I’ve been taking a little bit of my time to ponder about relationship.

I guess we all agree that being in love is something wonderful, let alone getting into a relationship subsequently. The happy end “societically perfect” version of it is when the lovebirds then decide to get married, have one or two beautiful, doing-good-in-school children, have a secure job and therefore a stable income, retire after 65 years of age, in short, live happily ever after as a family.

However, not all couples endure that long. Why? Isn’t love supposed to unite and bring happiness?

Scott Peck (author of the best-selling book The Road Less Traveled) defines love as the will to extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth. In other words, loving someone demands a lot more than just saying “I love you”. Genuine love requires commitment, in which we are ready to work hard and learn lots of new (including the unpleasant) things for and in our relationship. Ready even when things get into our ego boundaries. Relationship is about two strangers with different personalities getting together, and it is not always easy to work through.

People fall in love and whether we like it or not, people could fall out of love as well one day; when the mating instinct and the excitement of falling in love have run their course. This could be exactly the momentum where genuine love begins. Sort of a cutting edge where we either face this displeasing fact and work through it, or we choose to break up because we don’t feel like spending time doing the effort. It’s our own call.

Since I fully understand that relationship is not something easy, I have nothing against break-ups and divorces. It’d be much better to quit in time rather than to drag the conflicts over the years since it wouldn’t do anyone any good. Ideally, both parties would have an equal amount of will to nurture and maintain the relationship. The way I see it, conflicts mostly arise when the effort is unbalanced; for whatever reason one gives or takes more than the other. For couples with kids, it could even cause unwanted consequences to the process of growing up, which could turn those innocent children into adults with some serious mental issues or even character disorders. Not so good for the world.

Regardless of my opinion about break-ups, still we should not give up easily once we come to the difficult point in our relationship. Try to work it out first before we make up our mind, for we all actually dream of having a loving, healthy, constructive relationship. Provided we have tried and it is fruitless, then break-up might be a good option. Equal take-and-give and a deliberate amount of sacrifices are important keywords in relationship. After all, we all have the same rights to achieve our own happiness, even if we therefore have to disembark the relationship boat and start anew.

Well, c’est la vie.

My Thoughts On Relationship7.0101
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