Relationships are difficult to maintain although I don't think that they should be. In a perfect relationship we would love our partner, care about each others wants and needs. We would be there for one another emotionally and we would be monogamous. Telling each other the truth at all costs. Complete honesty should in theory save all situations, provided the people involved are really ready for the truth about themselves and what they need in a relationship. Complete honesty rarely comes without some kind of price. In actuality most relationships don't work this way in my opinion because of one major factor. The inability to look at our selves and our particular shortcomings objectively. You cannot expect a person to come into your life and make everything better. Only self-examination and self-improvement can accomplish that. If you are living up to your potential and are the person you know you can be before you look for a partner. You will not need to find someone to complete or fix you. That door swings both ways however you cannot find a fixer upper and then be upset when it requires more work and patience than you bargained for. You should be free to find a mate that you can appreciate for themselves and not for what they can repair in your life. Within ourselves we are often not clear on what it takes to make us happy.
It is near impossible to find happiness outside of ourselves for that reason. We think we know what we want but often it is the superficial that captivates us. A beautiful face or desirable physical body can distract us from the things that are really important in a mate. Getting caught up in only what you desire physically, what you want to feel sexually or even worse material things will surely lead you down a superficial path to nothing. It is the same mindset that allows an advertiser to use what attracts you to get you to get you to buy a product that may not necessarily be beneficial to you. Take a beer commercial for instance. The theme is always "Buy this and you will always have good times". Showing seductively lit soirées' attended by all the beautiful people. Or sun splashed beaches with perfectly toned and tanned partygoers playing volleyball an d sunning themselves. We are susceptible to this kind of advertising because we would like to see ourselves as these sophisticated people or these young happy go lucky beachgoers. So we buy the product because we buy into the fantasy. None of these ads ever shows you the people missing days of work, hung over, throwing up, or in car accidents.
It is similar when we are looking for someone to be in a relationship with. Everyone is out there advertising, and the better it looks and feels we think the better it must be, but just like the beer ad there is ALWAYS another side. It is all right to like what you are attracted to so long as that is not your only criteria for picking a partner. Separating the reality of love from the fantasy of the rest is not always easy. In every relationship there is that magical time in the beginning when everything goes right. People are on their best behavior ever mindful of how they are coming across and how they are being viewed. Regardless of how good an advertiser a person is there always comes a point when the real product shows through. After the glitzy wrapping and polished exterior are removed. The time when you can see the real merchandise with all its imperfection and blemishes. This is not a bad thing it is a necessary occurrence because it's probably about the same time that our own wrapper is coming off. To me this is a time of true revelation. A time when a relationship is truly built. Seeing each other as we actually are and striving to understand and appreciate the differences in one another.
It is after this period that the self-examination should come in as well as really assessing what you want in a mate and what the person you are with at the time has to offer you.
As well as what you have to offer to them. We all have shortcomings and failings as human beings. The idea is to determine what things you can live with and without for the short term in a partner. This is not to say you need to settle for less than you feel you deserve. And most importantly of all if the two of you together can be open minded enough to work on those aspects of character and personality that you may both be lacking in to become better human beings for yourselves and in doing so become better mates for each other. Ascertain whether or not the positives of the person outweigh the negatives in your mind. You must determine if the things that you do not necessarily find to be attractive about the person are significant to you in the big picture. What someone else may view as a fault or shortcoming you may find to be an endearing quality.
When we get to be a certain age and have a certain amount of experience with relationships we are more and more responsible for what happens to us. By that I mean you should be able to spot certain unacceptable behaviors before you become too caught up in a destructive situation. If a man has hit you before you should be able to spot that kind of anger in another man before it gets to that point of being physical. If a woman has cheated on you before there are certain tell tale signs such as unavailability or distraction that you have seen before. If you choose to ignore these thinking that well maybe it will be different this time then you alone are responsible for whatever happens to you next.
At that point you have to start to explore why you may be attracting the same kinds of people and why you continually accept this behavior in the opposite sex. The confusing of true love as opposed to feelings of lust and passion will rise up against you every time if you have no concept of the difference between these things. It's my view that there are many signs that a person may like you, or lust after you, or tolerate you but may not necessarily love you. For instance if a partner comes home and starts to tell you about the things that happened to them in their day without asking you about your day first. That is a sign albeit a small one but a sign just the same. My point is as a relationship progresses there will be a great many of these small signs. As insignificant as they may seem to be at the time they point to a greater issue of self-centeredness in your mate. If after not seeing my partner all day I enter our home without asking her how was her day, first. That may mean I don't care about her day and what she has gone through. That is disturbing when you claim to love someone, because you may not care about them as much as you should. In some time in a relationship you may use the word love over and over. To the point that it is taken as a given that you are in love with your partner.
Is that really it though? Sometimes the fear of being alone will cause us to accept less than we deserve because the alternative is intolerable to us. Especially when our self-esteem is tied to the person we are with. We feel good when they are there and terrible when they are not. Well what happens if that person chooses to leave for good? Do you really want to feel terrible all the time just because a person leaves you? Ceasing to exist or to be happy just because a person leaves you makes no sense.
Emotion often defeats logic in these circumstances. Unfortunately many different emotions can be confused as love. When it comes to love people many times throw logic out the window generally because love is seen as this mystical fixation that cannot be explained. A great deal of time and energy can be spent trying to get your significant other to do the things you want them to. Tremendous amounts of manipulation, sweet-talking, nagging, arguing and so on can go into trying to make that person act the way you think that they should. YOU CANNOT MAKE ANYONE DO ANYTHING. You cannot make someone into a thing that they are not. As it pertains to how someone treats you however. You can insist that you be treated at least as well as you treat them. This tack however starts with us. I have found after many years of trying to make women do what I wanted them to do. Ultimately the way to their heart and indirectly to my own desires was to sincerely treat them with love, care, concern and tenderness. Not in a manipulative way but out of true concern for what they needed from me. To put down my own wants and needs for the time being. To truly care about them and do whatever I could to be there emotionally for them. If you consistently treat your partner in such a way there is not a thing in the world they will not do for you to make you happy and vice versa. If for whatever reason they do not then you are with the wrong person. It is that simple, it really is. Emotion will sometimes tell us that I love him or her no matter what they do. While that may be idiotically romantic I suppose. There is room for logic in this scenario. If I hit myself in the hand with a hammer and it hurts and then I decide I will flip the hammer over and try it with the claw side and it hurts even worse. I cannot be mad at the hammer. At some point logically I have to understand that I am swinging that hammer or at the very least putting my hand in the way and it doesn't matter how many different ways I hit myself it is still going to hurt. Solution: put down the hammer. Letting passion alone completely rule your personal and romantic decisions is emotional suicide. Demand more for yourself and just as importantly demand more from yourself.
We are all looking for that perfect mate to come along and sweep us of our feet. That physically beautiful, intelligent, successful, sexy man or woman to fall out of the sky and take us away from the mundane life we find ourselves living. Is that fantasy realistic? I think it can be. I doubt however meeting someone of that stature is an accidental occurrence. If you want to meet someone who fills all these expectations for you. You probably should look at what you are doing in your own life to deserve such a wonderful person. If you think getting your hair and nails done and putting on a new outfit is going to be enough you had better think again. The same goes for the men out there. Being in shape and wearing nice clothes and driving a nice car will help you attract someone initially, looking good will not do a damn thing to help you keep a quality individual. Beauty fades, clothes get old and material things come and go. What you are inside intellectually and spiritually is a constant.
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