
And if you ask me if I felt that I was good to her in that relationship,
I would also say no.
And I would take the accountability of asking myself, why didn't you end the
relationship at the time that you knew that you weren't treating her the way that
you wanted to treat her. But obviously, as time moved forward,
I started to realize that, like, all right, for the sake of us both,
let me end this for us both.
So then time progressed.
Eventually, I went I graduated.
I went to college.
That was 14 or that was eighth grade, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth.
That's five years.
I went to college for two years.
I went to college and.
I don't.
Stundering.
I went to college and I don't I don't I don't remember how I was.
I don't remember how toxic our relationship was in college.
I don't really remember how the dynamics of our relationship changed
while I was in college.
But I think around that point, because that was rounding off the seven years,
I think around that point is when.
I started to realize more and more.
I think around that point is actually
when I had the conversation or heard the conversation with the person who said
that they were dating for 10 years and they ended the relationship.
So around that time of hearing that
conversation is when I was like, this relationship isn't going the way that I
wanted to go and full of transparency.
Obviously, we were we grew up in the church together.
We went to the same church together.
We lived in that we lived in the same town.
And.
We were dating for all these years,
so obviously the conversation of marriage came up or started to come up a lot.
You know, looking at rings, although we were young,
but when you're young and you've been dating for seven years,
I feel like marriage makes.
It's since a little bit,
probably all the way like you definitely could have waited.
We started looking at rings.
We were talking about, oh, I saw this church.
We should we would get married in this church.
Oh, obviously, that never happened.
No shade. I'm grateful that it never happened
because I remember somebody telling me we were in an office like environment.
I don't want to say exactly who we are because people who know we might know
who I'm talking about, we were in an office like environment.
And I remember this person coming up to me and they were talking about
just marriage and relationships in general, marriage and relationships in general.
We were literally at a printer in this office environment.
And they were like, you know, if you and this girl who I was dating at the time,
if you and her ever got married, I feel like you all would just figure it out.
And that happened years ago.
And I will never I don't think that I'll ever get that conversation out of my mind
because two have been in a relationship is different if somebody says
I can see it's different if somebody says I can see all getting married.
I'll make a great married couple.
It's different hearing that versus
hearing somebody say if you all got married, you all would just figure it out
because I never want to be and although I don't really care about what people
think, but I never want to be in a relationship with somebody.
And the the the thought that people and the thought that somebody has about your
relationship is that if this ended up in marriage, you all would figure it out.
Hearing that because there was a lot of truth in that hearing that made me like.
Take a step back and be like, you right.
You are absolutely right.
If we got in, I obviously as somebody who dates with the intention to be married,
obviously there was a goal for that relationship or every relation, not every
relationship, there was a goal for the relationships that I'm taking serious to
obviously end up in marriage, realizing in that moment that if we got married,
that we would be one of those couples who just figured it out.
And on top of that, somebody had said to us, when our relationship started to start
going sour and it was very evident that it was going sour,
somebody was like, you all should go get couples counseling.
And I was like, so
if we're not married.
And not not not premarital counseling.
Couples counseling, because you are not doing good in this relationship.
If we're not married
and it already looks like we need counseling to help us in our dating
relationship.
Marriage ain't going to work.
Marriage would not work out for us.
And so so I think it was a combination.
She had also mentioned the same counseling scenario.
And I was like, so
it don't make sense to me if we're all if we already need counseling.
Do you really want to be in a marriage
where as two people who are dating, who don't live together, who don't see each
other every day, who don't have to talk about finances, who don't have to talk
about children, who don't have to blend their families together, who don't have
to blend their cultures and their experiences together.
If we can't get it together here, I don't know that it will make any sense.
To get it together there.
And so hearing those two things, the y'all would just figure it out
and the y'all should go to counseling in my mind, it snapped.
A trigger in me
and made me realize that, like, maybe this relationship isn't for us.
And obviously we were dating for seven years.
And so I didn't want to just give up on that relationship.
Obviously, we were not both over the relationship.
And so I didn't want to be that guy.
I didn't want to be rude.
I also.
I don't know that I liked her at this point, but I definitely I loved her.
I didn't like her. And so loving somebody, obviously, you don't want to just be
like, you know, tap dancing on their emotions and their feelings.
And so there was a lot to consider.
And unfortunately, I spent like probably over a year
over a year considering if we should be in a relationship at all or not.
And within that year of considering if we should be in a relationship or not,
I think the way that I showed up was in a way that seemed like I was considering
this, like considering and in this relationship and so even hugging.
I talked to my friend, talked to my friend about this all the time that, like,
you know, even like being hugged by her, I was like, OK.
Like, because she's hugging me romantically and in my mind, I'm still pondering.
I'm still thinking about if this relationship is supposed to last or not.
Yeah, like, does that make sense?
So I do think that if you're in a relationship, I will say this,
if you're in a relationship and you do have it, it might not be the hug thing.
Oh, you'll see this light.
It might not be the hug thing.
It might be something else.
But just use this as as an example.
If you're in a relationship and.
It feels like when you hug this person,
they don't hug you back with the same romantic feeling or the same loving
feeling that you're giving off and that that can be hugging, kissing,
being conversating, go just being around them.
