Can You Retain Your Length Without Protective Styling?

This is something I have been toying with for awhile.

When I first cut my hair, I said "Man, when my hair gets to shoulder length I'm gonna wear it out all the time! Surely you can grow your hair without wearing a bun all the time." Well....as you guys saw, the minute I was grazing SL my hair has been hidden. I rarely straighten it and I surely do not wear it out.

But....

Now I am bored with the protective styling. I want to wear it out just a little bit (maybe 2 or 3 days out of the week) but I don't want to suffer a setback. I suppose that in order to do this, I would have to make sure that my ends are really really moisturized but it's scary. However, next relaxer I'm gonna try wearing my hair out 3 days out of the week and up the rest of the time and see how that turns out. Wish me luck.

Speaking of relaxers, I am relaxing my hair this weekend. When I took my cornrows out, I was met with a bunch of hair to get through. OMG it was insane! Even with the best of the best deep conditioning, my hair was just rebelling. The last time that my hair did this was at the start of my journey. My hair was so damaged back then, I didn't put a relaxer in my hair for 8 months and I kept my hair braided up then too. Anyway, I will probably do a real length check (ends trimmed and all) too. I can't wait!