In an era of 50-percent divorce rates, I wonder how many of those separations are caused by an unwillingness on one or more parties to give and take, to compromise, and how many of these are simply the result of bad choices and decisions.
Take, for instance, the woman who was truly in love with one man but then got a little too possessive and lost him. In an effort to win him back, she tried to make him jealous and wound up marrying the rebound relationship she began, even though she knew she did not love this second man.
Or the woman who was infatuated or in love -- it depends on whom you ask -- with a guy her sister was dating. Eventually the sister and the guy break up, but not before this woman gets pregnant with another guy she was dating at the time and winds up married to him.
Or consider the guy who naively believes that, well, he's supposed to be married by a certain age. After years of being unable to even land a date, he falls into a relationship with a woman. It is his first relationship and yet he thinks this must be it, so he marries her, even though he gets a barrage of signals warning him that this relationship just isn't right. For him, though, time and a sense of requirement -- as in, "this is what you are supposed to do next" -- are of the essence, so he acts against his own better judgment.
Or consider the woman who, walled off from a potentially loving relationship by a possessive and controlling boyfriend, weds the same boyfriend because at the time safety and security weighed more heavily on her mind than the need for love, in large part because this boyfriend kept love from her. As they say, however, where there is a marriage without love, there will be love without a marriage. And in her case, she found love years later.
While economics and changes in society have allowed more people the freedom to wait longer for the right person to come along, I think we still make mistakes at least half of the time. But where previous generations simply endured the mistakes they made, we now have the liberty to end what is wrong and continue to search for what is right.
That does not mean the search is ever easy. I truly believe there is one person on this planet for whom we were made, that one perfect match we were born to love. When we meet this person we will know it beyond a shadow of even the slimmest doubt, making us realize just how precious and rare this discovery is.
That said, there still are people in the world whom we could love, at least to a degree; people who are not the one, not our soulmate, not our perfect match. We might wind up with one of them if we have not the patience to keep looking or the willingness to trust that, yes, out there somewhere in the world is the person who is absolutely right for me. These other people would not be complete mismatches or totally imperfect for us, but in settling for them we could miss out on the most incredible and most important experience of our lives.
And we might well wind up being in the wrong 50 percent of couples today.
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Friday, April 13, 2012
LET'S DO THIS TOGETHER
Relationships are never, ever 50-50, no matter how much we may want them to be.
I say "may" because I'm not sure any of us has ever experienced or known a truly 50-50 relationship, so how can we ever know that is what we want? I think most of us would just like a 60-40 or 70-30 relationship, as long as the ratio is flexible and yet never rises to the 90-10 or 95-5 area ever.
I just think we all want a relationship where nearly everything is shared. No one thing is always mine to do and no one thing is always yours to handle. I can cook and clean, as can you. You can pay the bills and mow the lawn, and so can I. And as often as possible, we tackle these tasks together. But, when we're both working and both trying to run a home together, there will be times when I haven't the time and times when you haven't a second to spare, and that is when our partner, our true co-worker steps in to handle the burden, both of us realizing this is only a temporary arrangement.
That does not mean that no one "owns" anything. We each "own" our part of each responsibility. If I am making the salad, then I take pride and responsibility for doing it well. If you are making the roast, you do it to the best of your ability and can be proud of how well it turns out. But when we sit down for this meal, we each will be sharing our gifts and our energies with each other, in a way me feeding you and you feeding me.
If we perform our daily tasks with our partner in mind, and our partner sharing the job, then do we not feel closer to them with every job that gets done? And do we not mesh our very selves into everything we do, nothing all-me and nothing all-you but everything all-us?
I know of adults -- parents mostly -- who strive so hard to make everything equal for their children, as if the world were going to treat everyone equally. We should not strive for equality in our relationships but for equity, for a reasonable and personal sharing of the daily and regular jobs in our lives so that when those jobs are over we can both take pride in a job well done and both share in the free time left to us.
Left to us. As a couple. As partners. As co-workers. As co-accomplishers. As one.
I say "may" because I'm not sure any of us has ever experienced or known a truly 50-50 relationship, so how can we ever know that is what we want? I think most of us would just like a 60-40 or 70-30 relationship, as long as the ratio is flexible and yet never rises to the 90-10 or 95-5 area ever.