It might be worth to like wonder if this person also wants to be in this relationship,
because I really do think that it would have been helpful for her to be a little
bit more aware of the fact that I was off and we did have conversations about it.
But I don't think the conversation of and maybe it did.
And I just remember I don't think the conversation of do you want to break up?
Because it seems like when I hug you,
you're not hugging me in the same the same romantic feeling that I had
in my affection toward you.
And we did.
We talked about affection all the time,
how over time I just became less and less affectionate.
And I think it was.
Let me say this.
I oftentimes say in my conversations about this relationship,
I oftentimes be like, I was so toxic in that relationship.
I was so I was trash.
I don't know that I was.
I was trash.
I don't know that I was fully trash as I'm talking this out.
I don't know that I was fully trash
or I do have to I do think that because I knew that I was considering
like really thinking hard about if this relationship was a thing for us or not.
I feel like once those thoughts started
coming in my mind that it affected how I showed up.
So I don't think that I was necessarily trash because I was trying to be trash.
But I was literally trying to think about a person's feelings,
trying to think about how to go about this, trying to think about our life
together and in having those thoughts, the way that I showed up was different.
And so it wasn't that I was being toxic because I'm just a toxic person.
It was it was I was being controlled by the thoughts that that I was having
in my mind as it pertained to this relationship.
And so after a year, after a year of
thinking about if this relationship was for forget us, if it was for me or not,
because I used to say this to her all the time as the guy, although women propose
to their their their men pretty often, according to social media.
But I would say often that as the man,
it's my responsibility to ask you to marry me.
If I don't feel comfortable enough to ask you to marry me, I'm not going to do it.
In any relationship, if I don't feel like I want to be married to you,
I'm not going to ask you, and so as time went on after that year
and some change of me considering if we should be in a relationship or not.
And also what that looked like for for me, because you also have to understand
that me ending this relationship means that I have to start over.
And when you've been doing anything for seven years, having to start over,
you would rather be in this toxic than this in this toxic trash situation than to
have to start all over again with somebody else.
And obviously, when you're in relationships,
starting over, being able to do seven years again with somebody else,
nine times out of ten means having to do short periods of time with other people
to find that person that the seven years will be worth it for.
But I will say, I feel like that experience,
I don't I don't know what she would say that the experience told her.
I will say that the experience taught me a lot about who I wanted to be,
how I wanted to be in relationships, how I wanted to show up in relationships.
And the seriousness of how I take relationships where now I would never
we not we not make it a past seven hours if I know that I don't want to be with you
anymore, I don't it won't take me a year to think about it.
If the thought of me wanting to be with somebody else comes up in my mind,
that's enough for me to understand that we're probably not the best match.
So after that year is some change,
we had a conversation
and the conversation started off or went something like
I think we need a break.
And anybody who's ever taken a break in relationships,
I feel like maybe four people in this world of seven billion people
have probably been successful at taking a break in relationships.
Obviously, we were not successful after taking that break.
I'll key in what we'll talk about.
We'll talk about the breaks on part two.
But I'll key in the fact that
we ended up taking a break.
We ended up taking a few breaks in the process of how that happened.
I'll start to explain in part two of this series of me being single after seven
years, I want to do a take away from all these videos.
What was my take away in this first part of this relationship from being in a nice
relationship as a 14 year old until I was maybe at this point,
I was 20 when we took our first break.
What did I learn?
What was my biggest life lesson during that time?
I would say my biggest life lesson at that time was.
No matter what people's expectations are for your life,
you're in charge of where and what you want to be.
I think that people expected us and an
expectation is literally just people thinking how what your life should be.
Nobody told us that we needed to get married.
Nobody told us that we needed to stay in a relationship together.
People just saw, you know, you see people dating you expect them to be dating.
You expect them to eventually get married.
And I think that knowing that people expected
us to get married made me think that we had to.
And so I think after that experience of like, we're going to take this break
and we're not going to care what people think.
I think that that has a great responsibility of why I really don't care
what people think, I really don't care what people think today
because everybody has expectations, everybody has not just expectations,
but everybody even has just like their own made up plans, their own desires,
their own hopes for your life.
And I think this experience or this one part of this experience made me understand
that, like, I'm glad you have thoughts.
It sounds terrible, but I'm glad you have thoughts.
But I'm going to do I'm going to do what I feel is right for me.
Yeah, that was what I learned.
All right.
That was that was fun.
This is a little exposing.
I feel like I'm going to get a text message, a phone call.
I might get jumped. I don't know.
After this gets posted, but
make sure you subscribe because part two, it just gets not worse and worse,
but it does get worse and worse a little bit.
And
I was thinking about I was thinking about something that I'm not going to share,
but make sure that you're subscribed, that you like you comment below.
Stay tuned for part two.
I think today is today is Monday.
This might go up around Wednesday and then I think we'll do the other one.
I think I'll film the other one and have that one come out either Friday or Saturday.
We'll talk about part two of how or of why I am single after seven years or am I
single after seven years? I don't know.
I don't know. There's more to see.
Anyway, thank you guys for watching this video.
Be sure to comment to like subscribe wherever you're listening to this at.
And until next time.
I don't know until next time. Goodbye.