Loving the Romantic Relationship: How We Might Put Our Love in it's Proper Place (Instead of Beating Someone Up With It)
Relationships are hard. Whether a romantic relationship is seen as a nice warm glow which embraces the soul throughout the night, or if it is rather felt like a swarm of biting gnats that are chasing and buzzing around one’s head throughout the day, a romance is often one of the biggest challenges in life.
Can we talk about our relationship?
Loving someone with all of our heart; it can put a lot of pressure on that someone, and here I’d like to explore the option of loving the relationship itself, instead of trying to box someone into remaining the object of our desires. By focusing on the relationship, we might be able to free those that we love, and in doing so we may be able to enjoy that individual’s company more often, and perhaps even keep them comfortably in our lives.
Getting a Grip on Love, While Letting Someone Go
Looking back on old relationships, it was often easy for me to see then what I might have considered to be flaws in the other person, finding things that they did-or-didn’t do that might have caused the relationship to end. However, a true self-examination might have shown me that I was not perfect either, and such a logical introspection might have also allowed me a more holistic look at the relationship itself, instead of just judging the other individual being, blaming them for nearly everything.
Do You Love The Relationship?
During some of my romantic relationships in the past, I had focused every bit of my being onto another individual, then I would claim them, and begin waving around my expectations and needs like battle flags, and of course they had responded with flags of their own-- but wait. Why was I building a fortress and powering up my weapons, when I was supposed to be in a ‘love’ situation?
For reasons like this, romantic relationships may seem to have no logic to them, and any critical reasoning is often buried under numerous layers of emotions, becoming unavailable to the participants. Even the simplest math becomes hard if adding two together makes three, but a relationship has been formed by the union.
One Plus One Equals Three
Whenever two things are together, a relationship is automatically created, and this relationship between two things becomes a separate thing of it’s own. Unlike the emotional beings who created it though, the relationship doesn’t get offended, doesn’t love or hate, and doesn’t take sides in arguments. A relationship only needs attention, and cannot survive alone. Indeed, two must be involved in it, giving it all of their love constantly.
The initial relationship is formed automatically upon contact between two beings, and those beings will either like their relationship or not. They might both love it, or they may both hate it but the relationship is the default creation of the two individuals, and is actually the cause of their mutual attraction to each other, good or bad.
Love Isn’t Blind, It’s Just Confused
Romantic love knows nothing about physical beauty, and knows no boundaries at all, but they say that it’s blind for a reason: Romantic love can’t see that it is the relationship that is actually loved, and romance makes the mistake of trying to love an individual being instead of loving the often-illogical connection between the two beings. Inevitably this misdirection of focus will lead to expectations, or might tempt the individuals to try to make the other fit into a pre-conceived version of what romance is supposed to be.
Don’t Like the Relationship?
If two individual’s mutual relationship itself is what attracted them together in the first place, then with an objective examination of that relationship, the two can stop fighting with one another long enough to re-focus critically upon that relationship; do we still love it? Do we even like it anymore? Should we try to fix it, or can we?
Relationships can change, and do change naturally. Individuals change along with it, and over time those individuals can lose their love for a relationship even while still caring for the other individual, but the alternative-- trying to change somebody else-- has never worked for anybody.
Relationships can be changed by the individuals, and the individuals can be changed by the relationship, but individual beings should always be free to change when and if they are ready to change, not when they are told to by another.
If You Love Someone, Let Them Remain Free
Trying to get another to adhere to my version of romance had ruined many of my romances in time. To pretend that I wasn’t whole without someone’s love had led to endless manipulation on my part, as I tested their love for me, not aware of what I was doing to the relationship. Ultimately, by my meddling in someone else’s business, the romantic relationship had been turned into an adversarial one.
If we need for another individual to love us romantically, then we may be actually causing the problem with the relationship.
What a burden that is for us to put on another being; to suggest that their lives be forever committed to making sure that we are loved enough. Instead, maybe we should look again at the relationship itself-- a relationship that truly is depending on us, and really can’t live without us.
