Posts tagged with "relationships"

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I told Aaron a few months ago that I held his morals and atti­tudes towards rela­tion­ships as a per­son­al goal. Knowing him for a while and being through a few odd rela­tion­ships issues with him has made me real­ize that he has a very healthy mind­set. I’m not say­ing that there are bad or wrong ways of view­ing rela­tion­ships, I sim­ply found that his ideas fit with my over­all life goals very well. Even though I haven’t always stuck to these lofty stan­dards in my own rela­tion­ship expe­ri­ence, I still try to main­tain this set of ideals.

I know a few peo­ple whose main goal in life is to get mar­ried. I ques­tioned them about why they have this goal, and they would tell me that they sim­ply don’t know. I’ve been through all types of rela­tion­ship mind­sets before, all fair­ly dif­fer­ent, all from dif­fer­ent man­i­fes­ta­tions of my per­son­al­i­ty. There were phas­es such as “I want to be in a rela­tion­ship”, “I don’t think I’ll ever be in a rela­tion­ship”, “I’m unsat­is­fied with this rela­tion­ship”, “I’ve giv­en up on rela­tion­ships”, “I’ll be in this rela­tion­ship for the rest of my life” (haha­ha), “I don’t want to be in a rela­tion­ship”, and it goes on and on.

Right now I’m not even sure what I want. I think a rela­tion­ship would be great but unnec­es­sary. I’ve stopped being depen­dent on some­one to com­plete me, stopped look­ing at life as a dead­line, and have recon­sid­ered almost every­thing about what I want.

Being able to do so has made me think much more clear­ly and act with more con­vic­tion.

One Man's Sip

Glasses on the windowsill

I final­ly print­ed off my pic­ture of the glass­es on the sill and framed it, which is quite some­thing con­sid­er­ing the fact that I have bare­ly any dec­o­ra­tions in my room. I was lucky enough to have been giv­en a nice met­al frame as a Christmas gift a few years ago, but have not had a decent pic­ture to put in it. Since I don’t have a career going yet, I try to keep a min­i­mal­is­tic amount of fur­ni­ture until I can afford to invest in long term sets, and for now the pic­ture rests on my cof­fee table. I want­ed a phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of the image because of the poignan­cy it evokes in me.

Every time I look at it I can’t help but think of the morn­ing sun seep­ing through the cracks of blue venet­ian blinds, of the flour­ish of green leaves out­side the win­dow. I think of lying on a swollen bed with my back to the wall, notic­ing the bright­ness of the sun fill the room, talk­ing well past the break of day. I think of sleep­ing next to some­one, hold­ing her head, draw­ing on her face, see­ing the ear­ly light bring out the sun­flow­ers in her eyes. I remem­ber how we’d go to sleep, plac­ing our frames on the win­dowsill before suc­cumb­ing to exhaus­tion.

Perhaps I’m so affect­ed by this image, this bit­ter­sweet mem­o­ry, because of how much I rel­ish the act of sleep­ing next to some­one. One of my favourite parts of a rela­tion­ship is being able to hold some­one before los­ing con­scious­ness. I sup­pose it betrays a vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, a cer­tain unpar­al­leled inti­ma­cy, and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty is some­thing that I’ve always been attract­ed to.

But how odd it is that this may mean so much to me, yet mean so lit­tle to anoth­er. That even some­one shar­ing this expe­ri­ence with me may think of it in pass­ing, as some ephemer­al expe­ri­ence, not worth remem­ber­ing.

What do we take with our­selves when we fall apart? Do we keep the mem­o­ries or the emo­tions? Do we only take the good and leave the bad?

With this pic­ture I try to take every­thing. I don’t want to hide from hurt, I don’t want to neglect any feel­ings. I choose to see the image as a beau­ti­ful thing, a frame in time when I felt some­thing greater than most things I’ve felt in my life. I try to turn the pain into pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and gain from my expe­ri­ence. I look at this pic­ture and become affect­ed by every­thing it means to me.

Even if it means noth­ing to any­one else.

