Breaking the narrow-mindedness

It's been awhile, from my perspective, since I was in a relationship - two years or so now.  Though I still think plenty about interpersonal relationships, and most likely worry too much about how my actions come across to others, I have for quite some time now written off trying to understand relationships.  Not being in the midst of the work of maintaining one myself, I've been feeling for some time that whatever knowledge I thought I had collected has been slowly draining out of me.  Whilst my few theories on the subject continue to be chipped away over time, I grow to feel more clueless about how to "meet someone", transition into a relationship, and maintain one.  Without possibilities presenting themselves on my horizon, I've been relegating myself to wondering at how friends around me make relationships work.  As for myself, I mostly continue to rather passively hope that things will eventually fall into place with someone by way of beautiful happenstance.

One theory of mine in particular, developed early on in my forays into thinking about relationships, grew mainly from an experience of my own which I still hold as very special.  I decided that the most logical and successful way a relationship could happen was to transition from best friends.  It made all the sense in the world to me: you are already perfectly comfortable communicating, you get along well, you enjoy each other's company and seek out spending time together.  I guess I figured that all you needed was a spark of attraction to push things past the platonic realm, and then you were all set because the rest of it was already in place.

I held pretty steadfastly to this theory for a number of years.  It received its major crack in the same way I first came up with it - through my own experience.  Though I no longer believe in it like a guarantee, I still think it's possible.  I simply learned that it also might totally not work at all.  And I am glad to have the experience and luckily came out of it for the better.

Another theory: I have long assumed that getting into a relationship only makes sense if you have taken a pretty good deal of time to familiarize with each other.  This one is based partially on precaution: my fear is not taking enough time to discover a person's major characteristics, and then stumbling onto something serious enough to potentially drive a new relationship apart.  It also has to do with my being terribly indecisive, and being afraid to start something because I'm still not sure if I like the person enough yet.  (At least, that's typically what I'd argue to myself which leads me to stall for more time to decide.)

In the past couple of days, I have begun to think about some of these ideas differently.  Perhaps things can develop between people outside of these scenarios I've had outlined in my head for so long, and still be real.  Maybe I don't have to know someone long enough to think I've figured them all out before deciding I like them.  Perhaps a great deal of the joy of a relationship is learning the pieces of someone's personality over many interactions and experiences.

So I think, now, I am closer to letting go of my indecisiveness and being more willing to try letting things happen with someone without knowing ahead of time that everything "should" work out.