Fairy wrote: ↑Sat Sep 07, 2024 10:14 am
What are your personal opinions, as to what you believe or think, make an adult male and female relationship, either work really well, or fail miserably? Apart from the obviousness of incompatibility. Why do some relationships work and others do not?
I'll speak from what I think has worked in my current, longest relationship. Well, you have to love each other. That can be a vague word, but it includes this desire that the other person not suffer, in the specific situations, and enjoy, find meaning or whatever they are seeking possible. You are glad when they feel right or good and not glad when they suffer. That this is all palpable to the other person. Empathy could be a term for this.
Sense of humor. We've had to go through real hellish experiences since we met and we both make jokes, sometimes jokes that others would consider really quite dark. This was part of what got us through what might have frozen us or led to depression where we couldn't have managed to do what we needed to. I think also bodies like to laugh, that it has healthy effects and these effects, given that some of the hell related to health issues, got use through on that level also, not just the emotional.
I think common values and some common preferences help. I mean, if there's nothing you enjoy doing together, well, then it's hard to have a relationship. If you don't have at least some closeness in values than goals and ways of relating differn too much.
I think you have to be willing to look at and call into question your own habits and truths. Not just to cast them off when bidden, but you are able to look at the scary dreck, assumptions, unconscious patterns, and the dark side of your own soul. The other person lives with them, either literally if you live in the same home, or metaphorically since you spend time together. They aren't just spending time with what you like about yourself. They are spending time with what you don't like about yourself, including parts you don't even want to notice and manage not to. You get to react knee-jerk and defensively but if you can't at least also mull and reflect and feel into and reconsider, it ain't gonna last.
Related to sense of humor is play. Play has helped me. It might come through dance or playdoh or throwing things or in water stuff, but the what gets called child stuff, that's gotta be in there, at least for me. Physical play. And not like a prescription, but that play flows out of the connection you have. I suppose I have worded much of the above too universally. I started clear but sagged into universalizing language. I restate: this has what has helped me and the woman I'm with.....so far.
Man, it makes a world of difference to me if both people are interested in what they other one wants to talk about. Not always of course, but that generally one is curious, interested, would miss hearing the other person's thoughts and feelings, questions and mulling, dreams, memories.....
I need someone who is comfortable with both what get called positive emotions and what get called negative emotions. I don't buy that schema. But someone who gets there is a lot going on, life is challenging to say the least, and stuff is going to come up. That on some level both of us can be with the full range of the human in the other.
Should we try harder to make them work, or simply give up on them far too easily, for fear of being mentally and emotionally drained, or hurt.
It depends. I think most of us know people who try to make the wrong relationships work and suffer terribly for it. Then we likely know someone else who runs at the first sign of trouble. I'm afraid we are down to intuition here. It would be lovely if we could fill in a questionaire and get an answer (not saying you meant this), but I think intuition is needed here and I think intuition can improve.
Having some of what could be called self-love, or the lack of self-hate, or having some self-acceptance is likely necessary to have that intuition going well.
Are relationships just too much effort. Are they not worth the bother. Is the juice never worth the squeeze. Is it just easier to say they are wrong, or they are broken, even when they have also felt amazing for a long time, but then due to mood changes, suddenly something feels so wrong, so it’s just easier to throw them out with the trash, rather than try to fix the broken. Should we be frightened of each others moods, or allow moods to be there, without them posing any threat to the wonderful opportunist potential that two people can create together with each other. Can we accept that nothing is ever just a given, and that nothing is ever easy, and that with enough effort and relentless dedication all things and differences can be worked out.
People are so different, I have no idea what they all need. Some seem very shallow, but who knows. For me it seems a given that we probably will get frightened by each other's moods and we need to learn how to be there with them anyway. But if that ends up being a kind of rule someone, in a home with emotional or even physical abuse, may stay and suffer for no good reason. Intuition again is necessary.
Isn’t a treasured flower vase, that unfortunately crashed and broke into many pieces, but was restored back to its former beauty by being glued back together just as sentimental and precious as it once were in it’s original pristine state? And can’t our relationships be treated like that?
It's a lovely metaphor. Sure. That can happen and I have experienced something like that.
Or is it just better to be alone, for the rest of your life.
I am sure there are people who would actually rather be alone, we are billions. I say actually because I think many others haven't yet found a way to nto suffer immensely with others, so it seems or is the best option for now. I think we are social beings and we tend to want/need our special one, but I won't run up to the hermit's cabin and tell them they need to get out more. But if we are friends and they are clearly suffering lonliness and they ask me, well, I might suggest that things don't have to be like they have been in the past. But some process might have to be gone through for a different kind of relationship to be possible.
I suppose in the background is a kind of general idea that you gotta be able to be with hard to face places in yourself and in the other person. But that also if taken like a rule could lead to self-abuse.
