How do I Love Thee?

What do you call a cross between a romantic and a pragmatist? I don't know; but I am one of them.

I have had many discussions over the past few weeks with women about relationships. And some common themes keep coming up, over and over. Disappointment. Disillusionment. Disenchantment.

Here is the thing. I believe in love. In the truest sense of the word. I believe there is the perfect person for each person. Maybe there are multiple people for each person. The issue is, we have to find that person. That person has to find us. That's where luck, destiny, karma, whatever you want to call it comes into play. This belief makes me a romantic.

The problem is, many of us spend an inordinate amount of time, emotion, and commitment with those who aren't. We settle. We think we can make the best of the situation. We think we can change or change the other person. We bind ourselves in wrong relationships out of fear of being alone, fear of being a social failure because the pressures to be in a relationship are ridiculous. So, if our focus is on something that isn't working, how can we be present and available to discover something that will?

But can we leave it to chance? What if we never meet the one? What if we are destined to always be that single person in a sea of couples? What if that notion is pure crap?

So what? Does that mean we have to spend our lives being unhappy with ourselves, with living? Does that mean we compromise our very being not to be alone? Does that mean we have to make ourselves change to be with someone else? Or we have to fine-tune the other person so that he/she becomes who we want them to be?

If we cannot be who we are with the person we have chosen to share our lives with, if he or she cannot be themselves, then what's the point? Who are we? Who are we with? How can it work?

Bottom line. It can't. Being in a relationship should not be work. We should not be trying to make it work. It should be freeing, easy, uplifting.

Sure, in every relationship there is adjustment. Adjustment to the other person, his/her space, separate interests, perspective, other people in their lives and their lives before us. But that adjustment shouldn't be existentially painful. It shouldn't feel like we are hiding significant aspects of who we are. It shouldn't mean we have to be perfect, because perfection is relative.

It should be like a flower opening up to a bee.

Sure, every relationship has its challenges, its conflicts, its issues. We are human after all, and those arise whether we are in a relationship or not. We are not defined by the problems we encounter. We are defined in how we approach them. If our relationship creates problems, if we find ourselves facing the other like a combatant on the field, then how is this a nurturing relationship? Who is our ally in the conflict? Who do we talk to if not to the person with whom we are facing the challenge? If we can't work together, why are we even bothering?

A relationship should not make us feel inadequate. Should not make us feel like failures. It should allow us to love ourselves even more. It should allow our entities to embrace the other as he or she is. In our good days and our bad. It should be a breath of fresh air, not a labored gasp for oxygen.