I wonder if perhaps healthy romantic relationships *aren’t* inherently hard
but rather
we grew up with such off-base expectations of what they’d look like
& updating all *those* is the hard part
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I think this is true in a fortune cookie type of way, meaning that in general expectations lead disappointment. But I think even in arranged marriages there is hard work to make it work. I think dealing with people is hard no matter how you slice it.
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What direction we’re going with that tho?
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Yeah I mean, obvs ‘hard’ is vague. This is the flavor I’m coming from:
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Petition to replace all these instances of "work" with "nourishment."
inner nourishment
shadow nourishment
I recall this tweet often. I suspect ideas that "life is supposed to feel hard" keep us stuck inside exploitative paradigms. twitter.com/made_in_cosmos…
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Also, I say this as someone who’s had a handful of 1-2yr relationships. I recently found more breakup-shame, so I’m unfolding that.
The most spectacular burnout: I went all-in & bc I thought “relationships are hard,” didn’t notice abuse in the dynamic.
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Does “ending a relationship” feel inherently shameful to you?
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I’d be curious for someone w more years of relationship experience than me to weigh in on what different flavors of “hard” are out there, & which feel longterm healthy vs. unhealthy.
perhaps?
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devils in the details, but super broadly the hard thing about anything is managing your own psychology, and in a relationship that’s double the trouble. trouble squared, bc you can have trauma cascades, trust issues, etc
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Wife and I were laughing about this last night: the thing nobody quite tells you about marriage is: you’re choosing the person in life who’s going to upset, disappoint annoy and frustrate you more than anybody else
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most relationships end bc of a kind of “economic failure” or “trust bankruptcy”, and people feel shame bc it can imply that they’re “irresponsible”. but sometimes things are just not workable. a company of good people can still go out of business if the unit economics is wrong
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The pattern I’m describing is -
1. start a relationship
2. enjoy the good times and good vibes
3. accumulate “debt” from bad times and bad vibes
4. fail to address the debt; either avoid it or mishandle it
5. ditch the whole thing to repeat the pattern with someone else
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one way I heard it described recently (on tiktok, will add a further reply later if I can find the creator!) is that in a healthy relationship, over time the parts of yourselves that remain to be shown to one another are darker & less socially acceptable...
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so if your relationship is strong & healthy enough to last, more vulnerability will be necessary to feel the same level of intimacy. Most of us at some point chicken out, stop sharing our secrets, stop feeling intimacy & in this sense there is always a challenge for us in love.
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