freakingID

"The North Woods"

I’ve been watching movies lately that all deal with relationships, dating, sex, breakups, and the like. I enjoy these movies, and often envy the characters. I envy them so much sometimes I feel like I just have to watch another one of “those” movies, living vicariously through the characters.

We think someone may be living in that car. Count your blessings.

On the way to work this morning, then, I put my finger on some of the reasons I think this envy exists. How is it a happily-married father could envy some characters who are often desperate, heartbroken, and on a general emotional roller-coaster? Hmm.

Taking your partner for granted.

In a committed relationship—especially a marriage—it’s easier to take your partner for granted. In some ways, taking them for granted is part of the benefit of the commitment. When you formally make a commitment, whether it’s a marriage, a handfasting, or whatever, you’re in effect saying:

“Hey, even when the shit hits the fan, the boat’s rocking, and we’re up a creek without a paddle, you don’t have to worry about losing me. I’m here for the long haul, unconditionally.”

There are different ways we might take our partners for granted. If we just think about them a bit, maybe we can freshen things up a bit.

The value of reassurances

Uncommitted couples

When life throws lemons at a relatively new, open, or undefined relationship, you’re left wondering whether your partner will stick it out, or say “to hell with this” and high-tail it out of there. If they do stick around, there’s a sense of validation, a feeling that “I must be okay” or “this relationship must be going well,” since your uncommitted partner didn’t scram.

That’s a good feeling. Validation.

Committed couples

One problem for committed couples is a lack of validation. If you can just assume you’re both in it for the long haul, then you never question whether you’re personally good enough for your partner, or whether your relationship really is worth more than a dozen dead roses in a vase of septic-smelling water that no one remembers to change. You don’t ask yourself what you’ve done for your partner lately. You never ask yourself if your partner is going to scram, you never get that anticipatory on-the-edge feeling, and never experience that validating moment when you realize everything’s copacetic.

Sometimes this can feel like something’s missing from the relationship, like the love has gone out of it, or “the spark.” The spark is really just an up-and-down ride where you and your partner wonder if this is going to last, then you’re reassured that it will, and then you find yourself wondering again all over.

Sweating the small stuff

Uncommitted couples

In an uncommitted relationship, you’re more likely to pay attention to your appearance, your manners, your attitude, and your attentiveness. You’re less likely to:

• fart
• belch
• cram food down your throat
• wear yesterday’s underwear
• use swear words

…and so forth.

You’re more likely to make quality time for your partner, take pride in your appearance, mind your personal hygiene, and less likely to complain about inane things. Whether you realize it or not, you’re making yourself attractive in comparison to anyone else your partner might notice. After all, since you probably said something cheesy like “you can look at the menu, just don’t eat,” you certainly want to make sure you’re still a tasty treat.

Committed couples

Committed couples become comfortable around one another. A girl farts and can laugh about it. A guy belches, grins, and says “that’s a good food ‘thank you’ in China!” A girl stops taking care of her hair, and her guy notices a spare tire forming around his waste and just shrugs it off.

While it’s wonderful to feel uninhibited around your partner, there’s such a thing as too much comfort. When you first met your partner, would you have felt proud, comfortable, confident, and attractive if you looked and acted the way you do around them now? The next time your partner is “looking at the menu” and eyes something scrumptious, do you think you’re still the most delicious lover in their mind?

Sweating the big stuff

Uncommitted couples

When you’re just dating, steady or not, you may not share your life’s larger burdens with your partners. Or, if you do share, you might mention it, but not make a big deal of it. Your partner may have told you about some problems with their boss or some issue with a family member, but when you’re together, it’s not something always hanging over your head.

The two of you get together, laugh, kiss, have sex, eat, walk and dance, usually able to put your personal problems on the back burner for a time. You’re not really invested enough in your partner to get stressed out over the fight he had with his mother, or the probationary period she’s been put on at work. And really, he doesn’t want to talk about it that much, she doesn’t want to be reminded about it when she’s around you. Those problems are not a part of your relationship–they in no way define the time and feelings you share.

What a fantastic way to spend time with someone, untroubled until you’re alone at home again and faced with some of your more unpleasant realities.

Committed couples

When you’re in a committed relationship, it’s expected that you’ll share all your problems and invest yourself in your partner’s problems. It then becomes too easy for the problems to define the relationship. Instead of coming home to a loving partner who has missed you all day and is ready to throw down and have sex, you come home to a partner who has a new bevy of problems they want to share with you. You probably have a list of such problems you built up over the day, too.

By the time you get through your new lists of life hassles, do you really think there’s any energy left for the two of you?

The point of it all

I started writing this post several months ago, and I’m trying to just finish it and get it out there now. I’m pretty sure the point of it was that committed relationships often lead to complacency and lack of consideration. It seems the best situation is a committed relationship where you can be guaranteed the benefit of the doubt, but where you still can be expected to put the best of yourself into the relationship.