Stifled...

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Relationships...

Everyone has their own definition of things abstract. Honor, value, love, hate, existence, justice. I, for one, hear many whimsical definition of these from a particular someone. Her definition of love, of how a man should or should not treat a woman, of how a female should squeeze toothpaste out (from the middle?!?!) flood my everyday life. The validity, however, she never questions.

So here's my own take on what a relationship is. Call me gay if you want, I just want to make things clear.

A romantic relationship involves love at the beginning. Love is not an object you give to someone. It's a feeling you feel for someone. In fact, it's many feelings you feel for someone. By someone, I do mean one person only.

Love involves trust. Trusting a person, trusting what he/she says. If you love a person, you have to trust that person. Can we all agree that if there's no trust, there's no love? How can you love someone you don't trust? Life isn't a 007 movie.

Let's not go into the definition of love. So, a relationship involves love, but the raging feeling of wanting to be intimate with someone doesn't last forever. It lasts longer for certain individuals, shorter for others. When the feeling fades, does the relationship end? Maybe, that's why divorce rates are so high these days. But when divorce is not considered, what holds two people together?

I believe two things hold people together after explosive feeling of love fizzles. One is compatibility, the other is tolerance. What are they?

Compatibility is how close two people's interests and takes on life are. For example, the man likes to watch news on TV. So does the woman. In this aspect, they are compatible. Conflicts are reduced in this aspect of life. But if the man likes cats and the woman likes dogs, then they are not compatible in this aspect. It's even worse if the man likes cats and the woman hates them.

The more compatible two people are, the more their interests complement one another, the longer they stick together. Some people call a compatible other a soulmate.

What is tolerance then? Tolerance comes into play when incompatibility is taken a step further. Let's use the example above. The man likes cats but the woman hates them. The man, however, still got a cat into the house. The woman, at first, will tolerate the presence of the cat. That is the tolerance I'm talking about. Tolerance, however, wears thin with time. How long they can bear to be together depends on the woman's tolerance towards the cat and the man's tolerance towards the woman's hatred for the cat. Some can stand it longer, even for life, some cannot stand it for a week.

In general, man, being more agressive, tend to have lower tolerance.

When tolerance reaches the end of the road, sacrifices have to be made. In the case above, either the cat goes or the woman goes. This may sound like a trivial example, but if you take the same scenario and put it in other aspects of life, the impact is magnified. When the choice is between your lifestyle and your other half, or your career and your other half, or your freedom and your other half, this will not seem like a laughing matter anymore.

So this is my definition of a relationship. You may not agree, but I'm holding on to this and anyone close to me will have to follow this definition, just like how I follow another person's whimsical, self-centred definitions everyday.

End...

Hanged @ 1:10 PM