We can either nurture the relationship or ignore it, but by keeping the relationship as the focus, we automatically exit the fortress and drop our shields, and our dear human companions are spared from our shackles of emotion, and are no longer taxed by our imagined needs for victory, so that together we can build a beautiful relationship together.
Summary: Loving the Relationship
The relationship between two beings is what either repels them or attracts them to one another, and that relationship is a fragile, ever-changing thing. In romantic attractions, that relationship is unforgettable, yet is so often forgotten by it’s creators. Those emotionally-guided stewards of the creation can either change with their relationship willingly, or they can transmute it into something less romantic, a relationship with their expectations, demands and manipulation of the other as it’s controlling premise.
To love one’s lover romantically then, is for them to love the connection, the illogical bond that keeps those two beings together in life. To love that romantic connection is to give the relationship a romantic theme, and such a relationship requires nurture, attention, and a lot of love. True love.
I just had a crazy break up.
I'm normally a guy who has a lot of female attention here and I've had girls ask me out plainly.
Why is love so so confused? Paul, would you believe I fell in love with a regular looking girl. My friends were gobsmacked Stephen was all over a girl who didn't stand a chance beside the othet girls. Strike 1.
I did everything in my power to make her want to be in the relationship. Red flag..... I did things only married men do. Lol. A lot of crazy stuffs for her.
In the end, she left...... But left me with a shattered heart.
I recently just decided to embrace the fact that i should have always made her free and my heartburns are less now.
I love your article.
It's good to learn from things like that, once the emotion subsides then some sense can be made of the whole relationship, I suppose.
Thanks for the beautiful topics. Yes love is the beautiful gift of god for people. It can bind two hearts with a very beautiful and strong bonds, which one can not easily break. Without it life become a barren island where plants grow but nobody is available to nurish the plants. Thanks for sharing such an amazing fact, wish you a very happy love life.
I'm glad that you liked it, you have a beautiful way of saying it as well! Thanks for the lovely comment.
This was expertly written, brother! You have effectively captured the most salient points without being too preachy, like most other relationship articles out there. I could really feel the emotions resonating throughout the entire piece, which is weird since this is non-fiction. But, I'm not at all surprised, since it has your name in the by-line. I fully agree with everything you said, and it gives a lot to think about. Relationships are a work in progress, and one that you can't rest your laurels on. I love how you put it "Love Isn’t Blind, It’s Just Confused". Excellent!
Thanks, and I admit it's been a while since I was actually in a relationship of this sort, so I can be very objective about it! I didn't expect anyone to take relationship advice from a guy who hasn't had a steady girlfriend since the Bush administration, but in fact maybe that shows my expertise in the matter!
With Frank it's always been a matter of our needs beings respected and fulfilled, which sometimes means delaying or compromising on our own needs, each in turn, in a way that doesn't mean to completely neglect ourselves or our needs. When something displeases us, we talk about it. The love we share is so great that we feel it's important that whenever something in the relationship makes us not like that aspect of it, we fix it, so that we never become resentful.
We won't always like every aspect of the relationship because we won't always like every aspect of our lives that will negatively affect the relationship, but together we work on ourselves, to help each other be better people and happier people, so that the relationship is always something that we love, because we truly love each other.
Oh, by the way, I nominated you for the 7-Day B&W Photo Challenge. I mention it in this post: The 7 Day Black & White Photo Challenge: https://steemit.com/sevendaybnwchallenge/@binkyprod/black-and-white-7-day-photo-challenge-day-7
It sounds like you have created a relationship that is as good as it gets, I am happy for your relationship, it sounds nice.
Ok I missed the nomination, but I have been nominated already for that, so I accept this nomination again, and also now I know someone else to nominate one day during my own 7 photo challenge!
hehe ;) I look forward in seeing what pictures you share.
spread love all over !!!