Relationships

Relationships

Relationships in our youth are for sex. Relationships in our twenties and thirties are for children. When we are old, we have relationships for companionship. Wrong. Companionship is pivotal whatever your age. Sex can be crucial and poignant right up to death. As for children, that depends on biology.

Femininity is aligned with vulnerability and vulnerability is an attractive trait sought by many masculine characters. Far more attractive than highly confident self-sufficient persons. This can be the reason some individuals spend many years being single. We can woo by portraying ourselves as in need of help and appearing vulnerable. Or shoo away unwanted advances by portraying ourselves as confident and capable. On the other side of the coin are those who present themselves as a protector, protecting but not quashing their partner. Sometimes we have to put on a pretence to draw people in whether it is as a male or female figure. Finding love is a game, a mesmerizing game in the game of life.

Some worry that getting with someone could lead to a lot of heartache if it doesn’t work out. All relationships are dead end. They end at death or when the two of you fall out. If you want a benign, dull, uninspiring, uneventful, low impact, safe, safe, safe way of life, then don’t get romantically involved with someone else. Don’t live. Life is just not as predictable as fortune tellers make out. Any number of mishaps might be lying in wait today tomorrow or in the coming years. After such events people change their views and adapt their outlook. Astute ones do so prior. The fortunate couples feel at ease with each other, comfortable together and have an ability to tolerate their partner’s many faults and failings.

People do change – to some extent. They relax their pretence. They begin to accept who they really are. They shake off all the shackles, ridding themselves of the pressures and expectations people have of them. You move towards the real you that was always there, latent, and disguised. Relationships therefore come under strain when the person you are with no longer resembles who you thought they were. The mask lifts revealing the truth.

The end of a relationship can bring about feelings identical to a death. One can grieve for a long while after. Potentially we suffer grief that stays with us forever more. Time does not always heal. Only getting with someone, that is on aggregate better, softens the blow. If the pair of you were always arguing and not getting on well, then that is a different matter. There will be very little in the way of grief, perhaps relief instead. You won’t be staying together for the children but separating so that the children need not endure more conflict.

The sex was good, the courting went superbly. Now your mind is focusing on what was obvious from the start. You have little in common. One wants to go out all the time, the other wants to stop in. Sound familiar? The only question one needs to ask is this. Do I want to carry on like this for another twenty years? The world is a mess romantically. Some have managed to find and secure the perfect one. Perfect for each other that is. They are the lucky few. Many are making do. Some work together in the same business plus hold things together by setting aside an evening or two, a day or two, to habitually do things with one another. Dissatisfaction hasn’t set in. Not yet. When it does, they have a conundrum to mull over. Splitting up will affect the good days with the extended family. I may end up being single for the rest of time. And many do find themselves living solo. They acknowledge the advantages. There are lots of advantages to being in a relationship though.

Each relationship is a hotchpotch of good and bad with too many variations to generalise. Putting the absolute no-no’s aside, violence, coercive control etc, we have to accept all partners are problematic. You are problematic too. List your own detrimental features first. Strength does not arise from coping with being a singleton, but from making a worthwhile relationship work.

Monogamy is a popular ideal, although some can have more than one relationship running concurrently with purportedly few side effects. Bigamy is outlawed in many countries. This is an example of the state meddling with our personal affairs. Many will see it as none of anyone else’s business. That is unless there is some deception involved, and they feel the need to inform the duped party. Do you pay attention to all the other monkeys frolicking in the trees or cats in your garden making long term bonds to multiple partners? What is the moral basis for limiting the number of wedded partners, nothing substantial I suspect. Having another partner that everyone concerned knows about is less of a minefield than the abundant affairs that take place in secret.

Affairs are thrilling, exciting, something fresh. They can be a new beginning, sometimes. We connive, we battle to keep things a secret. Some face the cost of being unfaithful. There is a significant chance of catching a disease. We lose respect from members of our family. Whilst you can sign any form or swear allegiance to someone, the only real commitment one can make is when you actively decide to have children, for they can be a lifelong part of your life regardless of the success of your partnerships.

