Relationships Require Work

I have been around for a few years and one thing that I am learning is that relationships require work. If any relationship is to be positive at all both parties are going to have to put in a lot of extra work. We all have a slightly jaded conception of life in that we choose to believe that we will enter into a relationship with the perfect person. We choose to believe that that person will fulfill all of our dreams and expectations. During the courtship phase of any relationship both parties put their absolute best foot forward at all times so that if there is a problem we will choose not to see it anyway. Soon after marriage reality hits like a ton of reinforced concrete and we realize that our pudding pie has some serious issues. Pudding pie is realizing the same thing about us right about the same time. The toughest thing about being married is that two people who have been independent for all of their lives have to learn to depend on each other. This in itself isn’t bad but they have to learn how to yield their wills to the collective will of the marriage. This may be easy or hard which depends on the personalities of the people getting married. Any relationship isn’t good at all when it is not a joy to be involved in. Living with a man or woman that you can’t get along with has to be a sentence worse than death. This is not only true for marriages but for work relationships, friendships, or acquaintances. Sometimes people will just choose to adapt to a bad situation and live a life of misery. Good relationships should increase the very life spans of the people who are in them. Bad relationships will just nibble away at the physical and mental health of both parties involved. One thing is certain no matter what type of relationship that you find yourself in. You can’t improve it if you only focus on the negatives. When you do this it will only serve to make a bad thing worse. Choose instead to look for the good points of your significant other and focus on them. Hopefully they will do the same for you. Have you ever seen the brat whose parents chose to ignore every bad thing that he or she did? Real love will work the same way. It will cover up the bad in lieu of the good. It will almost make wrong right. You will definitely need real love to make any type of relationship last. I think that the society that we live in is part of the cause for the high divorce rate among Americans. For one thing we live in a society where everything has to be done now. People don’t have the regard for others that they used to have. If you are entering into a relationship and want it to work you must esteem the other person higher than you are. Your focus should not be on self gratification but on the gratification of your partner. I believe that too many people enter relationships these days for physical gratification or money. I was talking with one of my wife’s single friends the other day about her hopes for a relationship and one thing that she said several times disturbed me. She made the comment that she didn’t know what the other party could offer her. I can certainly understand her rationale but the reason to enter a relationship is not for what you can get out of it. This type of relationship is almost doomed to failure right from the start because sooner or later the going will get tough. The entire key is motive. If your motive is to please the other you have an excellent chance, but if your motive is self satisfaction you are almost doomed to failure. The Good Life