Relationships: The Human Element

I think there's no substitute for expressing yourself in a relationship. Some people say you should always try to act cool, never raise your voice and things of that nature. But the fact is, people often have strong emotions, and it might be important, for the sake of a healthy relationship, to express your emotions, instead of clamming them up inside. If your partner loves you, and so you to them, then your relationship will endure, wont it? People, when they argue, should do the best that they can to keep things in perspective, but as I've reflected in other columns, love is a more powerful force than anything that we know about. Mysterious is love, and while its good to try and follow solid principles when settling disagreements, respect, and love, are important, and resemble, sometimes, a two way street. Who can stand never to receive, but always to give these things, in a relationship? What if one of the persons doesn't care about the other one, and the other one always has to put up with it? How does he feel? How long will their relationship last, even if he tries to suck it up and do the right thing? It's a conclusion that somebody normal will arrive at.

As they say, however, the harder the battle, the sweeter the victory. Being humble when your spouse always acts this way might provide an example. There are times when we must listen, and times we must speak. We expect to be heard, just as we have listened. It's too bad if we feel shortchanged in this transaction, because most of the time, there's nothing left to do but disagree. It tries our patience and tests our nerve.

So the human element is something that we might have to consider when saying to others what they need to do. Relationships, healthy ones, are based on the love that both people have. If there isn't any love, no amount of recommending this or that does anything. It just sounds like pure nonsense, when feelings are at stake.

Idealized love is hard to come by these days. Perhaps its not real, and just exists in the minds of lonely hearts. It's something to think about, while trying to navigate the troubled waters of today's society. I happen to believe in it, but I do not understand its ways, and sometimes, I don't think most anybody does, except maybe in retrospect.