Emotional infidelity can be as destructive if not more so than a physical affair. This type of infidelity can also be harder to forgive, forget and get over. Alarm bells start to ring when someone confides in others rather than share their problems with their partner first. Trust is like a pane of glass, once shattered it is never the same again. You can refashion it like a stained-glass window to keep out the cold, but it doesn’t always replace what was once there. When offspring arrive some resentment and jealousy can set in. Most couples see the importance of finding the space in their routine to ensure that intimacy is not neglected. As for jealousy regarding a former partner, our skin gets replaced every two years. Bi-annually we become biological virgins again. You will never be as good in some respects as those that went before you, but there is a reason why they are with you now and that and that alone is the only thing of importance.

Some people split up having messed up their relationship. They see their children only part time and have entered a state of having nothing to lose. They do not care about preserving your relationship, a relationship that is going well. They will find or create the opportunity to damage and steal from it. They do not want to take your partner from you and live happily ever after, they want to have sex and walk off laughing. How do we protect ourselves from such venomous scum? You can see the virtue of keeping tabs and being guarded. Guarding in a number of ways which only those that have had to deal with the problem understand. Having a ready store of the element in all life, triple bonded with the main component of air is one kind of tempting solution. However, “go away”, “stay away” is the most customary tool. They are like mosquitoes lurking and waiting for you to stop fidgeting. You swat one and think that is the end of it, for another to crawl through an unforeseen gap in your defences.

We may shrug and not think too much about a sexual disease befalling us. The unwary have found the pain gets so bad that they clap their most precious end, hard, to eject the fetid mucus. Having to do such a thing because of an unfaithful mate makes it all the more grating.

It is nice to feel comfortable and relaxed with your partner; where you can be yourself and behave according to your nature. Nothing aggravates the soul more than having to ‘walk on eggshells’, always frightened to say the wrong thing or be cautious in too many ways. I learned to make fun of the bad moods with persistent jokes and comedic goading. This relieved the pressure and worked for me. Compatibility is about knowing that people are far from perfect and finding someone with a set of imperfections that you can accommodate. Many of us treasure quirks. They add something.

We can look elsewhere for something better and find ourselves exchanging one problem for another. People can easily get distracted by the longing for a change. As the years pass, regardless of how well people get on with one another, a little boredom can set in. A switch to another partner or a period alone can appear very appealing. We can be so accustomed to the way our relationship works that we don’t add up all the plusses. It is only when we begin a search for a new partner that we realise what we lost.

There is no clear formula for maintaining harmonious relationships. We each have things that matter and things that don’t. If our partner is significantly taller than us, does it make it harder to stand one’s ground? Do we look for complementary characteristics, a submissive and the assertive? Usually we are drawn to those that are similar to us. As for love, it is not so much romanticism and unyielding in its definition, it stems from getting to know someone. We might have a love of all humanity, but the more you know someone the more love we feel. The people you love the most are those that you know well. Their soul, their characteristics will be in keeping with your preferences.

It is impossible to be absorbed by the problems of everyone the world over, there are billions of them. We love and care for those that we are most familiar with. Lots of people get in trouble. We feel the most pain for those that we are most heavily associated with. This doesn’t provide a good excuse to ignore the difficulties of everyone who isn’t a friend or relative but motivates us to assist in small ways whenever it is practical.

What we display can run counter to our intentions. Teenagers can be a little mean or nasty towards those they fancy. As they mature, they find better ways to court a lover. We might assume that someone is a rude individual due to their offish manner. However, we may have caught them at a bad time. They may be in the middle of a bereavement and be very different on another occasion. People deserve more than one chance. At some point, it is bound to be you too that deserves another chance. “Friends come and go, enemies accumulate.” You will feel stupid when you have an accident and a foe comes to your aid.

“If only everyone was like me the world would be a better place.” Thank heavens, thank your god, thank anything you like that we are not all so stilted and all so similar. There are many a person who passes way beyond the mid-life age marker retaining no clue whatsoever of how other people think. The ugly side of the ignorance paradox: not grasping that other people have different desires and look for different things in life.