Relationships – Sigh…

OK, let’s do it, let’s tackle one of the biggies.

I’ll be concentrating on loving relationships (Male-Male, Male-Female and Female-Female), but there is something well worth remembering. Every interaction we have with every living thing, (and some inanimate things), is a relationship – be it with a dog, workmate, girlfriend or Grannie Biggins. This discussion will, therefore, both draw on and be relevant to all forms of relationship. I’ll point out where they diverge.

For the moment, I will be talking about a relationship with someone that does not have a serious physical, mental or emotional problem. We may, however, discover along the way that most people are not totally free of all three conditions – hence my using the qualifier “serious”!

Over three decades of counseling, I have seen most of the fallacies, myths, conventional wisdoms and urban legends. If you hold any of these dear to you, tough shit – I’ll be hammering them.

This IS a huge subject, so…

PART 1 (I haven’t planned out how many parts yet).

Two people can be attracted to each other, right. Whether that is because her nose looks like a red-arsed baboon’s labia, he reminds you of the one male in your life to ever show kindness (Uncle Bert), or simply because she has great tits, it really doesn’t matter. It also doesn’t matter whether or not those attractions are the result of ‘our animal heritage’. Those theories are great for anthropologists or social scientists, but for the rest of us it’s OK to just know it happens. We usually draw on those theories when we want to make excuses for some bad behavior.

So, the big question is, “what do we do when it does happen, when we have that attraction?”

I’ll go into some of the aspects of turning that attraction into a relationship later, first there is an important point I need to make.

Let’s jump the gun, look at existing relationships, and hit MYTH NUMBER ONE.
It can be summed up by a simple sentence, and when I hear some version of it I want to take a sledge hammer and knock some sense into the speaker’s thick, dumb skull.
“Relationships are work, and too many are not prepared to put in the effort, preferring to just run away”.

Bull fucking shit!

Here’s my reply: “If your relationship is work, you’ve got a real problem. You’re probably not compatible”.
Most people make the mistake of confusing half-love with full-love.
Half love is when you love some things about someone but not others.
Never commit on the basis of half-love. I’ll go into that in more depth later. (I’ll keep saying “more later”, this is a big subject with a lot of ground to cover).

All those things that make a relationship work, all those things that keep it vital and enduring, they are FUN.
More often than not, they are also the very things that made us decide to have a relationship.

Much of that ‘work’ concept is based around the misunderstood and misused word “Compromise”.
In my experience, which is extensive, compromise usually means that one person get’s what they want and the other put’s up with it. That is not compromise, it is control. In a true compromise, both parties walk away truly happy with the result.

Here is an example:

The Issue;
He wants to watch sport on TV and she wants to watch her favorite soap opera. (Nice, using stereotypes eh, should make everyone feel comfortable).

Compromise as control:
“I get to watch my sport, then I won’t go all silent and moody, I’ll be nice and even tempered”. One partner gets what they want, the other makes a ‘sacrifice’ for the sake of good relations.

Compromise with winners and losers:
“You get to watch sport every first and third week of the month, and I watch soap operas during the other weeks”. That means that, every week, there is a winner and a loser.

True Compromise:
“Hey, we’ll cut back on going out and buy a second TV”. No winners, no losers (except maybe a restaurant or film theatre), everyone is happy.

Much of the marital or relationship ‘work’ is based around choosing either example 1 or 2. Both lead to resentments, eventually.

Let’s look at another aspect of that ‘work’.

“Life is full of problems and stress, we all get tired sometimes, we can’t be perfect all the time. We have to accept that and understand when our partner is not at their best”.

Do we?

There is a vast difference between “Being supportive” and “Taking shit”. I fully agree with the former, I reject totally the latter.
I’ll listen to you, I’ll have your head on my shoulder, I’ll make you a nice cup of tea, and I’ll see if there is anything I can do to lessen the burden. I’ll even understand if you need to shout, scream and curse – as long as it is not directed at me. That’s being supportive. I‘ll not indulge you in making me your whipping boy, and I’ll not accept you insisting on also making my life a misery. That is taking shit.

This takes us very handily onto the next concept, relationship negotiation and setting boundaries.

More in PART 2.