Saturday 5 December, 2009Just the Two of You

The basis of any relationship should be just the interaction between the two people involved. One person meets another and whatever transpires between them and how they relate to one another is strictly their business. A simple theory, really, to understand.

But in real life, where most of us have family and friends, all these other people in our lives will have a decided opinion about the person that we choose to become involved with. And like it or not, they may be right at times that we wish they weren’t and completely wrong at times that we wish they weren’t. 

Now, if the relationship that you have been developing with someone has brought you more happiness and contented than pain and discomfort over time, then its safe to say that most of the other people in your life will have accepted your choice and be genuinely glad that you are reasonably happy.

But if you’re not happy and content, not only are you going to hear that the one you chose is a jerk and an asshole, but you will be reminded that you are the one who chose to bring this person into your life. And they’d be right. Which is a real pain because you know that ultimately some of the pain that you brought into your life is of your own choosing.

It’s kind of hard to get around that.

Something that my partner of many years has said to me whenever I have pointed out to him the pain he has brought me is: “Well, you didn’t have to stay.”  It is such a statement of truth that I usually cannot come back with anything without being very consciously aware that it is the truth. If I saw what I perceived I saw and it made me unhappy and I still stayed, am I even allowed the right to bitch or complain?

Most people agree as they mature that if someone chooses to stay with someone and continues to be more unhappy than content, then they have brought it upon themselves. This is reinforced when the one who is clearly unhappy confides his or her unhappiness with family and friends. While the friends and family will and can sympathize the majority of the time, they will eventually stop offering support and will even grow weary of hearing you talk because you have shown that no matter how much you say you are hurting, you are not making any changes to bring about a different outcome.

We’ve all been on both sides of the fence.

So where does this leave us when we go through troubling times in our relationships? It leaves us needing to be consciously aware what we relate to other people. We don’t want to lose our friends because we’ve bored them to death and we don’t want to alienate our family by showing them we’re not about to take any different action. In the end, all relationships are between the two involved.