I'm not someone who is easily wooed by images of happy couples. I'm much more interested in what's happening behind the façade of happiness, the conflict underneath their embrace.
The images sold to us about romantic love, the long-standing narrative about dreamy beginnings, and fairytale endings are missing realness. Social media has, in many ways, deepened this false narrative. You’re privy to the vacations, the engagement, and the perfectly decorated Christmas trees on a repetitive loop. The media’s portrayal of love and the superficial conversations we’re having about falling in love appear so conflict-free that once we're actually in it any tension, boredom, or disconnect feels like misalignment. "We’re not on the same page. This can't be my person."
There are so many relationship realities that need more attention. Sharing relationship wisdom is needed to help us better navigate, better communicate, and better balance romantic and sexual connections alongside personal evolution.
In truth, no two relationships are the same and each journey carries so many little moments of discontent, momentary breakups, imagined endings, mountains to climb, and various valleys where you both lose your way. Yet the consistent narrative is one where the conflict is largely tucked beneath beautiful memories and pleasant experiences.
We demand so much from our partners. There are endless roles they need to play. They should bring you joy and satisfaction, adventure and humor. Challenge you, teach you, be patient with you. Never mind finding you desirable and attractive…all the time. They should tolerate you and seemingly enjoy it every step of the way. You expect that they, not only, know your every need (even the ones you can’t quite pinpoint) but fulfill those needs.
Notice how many of these you are still trying to figure out how to give to yourself on a daily basis and how often they change.
We're all fragile packages waiting for someone else to just know how to handle us and we need to talk about this fragility. Self-inquiry, stepbacks, and uncomfortable growth don’t just all disappear once you’re in the relationship. We need more honesty about the challenging path of trying to love ourselves and someone else at the same time. We need more stories of couples enduring drastically misaligned growth spurts and the constant evolution of wants and needs. That’s what happens between vacations, engagements, and Christmas trees.
I've experienced a wild ride of varied experiences. Commitment phobia and blissful companionship. Monogamy felt unrealistic with its outdated rules. Polyamory felt exhausting with the incessant communication. I’ve experienced an aversion to affection and intimacy in other years. There has been happiness, lust, addiction, and most recently relationship burnout. This is my ongoing quest. A rollercoaster across the board of trying to find what works best for me. What I've learned from all of these stages is that relationships are emotionally taxing because your personal evolution is happening simultaneously. Half the battles you face together are rooted in your own questions about who you are and what you need at this moment in your life. No one will check all your boxes at any given stage and most importantly your boxes will change. You will change.
We need to keep that reality at the forefront of the conversation when we talk about love. In any “I Love You”, the I and You are forever changing.
“I have a big love for you, A free love expansive, spacious With room for you to roam, room for you to grow I love you for you because of you as you are, as you will be. I love you today, I loved you yesterday and I’ll love you tomorrow” By: Vanessa Maria Rodriguez I wrote this poem after watching Scenes from A Marriage.
GOOD READS
The Course of Love by Alaine Botton. This should be a societal prerequisite read for any relationship. “It helps to have had a few lovers before settling down…to discover first hand, in many different contexts, that there isn’t any such [right] person; that everyone really is a bit wrong when considered from up close” The Course of Love explores a married couple after the birth of love, what it takes to maintain, and what happens to our original ideals under the pressures of an average existence.
Verity is an anxiety-inducing, page-turner about obsessive love and manipulation. A "sublimely creepy" psychological thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Colleen Hoover. What a fckn ride. A must-read.
Why Are We So Awful to Our Spouses: When you’re actively in a partnership, says Harrington, “everything can feel like a referendum, and you’ve often got so much bubbling under the surface. But at the same time, you have this freedom and safety because you’ve committed to someone on that level.” Which means feeling safe enough to have an adult temper tantrum without worrying that the other person is going to walk out.
LISTEN TO
On Being, Podcast: The True Hard Work of Love and Relationships featuring Alain de Botton. The link includes the podcast episode and the transcript for my fellow readers. Love is something we have to learn and we can make progress with, and that it’s not just enthusiasm, it’s a skill. And it requires forbearance, generosity, imagination, and a million things besides. The course of true love is rocky and bumpy at the best of times, and the more generous we can be towards that flawed humanity, the better chance we’ll have of doing the true hard work of love.