I just think we all want a relationship where nearly everything is shared. No one thing is always mine to do and no one thing is always yours to handle. I can cook and clean, as can you. You can pay the bills and mow the lawn, and so can I. And as often as possible, we tackle these tasks together. But, when we're both working and both trying to run a home together, there will be times when I haven't the time and times when you haven't a second to spare, and that is when our partner, our true co-worker steps in to handle the burden, both of us realizing this is only a temporary arrangement.
That does not mean that no one "owns" anything. We each "own" our part of each responsibility. If I am making the salad, then I take pride and responsibility for doing it well. If you are making the roast, you do it to the best of your ability and can be proud of how well it turns out. But when we sit down for this meal, we each will be sharing our gifts and our energies with each other, in a way me feeding you and you feeding me.
If we perform our daily tasks with our partner in mind, and our partner sharing the job, then do we not feel closer to them with every job that gets done? And do we not mesh our very selves into everything we do, nothing all-me and nothing all-you but everything all-us?
I know of adults -- parents mostly -- who strive so hard to make everything equal for their children, as if the world were going to treat everyone equally. We should not strive for equality in our relationships but for equity, for a reasonable and personal sharing of the daily and regular jobs in our lives so that when those jobs are over we can both take pride in a job well done and both share in the free time left to us.
Left to us. As a couple. As partners. As co-workers. As co-accomplishers. As one.
Monday, April 2, 2012
IF DEATH WERE NEAR ...
Everyone here is dying, whether we like it or not.
We cannot prevent it and we try not to think about it, but it is an indisputable fact of life. All of us are dying.
The only unknown is how fast we are dying. Will we die today? Tomorrow? Fifty years from now? We don't know and because we don't know we tend to live as if we will do so forever when, if we let ourselves think about it, we know that cannot be true.
I often wonder how much differently we'd all live if we knew when we would die. How would that effect our work? Our relationships? Our attitudes? Would we hate less, or more? Would we love more easily or even more restrictively than we do now? Would there be less poverty and less hoarding if we knew when we were to leave this life?
But we don't know, can't know and so we go on living as if we have years not minutes, decades and not hours or days left. We place great importance in things that will not last and little or no importance on the things that will. We hold desperately onto items and objects and readily dismiss and distance ourselves from people and relationships.
And we act as if love were something to take or leave, more often leaving than taking. Because, we figure, time will bring it around again and, if not, we'll find it somewhere farther down the line in someone else we have yet to meet.
I often think to myself, if I knew I was to die tomorrow, what would I be doing today? And while I know I cannot live my entire life that way, because to do so would be to give away everything and to live the rest of my life in poverty (though I am not certain that would necessarily be a bad thing), if I can carry a little of that reality, a little of that thinking into my everyday world, perhaps it will make me a better, more loving person.
Even if the rest of the world lives as if there are thousands of tomorrows to come.
We cannot prevent it and we try not to think about it, but it is an indisputable fact of life. All of us are dying.
The only unknown is how fast we are dying. Will we die today? Tomorrow? Fifty years from now? We don't know and because we don't know we tend to live as if we will do so forever when, if we let ourselves think about it, we know that cannot be true.
I often wonder how much differently we'd all live if we knew when we would die. How would that effect our work? Our relationships? Our attitudes? Would we hate less, or more? Would we love more easily or even more restrictively than we do now? Would there be less poverty and less hoarding if we knew when we were to leave this life?
But we don't know, can't know and so we go on living as if we have years not minutes, decades and not hours or days left. We place great importance in things that will not last and little or no importance on the things that will. We hold desperately onto items and objects and readily dismiss and distance ourselves from people and relationships.
And we act as if love were something to take or leave, more often leaving than taking. Because, we figure, time will bring it around again and, if not, we'll find it somewhere farther down the line in someone else we have yet to meet.
I often think to myself, if I knew I was to die tomorrow, what would I be doing today? And while I know I cannot live my entire life that way, because to do so would be to give away everything and to live the rest of my life in poverty (though I am not certain that would necessarily be a bad thing), if I can carry a little of that reality, a little of that thinking into my everyday world, perhaps it will make me a better, more loving person.
Even if the rest of the world lives as if there are thousands of tomorrows to come.
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