Relationships

Setting aside my feminist rant concerning relationships and the social evolution behind masculine and feminine roles I just want to start by saying that I am about as far from being an expert on relationships as one can get.  Therefore, anything I say in this post can be taken with about a kilogram of salt!  However, I do know what it feels like to fall for someone and not have it returned.  I also know what it's like to be that person to not return someone else's feelings and let me tell you that at both ends of the spectrum you are royally screwed.  I believe that it is human nature to avoid pain or being the cause of it.  We have so many tactics to prevent these things from happening on a daily basis and being cynical is one of them.  It's much easier to look at something and stand against it rather than pour ourselves into it and have the chance of getting hurt by it in the end.  I've always been cynical about relationships, but recently I had a conversation with a very close friend of mine who made me look like a freaking hopeless romantic!  That is a very difficult thing to do i.e. I laugh at both the Titanic and the Notebook.  But she, and she knows who she is, has the impression that relationships and in particular dating is a waste of time.  Recently she wrote about this conversation and how she couldn't express it at the time, but she's really less of a cynic than she portrays and more of a, wait for it, human being!  To her expressly, everything you said is not eccentric or unjustified in any way.  Being in a relationship is all about vulnerability; I believe that there is absolutely no possible way to remain completely in control in a relationship.  We relinquish the control we have over our emotions for control over theirs.  This all sounds a little matrix-y but all I mean is that to be in a healthy relationship is to trade the parts of you that you want them to know intimately for the parts of them you love.  Love is an all-consuming kind of emotion that doesn't work if you try to have it in moderation.  Love is not for restraint or for protection it's for losing who we are and finding it again in all of the things we like in that person only to realize that the whole time we thought we had lost it they we're holding on to it for us.  If they won't have the patience to hold onto us while we tread water in the beginning then it won't work.  However, I had a conversation with some people last night about how obsessive love can get and how this exchange can go wrong if instead of holding onto who we are for us that other person absorbs it until both people are changed, but not for the better.  Basically love, like practically everything else in this world, lives only in the extremes.  But honestly who wants a love of indifference?  "Oh yeah we've been together for 2 years because we like each other just fine..." said no one ever!  The trick to this whole spiel is finding that person and here I will not compromise when I say that just as everything happens for a reason, everyone happens for a reason!  I firmly believe that there is someone out there for everyone and even if it takes those two people 80 years to become ready to meet each other once they are it'll be inevitable.  Now that I've lost all credibility as a cynic I'll end with one of my favorite quotes from Maya Angelou who once wrote
"The first time someone shows you who they are, believe them"
Take that how you will on this gloriously work-free summer saturday and have a RUN-believable day!

Song Suggestion: I Already Forgot Everything You Said by The Dig