Sunday 19 July, 2009A Little Bit about Patience

The definition of patience in Merriam-Webster’s Thesaurus states that: “Patience is the power or capacity to endure without complaint something difficult or disagreeable.”  What I find particularly interesting in this definition are the words: “without complaint.”  Not complain within a relationship? If only!

Patience is so necessary to a relationship that I personally don’t see how any relationship can survive without it. Whenever two people come in contact with one another, there is going to be friction at some point: and someone had better be practicing patience in order for the relationship to move forward.

It’s been my observation that women practice patience far more in relationships then men do. While I have known men who extended patience even further than I have in some situations, I’ve also known men who believe that they posses patience but in truth, they really don’t. Their irritability and impatience reflect themselves in their words, tone and response to their partner, and true patience is not edged with sharpness and crassness.

Yesterday I was in a social situation with another couple who have one of the most fucked up relationships I have ever seen.

We had dropped by in the late afternoon and hung out with them on their porch, drinking some English beer and ordering in some Chinese food. When her boyfriend and mine drifted off into talking about work, this woman and I had our first real time together and our conversation flowed as we began to know one another.

Her boyfriend, who is brilliant in thought and charming in humor, could listen to our conversation as he held his own; and he would often interrupt us to comment on something that he’d heard one of us say. He did this repeatedly and I watched this woman’s reaction closely. This is what she did: she’d glance at me, smile wryly, shrug her shoulder, then sit back in her chair and sip her drink quietly and wait until he finished talking before we’d return to what she and I had been talking about. I could see that she didn’t like that he did this and that she’d prefer that he not: but she’d been living with him a long time, knew that this was just his way and so, she had learned to deal with it. Therefore they no longer fought about it. “I learned patience being with this one,” she told me later when he was out of earshot.

I responded by telling her that I didn’t know a single woman who didn’t learn patience after living with a male for any length of time.

Thomas A. Kempis, a Renaissance Roman Catholic monk (born in 1380), noted that: "All men commend patience, although few be willing to practice it.”  Well, patience is hard to learn! It requires daily commitment, open mindedness and the ability to keep one’s mouth shut at times. But it’s so good for the soul while it helps improve understanding between one another: and isn’t that worth it?