Bumps and how to resolve them.

Iliyan and I call “bumps” those situations in which we are together and feel sad, cranky or have different opinions on something, consequently resolving the situation by sorting our feelings out and communicating with each other. We have never had fights or even arguments (we have disagreed on various topics but mostly we discuss them calmly), it has always been these little things which we decided to call bumps since they are smaller than the two aforementioned.

Being away from Iliyan and having to deal with my studies is a source of daily stress which triggers most of my down and cranky moods. Sometimes when we discuss a topic, we find that our views are different, we get all passionate exposing our opinions to the point that sometimes this as well concludes in a bump, everybody is a bit stubborn and needs a few minutes to understand the other person’s point of view and vice versa.

As I mentioned in my previous post “The art of improving yourself”, spending a lot of time with someone unveils everything about you, them and you two as a couple, both good and bad. That daily time that I treasure with Iliyan —both on calls and in person— with time, has given birth to certain situations that at first I was afraid had to do with us not completely working together, when it turns out it really has to do with this next step in our relationship: resolving bumps.

Felt a bit down that day, but Iliyan tried his best to cheer me up, and he did! He always does his best to bring a smile back to my face, but I want to help the process, so I allow my feelings to be there, understand them, voice them out and then let them go.

When one is in a mood of deep sadness it affects the other as well, whether we want it or not, we love the other person with all our heart, it is natural that their mood becomes ours. For some hours this mood stays, like a “sad cloud”, bringing sometimes our fears, negative feelings, worries and specially the feeling of longing we have for our beloved and failure that we are not good enough for them, thus having a hard time to feel happy.

The biggest problem with this situation is the amount of energy that goes into it, it is a bit like quick sands, if you try to get out, it actually worsens, so the feeling of wanting to give up, close the call, just not tell them what is wrong, is sometimes quite strong in us. But in our heart what we truly want to do is just to smile once again and say “I love you” to our beloved, it is as if our throats are closed down, your thoughts are the only ones going crazy trying to express what is going on.

Getting out of those feelings is hard, but it can be done, it just requires patience, communication and loads of love.

What are the steps we take to resolve these bumps?

The first step is to acknowledge what I feel, find out why I came to feel so sad, bad or cranky.

Secondly, either voice it out or write it down to Iliyan, explaining as much as it is needed, exchanging our feelings, what hurt us, annoyed us —if any— or discuss our different opinions if our crankiness came to be because of that.

Thirdly, give support to each other and finally, our love will have the space to come out by putting aside our previous feelings and say:

“I love you. Thank you for your patience.”

We are one and our love is strong.

Giggles. That is when our partner knows that the cloud has passed. Once you made them laugh, you succeeded. For the person making all the effort to make you smile again, it is not easy at all. Iliyan has to try very hard not to fall into my same mood so he can make me happy, and I as well. We appreciate each other’s effort, both when trying to lift the other one as when we try to put our feelings aside so we can help out with our own lifting.

In our case, our long distance relationship is what makes these bumps more recurrent, we miss each other a lot. But this is also the perfect opportunity to work out the dynamics in our relationship, because it is harder, if you get past it, it is like succeeding in climbing one of the biggest mountains together.

You learn a lot from bumps. To broaden your mind, listen, support and love each other even more than before. Our love comes out stronger every time.