Proton coupled carbon-13 relaxation experiment was performed to investigate the effect of vicinal protons on spin-lattice relaxation of methylene carbon-13 in n-undecane. A BIRD type pulse sequence was employed as a way to check the validity of describing the 13CH2 moiety as an isolated AX2 spin system. The results show that the presence of vicinal protons exerts substantial influence on the relaxation of methylene carbon-13, indicating that it is not a very good approximation to treat a methylene moiety as an isolated AX2 spin system.