Baby Driver - Why 13 Year Olds Shouldn't Get Married

To be very truthful, I knew all these things intellectually in high school. But immaturity is a lot harder to manage in the subconscious.

Maybe some of the things the author wrote about are self-evident to people who've been married or in relationships for a while. Maybe you were exceptionally mature about relationships when you graduated middle school. I don't know. I thought I was, but I'm still dealing with all the fallout from the last two years of disastrous or mediocre relationships I got into as a result. It's one thing to know something intellectually but it's another entirely when you're dealing with hormones, emotions, and upbringing that are mostly out of your conscious control.

Somewhere I was still expecting a Disney ending, where I would know exactly when I was in love and what that love was going to be like. Even despite reading articles like that at a young age, and trying to learn from previous mistakes, I still had massive trip ups about relationships and sex going into this semester, stemming from misconceptions about relationships and sex influenced by the combination of Disney, fanfiction, and the Christian fundamentalism I was brought up to.

I'm not sure how to express what I'm trying to say here...I guess, I'm saying that yes, a lot of the fundamental truths about relationships in that article are difficult for me to remember or implement when I'm in a relationship, and not necessarily because I don't know them intellectually.

I think there are lots of people who don't know these things, but just saying them in so many words won't help. It's like reading an article saying "math is hard, so you have to work really hard at it"--true enough, but I won't be any better at math after reading it.

The thing that drives me nuts about relationship advice books is that they always give catchy/obnoxious names to things that already have very simple names. I have a longstanding hobby of reducing pop psych to the words "good" and "bad" and it's amazing how often it works.

"You can have an internal or external locus of control."
"You can have a good or bad locus of control."

"Relationships can be codependent or independent."
"Relationships can be bad or good."

"Communication can be aggressive, passive, or assertive."
"Communication can be bad, bad, or good."

Hell, maybe that should be my gimmick! I'll write the first relationship book that just doesn't have any unnecessary labeling! (I've long been a believer that people who want to sound smart use big words; people who really are smart use clear words.) It won't get published though, there's no hook.