Relationships

What is it about relationships that can make our lives deliriously happy or extremely miserable? Lately I have been thinking about relationships; family, friends, the relationship between a man and a woman.

Relationships are precarious things at best and good relationships are formed, forged and developed over a long period of time. When it comes to a relationship between a man and a woman this precarious “bond” becomes exponentially more so. I have found that when in a relationship with a person of the opposite sex, at the start of the relationship the more time you spend with the individual the more your feelings toward the person grow stronger until it reaches a plateau. During this “honeymoon” period, all things are rosy and no matter what the person does it is acceptable and yeah, you find it cute. Then as you get used to the person and are comfortable in each other’s company, unless you are one of the few who know how to keep the flames of passion burning brightly, things start to wane and you start taking things for granted. The small things you did because you were in love now become more and more of a task than an act of love, so much so that you stop doing these things. The individual’s faults and flaws become more and more apparent – he snores, her feet are cold etc. The thin veneer called love which covered these little cracks seems to vanish and those idiosyncrasies you found so cute and adoring at the start of your relationship now become huge craters when things go wrong.

Relationships, especially those between a man and a woman, take hard work. You have to continually work at it to perfect it. Love too, is hard work but the result of loving someone and being loved by someone is well worth it. The mistake we make is thinking that being in love and staying in love is automatic. It is not. It is a continual act of caring and sharing, not just by saying I love you but showing that I love you by doing small silly things even making a fool of yourself to put a smile on your partners face.

Remember: A perfect relationship between you and your partner doesn’t mean that the people in it are perfect. It means that you both overlook each other’s imperfections. Love hopes all things and endures all things. Ultimately it is built on acts of faith.