The Love, Relationships, and Controversy Series Part IV: Couples

Now that it is more than a week past when I originally planned on posting this, I am finally getting around to typing out the last of my posts in this series. Thus far I've talked about the way we develop friendships and express love, the kinds of love and friendship between men, and the kinds of non-romantic kinds of love and friendship between people of different genders. At last it has come time for me to write about what we all typically think of when we think of love and relationships.

Within my personal social circles there are very few topics discussed and debated quite as much as that of relationships and how they should be handled, viewed, carried out, introduced, etc. etc. It is a topic that people tend to be both passionate and biased toward, and one where there is a great reluctance to listen to any contrary pieces of advice or suggestions from anyone else because either A) there is no way anyone else could ever understand what they are thinking or B) they have enough experience under the belt and have studied relationships enough that they clearly know better than anyone else how relationships should function. It is a topic where the pendulum of opinion seems to either swing toward the extreme of absolute slackness and freedom within a romantic relationship to the extreme of their being only one proper way for every relationship ever to be handled.

I am going to try and walk the line between those tempting extremes and lay out what I have observed, experienced, think, and feel about the whole subject in a way that you can at least appreciate if not agree with. The key thing to understand when thinking about relationships of a more romantic nature is that, while there are certainly truths and realities about human nature that apply to pretty much the entire human race, everyone is different and when you start putting two people together, an even more unique situation occurs. It absolutely a good idea, in my opinion, to draw upon past experiences and knowledge you have gathered in your own relationships and the relationships of friends/siblings/children/parents etc, but always try to keep in mind that the circumstances and nature of every relationship is going to vary. This is something I tend to have trouble remembering myself, but I encourage you all, as I divulge my personal opinions, to take my words with a grain of salt and understand that I am not trying to lay down an unwavering ultimatum.

No, on with the show...

Because there is a kind of natural chronological progression for romantic relationships between the interest being sparked and the knot being tied, I figure it makes the most sense to start at the beginning and conclude with the ending.

I know it sounds a little bit cheesy (w are talking about romantic love here), but your future spouse should be your best friend, and I think every romantic relationship should be founded on a strong friendship. Feelings and twitterpation are all fine and good, but they aren't going to stand the test of time all on their own. Before you even consider entering into a more serious, romance orientated relationship with someone, you should a friendship already established and a friendship based on common interests and beliefs. Your significant other should be someone who believes the same foundational principles as you when it comes things like politics and especially religion. While it is entirely possible for relationships between people of different political stances and faiths to work out, I don't see how that could ever be easy and I've seen several scenarios where it makes things rough for both the couple and their children. If you think about it, your religious faith is a pretty massively important thing, and if you really believe the teachings of your religion that you have to hold those teachings above your personal feelings for another person. If you can't have common ground on issues like then you are asking for trials and troubles ahead.

Long term, functional relationships are going to need some kind of common ground to stand on when the going gets rough and the rough gets going, because real life likes to throw a lot of curve balls our way, and during those times we tend to get depressed, frustrated, angry, and confused and if you are in a relationship with someone where your passionate feelings and emotion based love for them is what you are depending on for success, that depression, frustration, and anger is going to override your twitterpation and things are going to go south pretty quickly. (No offense Texas.)

Of course, this is all assuming you are looking at relationships being a long term investment in the first place. For me, when you enter in a romantic relationship with another person and become "an item" you are making a decision to work towards something. These relationships aren't stationary things that exist in some kind of limbo. The longer you are in a relationship, the more difficulties and temptations you are going to face, and if you don't have some kind of goal or purpose to which you are working, things are going to get messy. Regardless of how you operate your boyfriend/girlfriend experience, I firmly believe that every romantic relationship should be founded on the purpose of either moving towards marriage or determining that your boyfriend/girlfriend isn't someone you could marry. If you reach the latter conclusion you should back out and end the thing, because otherwise you are committing more and more of yourself and your time into something that is going to escalate without ever having a way to vent or focus that escalation.

I have heard the argument that you have to date a variety of people, or enter into open ended relationships because otherwise you don't have any way of finding out whether or not someone is "the right person" or not. There appears to be this idea that it is only through expressing outward romantic affection, dedicating vast amounts of time to a specific person, and potentially going as far as living with/sleeping with someone are you able to determine whether or not they are someone you could marry and love for the duration of your life. I would like to propose that this way of thinking is utter nonsense.

Firstly, if you are getting to know someone as a close friend like I have already suggested as being important for a relationship to work well, than you should know that person pretty well already before you ever enter into a relationship with them. When you are in dating/courting someone you do learn things about them that you don't in regular routine interactions, but when it comes to figuring out whether or not someone is the kind of person you could spend your life with, it is the day to day routine activities that are most likely to make or break the deal. How someone handles stress/frustration/anger disappointment, how someone treats other people of your gender, how someone treats their parents and siblings, and how someone juggles their responsibilities are all things that you can learn pretty easily without ever moving in with them. These things, along the previously mentioned political and religious beliefs, are significant traits and points of interest about someone that you find out about just by being close friends.

