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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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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Yup, basically
on a long enough timescale you either have to go deeper and deeper into your traumas, or otherwise develop a certain icy-neutral protocol
& sooner or later they’ll come out anyway, the longer you less likely you can hide it. Easier to hide from self than partner
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totally agree, beans will be spilled and your choice as a couple is whether you're gonna clean them up or collude to ignore them and spend the rest of your marriage tiptoeing around on a floor covered in spilled beans 😂
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super interesting to hear this from both of you given that i know you’ve both really walked the walk. long-term relationships as like this constant challenge to keep eating more and more shadow or else the uneaten shadow increasingly gunks up the whole thing, something like that?
yup
it’s not necessarily as grim as it sounds; once you’ve made some progress together it’s like lifting weights and it feels good
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yup
also, finally found the tiktok vm.tiktok.com/ZMRqUSSCp/
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