The Experience of the First Classification

People in rela­tion­ships can be divid­ed into two cat­e­gories; those who love the self and those who love the oth­er. Every rela­tion­ship is dif­fer­ent, not just in the sense of a dif­fer­ent pair of peo­ple, but also in the idea of the same per­son with a dif­fer­ent girl­friend or boyfriend. Although some­one may be of a cer­tain cat­e­go­ry through one rela­tion­ship, they may fall into the oth­er cat­e­go­ry in anoth­er. Even cross­ing cat­e­gories through the same rela­tion­ship is pos­si­ble, depend­ing on the dynam­ic of a cou­ple.

The lovers of the self care about the oth­er per­son, but only inso­faras their own vest­ed inter­ests are con­cerned. When the desire of this type of lover begins to out­grow what the rela­tion­ship can offer, the bond weak­ens and often breaks. The main con­cern of this type is what they are get­ting out of the rela­tion­ship.

The lovers of the oth­er are lovers in the clas­si­cal sense of the word. These are the peo­ple with an hon­est love, the ones who care most about whether or not the oth­er per­son is hap­py. This type of lover is the one least will­ing to break a rela­tion­ship, the one who is more will­ing to sac­ri­fice or com­pro­mise.

Relationships are based on match­ings of these two types. A rela­tion­ship between two lovers of the self will last as long as there is no con­flict involved. Once a dis­agree­ment is reached, nei­ther par­ty cares enough to make the rela­tion­ship work. On the oth­er hand, a rela­tion­ship between two lovers of the oth­er is the ide­al match, and gen­er­al­ly the longest last­ing. Both peo­ple are com­mit­ted and will­ing to work out any prob­lems that may arise. Usually, the only break in the rela­tion­ship may be from base con­flicts (dis­agree­ment on issues which are too basic to work out or com­pro­mise about, such as adop­tion).

The most com­mon type of match, how­ev­er, is with one lover of the self and one lover of the oth­er. At the end of such a rela­tion­ship one is left unaf­fect­ed while the oth­er is bro­ken-heart­ed, and the end of such a thing, in my expe­ri­ence, is inevitable. In cas­es like this, I’ve found myself on both sides of the coin.

And regret­ting noth­ing of either.

Janus

Sometimes I see the same movie twice with a large gap of time between view­ings, and I under­stand the char­ac­ters, thoughts, emo­tions, and actions very dif­fer­ent­ly each time.

A few days ago, I came to the real­iza­tion that I’ve been a dif­fer­ent per­son in every rela­tion­ship through my eight year dat­ing peri­od. Not all of me has changed, but there are a few aspects which I believe would be impor­tant in such a bond.

I’ve gained more matu­ri­ty and more con­fi­dence. I’ve gained a fair amount of intel­li­gence (though I still feel like I have infi­nite­ly more to learn). I’ve changed career goals, rela­tion­ship goals, and hap­pi­ness goals. I’m more out­go­ing, more tol­er­ant, more secure, less pre­ten­tious (I hope), less arro­gant, and less igno­rant. I’ve changed my opin­ions on chil­dren, abor­tion, and reli­gion. I’ve even changed my actions based on these shift­ing beliefs.

Although I view most of these changes as being good things, they may put strain on a rela­tion­ship nonethe­less. After all, change is change, and unless a rela­tion­ship is strong and flex­i­ble enough, it can­not endure such stress. It’s a lit­tle scary to think that I may be bring­ing extra strain into a rela­tion­ship, sim­ply by being myself.

At one point in my inex­pe­ri­enced youth, after hav­ing changed a fair deal already, I believed that I would­n’t change any more. Now I real­ize how stu­pid­ly obliv­i­ous a com­ment that was, and am of the belief that I’ll nev­er stop chang­ing.

The most impor­tant thing to keep in mind through all of this is whether the change is for the bet­ter, and as Tom has helped me real­ize, rela­tion­ships (friend­ships or oth­er­wise) should form around this idea.

Whether or not a rela­tion­ship will work out in the end is not based on one per­son, but the foun­da­tion and dynam­ic of two peo­ple.