Relationships

I am by no means a relationship expert. In fact, I have a lot of ideas and zero experience, which makes me a bit of hazard when it comes to relationships, romantic ones that is. I have no idea what I am doing and it is so aggravating. I don't know if I'm doing the right things, the wrong things, or something that doesn't matter either way. I think I am showing a person how much I care about them and I end up annoying the heck out of them. Then, I pull back and try so hard to not do that and I end up offending them. There isn't anyone I have asked for help that has really given me any, which, quite frankly is a bit frightening. Does no one know what they are doing and how these things are supposed to work????? Of course there is the small problem that I don't really feel like there is anyone I can talk to about it completely so it limits what they can give me advice on and what I can ask advice on, but that shouldn't be that unusual, right? I mean, what did people do before there were marriage/relationship counselors? They had to have been able to work things out on their own, so why can't I? Honestly, I feel so completely lost. I never have understood the whole dating thing anyway and now that I have a relationship I understand it even less. What is it even? How do you pretend you are serious with someone but your not? How to do get close but keep yourself from getting too close? How do you let someone in but shut them out all at the same time? I realize that relationships take patience, something I never really realized before, but how do you proceed in something when there is so much uncertainty? My thinking has always been that the relationship is just temporal until there is a commitment made - either marriage or the declared intention to get married. Yet, in the living out of that it is so much more complex than that. What happens if you both really care about each other but marriage is not an option at the moment? Then what? Well, you can wait but it's hard to know where the boundaries are and what is the right or wrong thing to do both with yourself and with the other person. It's so frustrating! How do you tell yourself to not care about someone so much, especially when that person is your best friend? How do you keep yourself from falling completely and totally in love with someone that you grow closer to each day? I know love is a choice in so many ways, but it is also an emotion that grows with the growing of relationships. The relationship will either foster and encourage love or it will kill it. What do I do if it encourages it but I can't act on it? Do I pretend it isn't there? Oh, I don't know. There are so many opinions on the "right" way to do it, but I am not settled with any of those opinions. The only thing I am settled with is learning more and more how to put my trust in the Lord in this area of my life and continuing to make choices and do things in my relationship that will bring honor to Him and will encourage both myself and my significant other to seek the Lord and grow in His grace and knowledge every day. In the end that is the best way that I can love someone anyway and it is the only thing I am absolutely sure of. I don't know if any of this made any sense but that's what happens when the writer is confused!