Secondly, you don't exactly "figure out" whether or not someone is a person you can love and dedicate your life to. Twitterpation and infatuation are all fine and dandy, but the lightheaded thoughts and feelings you experience about that special person early on in a relationship aren't going to last indefinitely. so it isn't like you've found "the right person" as soon as your heart starts fluttering. The  kind of love that is associated with couples is the kind of love that you chose. You make the individual choice to personally nurture and grow the relationship between yourself and another person, and from that comes the kind of lifelong, steadfast, loving relationships that we see in couples celebrating their 40th, 50th, 60th, and greater wedding anniversaries. It is true that when you are in a relationship with someone before marriage you should be looking for evidence that you two will be able to function as a couple later on in life, as well as reasons to why you wouldn't make a good married couples (if you find those you need to address them or end the relationship), but ultimately you have to choose whether or not that relationship is going to work and then you make it work.

Relationships are growing and changing things, and like and growing thing, you have to care for them and watch over them to make sure that they remain healthy and strong. The most beautiful and magnificent flower in the world will wither and die if left uncared for, and if you "find the perfect person" and then decide that you were meant to be together and that nothing could go wrong as a result, there is a lot of potential for things to turn pretty nasty. Likewise, a neglected and seemingly unspectacular plant could end up growing and flourishing under a nurturing and tender hand. A seemingly unlikely relationship could end up working out quite well if both parties decide to actively work together on it. Love is something you have to work at, and you have to choose to work at it. When you enter into a relationship with someone you have to commit to putting your back into it and pouring blood, sweat, and tears into making it turn out right.

Eventually, once you and your best friend have made the active and continual decision to pursue a relationship, and you have found that you share enough common ground, beliefs, and opinions that you actually want to spend the rest of your lives together, you get to move onto the next stage: Engagement.

Again, I understand that everyone is different, but I don't understand the decision to enter into an engagement and then wait two... three.... four... or more years until you actually get married. Once you have made the for sure decision to get married and share your lives than you don't want to wait any longer than you have to. I haven't been engaged myself, but I've known quite a few people that have been engaged and I've watched a lot of those relationships go from beginning to end. During the engagement seems to be when emotions are the most fevered, and feelings are the most sensitive. That's when people seem to start questioning their decisions and getting panicky just because the time to make that final commitment is rapidly approaching. Once you have gotten engaged though, you have essentially promised to make the vows that you will on your wedding day. You aren't actually married yet, but you have promised each other that you will be, and I don't see why you'd want to drag out the time between making that first promise and fulfilling it.

Instead, it seems to me like it would be so much more helpful to you and your spouse to be if you wait to get engaged until you actually are ready to fully commit and get married in the very near future. Spend the time leading up to that point getting to know each other better and better, because there is really not much you can do as couple before engagement that you can do as couple engaged. Like I said, I haven't been engaged yet myself, but the only thing I've seen prolonged engagements do is weaken relationships because the hype surrounding them can only last so long and eventually seems to turn into impatience, frustration, and a lack of interest... but that's just my two cents.

When the day finally comes for the wedding however, I feel like there are a few things that I can speak to with absolute certainty. For one, we are far too receptive to the idea of divorce in our culture. When you get married you are making a promise, a very serious promise, to love and cherish your spouse until death do you part. Baring abuse, there is almost no good reason for two people to divorce. The wedding is that point where your choice to continue loving and caring for someone gets locked in, and you really shouldn't be able to just back out anymore. You take relationships and engagements leading up to that point seriously, because once you have exchanged vows and the service has ended things should be set in stone.

Honestly, I think one of culture's greatest weaknesses when it comes to this entire topic is that we don't, as a whole, seem to really understand what marriage really means. When you marry someone you are leaving your mother and father behind and are becoming one flesh. You and the person you marry are entering into a vocation ordained by God, and it is a vocation that should not be taken lightly. What God has brought together let no man break asunder! Marriage is really not for the sake of personal convenience or pleasure, it is for the benefit of the community and world at large when husband and wife appreciate and understand the significance of their duties to each other, and to their children. If you never get married there is nothing wrong with that, but if you do it should not be because you want to make yourself, or even your spouse, happy. Marriage is about family, it is about the church, and it is about making you and your spouse better people for the wider community.

Unfortunately, what I cannot figure out how to say what I want to any more eloquently than that. For honestly, what more is there to be said? At its heart love is a choice that you make, and one that you fight for against you own sinful temptations and flaws. Acknowledging this, and acknowledging that love and relationships are not about us and our personal happiness, makes everything so much clearer and easier.

I cannot say that this series went exactly the way I wanted it to. I never feel quite satisfied with what I have to say once I finish, and I fell way behind schedule, but my hope is perhaps some of you gained some insights from my thoughts, or at least enjoyed/appreciated reading them. The whole topic is infinitely more complex than what I touched upon here, and I could write a million posts without being able to say all that there is to say, but hopefully what I did say is worth reading.

If you got this far, than thanks for reading and have a Merry Christmas!

Pax