Justin Timberlake wasn’t really on some scandal-laden
Illuminati fuelled psycho-distortional binge when he sang the lyrics of ‘Mirrors’
because, just like looking into a mirror, a relationship can be presented to
the eye in one way – but be interpreted in a completely different sense. This
post attempts to discuss some issues in relationships: from walking completely past
the person you love, to overflowing with love, to our need for validation and a
bit of other emotional gunk that I’ve scraped out from between the bricks of
the dammed up walls of my heart-river. (Gaaay.)
You can be with a person for quite some time – to a point
where the qualities that attracted them to you in the first place become almost
commonplace. To you and your partner, both: a beautiful woman’s partner
neglects to compliment her beauty, and maybe she herself tends to neglect the
occasional maintenance act of waxing. It could be said that the relationship
has dragged itself out until you begin to walk past your love. Or it could be
said that the relationship has deepened to a point where you’re not taking each
other for granted in as much as being in a deeply communal existence, where you’re
no longer seeing her beauty but you’re seeing the lady beyond her qualities,
and have come to value and feel her essence as a person. How to explain this…
you’re not in love with her qualities or actions anymore. You just love her.
This isn’t cheap logic to use as an excuse to not compliment
your partner, by the way!
Continuing on this trail of compliments comes the need for
validation. A very wise guru said that we should, for our own sake and for the
sake of our relationships, always assume the other person in the relationship
loves you. It’s easy to come a year along and wonder whether your partner feels
the same. It is hard to push for affirmation. We want this affirmation to
reinforce our stance in a relationship. We want to feel wanted to know we carry
some weight and that the other person would notice if we don’t come home one
day. Why? Our ego needs satisfaction. Our identity, the fragment based on our
partner, needs to be validated. We want to validate ourselves. What pressure to
put on another person! I’m terribly guilty of this. Of paying a compliment and also
wanting to hear something just as nice as back. I’m still trying to work out
whether this makes me a weaker person, an insecure person or a person so vain
that she needs to hear that you think that she’s just as amazing as she thinks
you are (all this in addition to being a normal human being, you know) .
Just as being at the bottom of a well, almost near
drowning, is a difficult place to be at –
being very much in love is an engulfing situation. A year later, still being
completely fascinated by the person you’re with, the way he speaks, smiles,
laughs, puts you in a position where every action you undertake and most of the
emotions you feel move from the bottom of the ocean of love with such unnecessary
force and immensity that it could overwhelm. One of the hardest things I’ve
found is trying to control my emotions and affections in a way that are
palatable, easily and readily, for my partner.
It must be a terribly awkward position for someone who has
their act together to be the recipient of regular love-smacks across the torso
by a partner wielding a tonne club of affection. Where the occasional pinch once in a while may
be pleasurable, controlling your club may be useful.
Why is everything so hard? Why are there so many rules? Why
can’t we just be? Why are there invariably so many nuances and over thinking
traps to fall into? To respond, does doing everything the way you want it to
always lead to happiness? Say for example, you are an early riser. And you like
to practice the cymbals every morning. You do this every day on your own path
and you expect your partner to wake up and praise your playing. But instead you’re
dating Father/Mother Time and they tend to rise when the clock hits noon. You’re
going to be in an unhappy position. Thus, consideration of loved ones and the
impact of our behaviour on their happiness would be a logical facet to factor
into our daily decisions.
This isn’t to say you shouldn’t be yourself. If it is in
your true nature to rise early, by all means do so. And occupy yourself with an
activity more considerate of your partner’s need for slumber. Ideally, however,
you would want to be with someone that would enjoy the clinging of the cymbals
regardless of the time, place or sleep depravity. Right? Who ends up waking up
with you is something you can control.
Something I’ve yet to figure out, though, is what the ideal
is when it comes to hobbies and passions. I would love some input on this, as I
assume it varies in different relationships as people hold these things close
in a number of different degrees. How important is it for you to participate in
your partner’s hobbies? For example, let’s say there’s a typical man: wholly
interested in soccer – watches every match, has a fantasy football team, tracks
players from their waking moment to bed. And there is a female who enjoys
flower pressing – selecting the flowers, preserving them, musing over old
albums of flowers and such. She has little to no interest in soccer. He has
little to no interest in flowers. But they’re both really important to the
individual.
I suppose if she lived in hope that he wouldn’t make her
watch every single match, and if he lived in the hope that she won’t make him
identify each flower by texture in her book –there wouldn’t be an issue of
fairness if they both decide to not involve the other in their hobby. The
problem that arises, though, is when she secretly hopes he would view and
appreciate her work in a way similar to him wanting her to watch sport with
him, it’s a question of sharing worlds and wanting to form such a world
together. Tricky, hey?
On the other hand, it is critical to maintain an individual
identity in a growing relationship. So by the individual pursuit of hobbies,
their individual personas are strengthened and thus the fraction of their
happiness that is dependent on their partner grows smaller. The smaller this
fraction, it can be said, the greater the overall happiness in the relationship
because there is no ‘need’ for the other person. It is a warm, tingly, “I want
you, with me.”
What do you think?
When things grow into comfort, I think, they take on a
special sense of intimacy. A night in with pyjamas and tea, sitting at a desk
and your partner chilling in the other end of the house can be just as
emotionally fulfilling as a night out on the town dressed up head to toe.
Comfort shouldn’t be scorned nor devalued in relation to specific appreciation –
but where there are gaps in that appreciation deficiency, I feel, it’s a chance
for you to work on your own self esteem: “I’ve been with this person for a
year, they must see something amazing in me. Why do I doubt this and demand to
hear it from them, when they’re free to walk away tomorrow if they really
wanted to?”
And if my relationship ends tomorrow or next week, you guys
will all think I’m an idiot with unfounded opinions - but I feel that I have learnt an
immeasurable amount in this past year. Immeasurable.
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