I’m not telling people not to have standards (that’s essential to contentment with your future groom or bride to be) but are people’s expectations of their future partners becoming ridiculously unattainable?
I have a few friends at the moment with relationship troubles because for one reason or many, a friend or their partner, was expecting too much of their other half.
One fool with no vision beyond his biceps left a fabulous friend of mine because she wouldn’t ice-skate, but she had reason to refuse… she was never taught how. Ice-skating to me, would not make or break a relationship. One does not master marriage on skates. Ice-skates were not going to help her clean, be a better cook or a better lover. This gutless wonder, found flaws in one of the most beautiful people I know, not because she was flawed but in fact because he was looking to pair up with Tour-Guide Barbie which might be fair if he was Ken, but this boy is more akin to Humphrey Bear (in appearance not love). Seeing my friend so broken over a flawed person who pointed to her insecurities to justify his commitment-phobia was heartbreaking. This was a man that was all brawn and no brain because any smart forward thinking man would have done his utmost to keep her…come to think of it, he may have been lacking in another department too.
The devastating thing is this is not the first time I’ve seen it happen. I’ve had friends in long-term relationships who have become train-wrecks after their romantic carriage ride down lovers lane came to a screeching halt when one partner failed to commit to someone they knew they loved because they believed there was better out there.
That polygamist ideology is spurred on by articles like this one from Sam in the City in SMH that claim that believing in “the one” when there’s so much choice out there is unfathomable in the 21st century (http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/lifematters/blogs/ask-sam/can-you-be-with-one-person-for-the-rest-of-your-life-20110511-1eifd.html).
Opinions like this, show a great loss of a necessary value. If love is what guarantees happiness, why are people treating it like a disposal commodity? Does an abundance of people create the illusion of choice? Are we so fickle that the sight of an attractive person who we aren’t with, makes us question the value of the person we are blessed to have?
When I think of it in terms of friendship, an end is never a foreseeable option to a disagreement. We may meet many people throughout our life’s journey but we always hold nearest and dearest those friends that have seen us through every triumph, tribulation and tooth loss from adolescence to adulthood. Why then, when we find love is it so easy to part ways with someone we’d hoped for a future with?
This week I was shocked to learn that Maria Shriver and Arnold Schwarzenegger are separated after 25 years of marriage. The terminator and Shriver terminated a love that spanned years, career changes, hairdos and eighties fashion (if you survived the latter you’d think you could get through anything). Of course nobody ever knows the intimate details of their friend’s relationships unless they’ve divulged every detail to you, but from what I have seen and heard, I’m disappointed in the fact that nobody wants to fight for what is meaningful anymore.
For many of us, our parent’s generation got to know each other very quickly and within that time decided that that person would be the one they shared their life with. It was not the fairytale that many of us dream of, it was better. It was that deeply connected, self-sacrificing, faithful, serving, unconditional love that swore and stayed committed till death do them part because love, marriage, their word and honouring a promise were values far more important than a candlelit dinner and a few lust-induced butterflies.
When they promised to love, they also promised to fight because the relationship would always be a bond they’d never dare break. They treated marriage like it was something they could never get out of because it was a choice they made and they accepted that true love was hard work. So they kept on working.
I don’t think that standards were sacrificed back in the day. I think it’s more that they favoured quality over quantity and perhaps that was the secret. They didn’t look at small flaws, they worked together to right each other’s wrongs and it didn’t matter if one could skate or not because they’d guide each other through it (or do an awesome lift where the non-skater didn’t have to touch the ground).
The secret to finding true love was not about butterflies, boobs and Barbies, it was about finding someone you’d rather fight with for the rest of your life than leave and be superficially dating anyone else.
No comments:
Post a Comment