How hard should relationships be?
(Nimue)
The idea that relationships – and particularly marriages – are hard was with me from early on. It’s an often said thing, a generally held wisdom. Marriages are hard. Relationships are hard. You have to work at them. So I went in to adult life willing to put in the work.
This last year and a bit has led me to a significant re-think. We’ve had some hefty challenges, but the relationship itself has never been one of them. When things come up for us, we talk – and listen to each other. We figure out what’s needed, and then we act on it. That takes a small amount of effort, but really not very much. As we’re both invested in making each other happy and wanting to take care of each other, the desire to find the best way of doing things, is strong.
All of that calls for trust, for good communication, willingness to be vulnerable. We’ve had a lot to learn about each other. Being together has changed both of us, so were constantly learning and adapting to each other. It takes attention but it’s not actually work, it doesn’t feel difficult. That’s been quite surprising.
In the past, lots of relationship things have felt like work. Trying to understand someone who didn’t communicate their thoughts and feelings was hard work. And further back, trying to get things right for someone who constantly shifted the goalposts was hard work. Trying to explain to someone who is not inclined to listen, is hard work. Being the only person willing to try and adapt and change is hard work. There can be a lot of work in a relationship if only one of the people involved is actively trying to make it function.
What I’m finding now doesn’t feel even slightly like work. It feels like an adventure.
I find myself wondering how much of a difference it would have made if I’d started with a better story. If I’d grown up being told that relationships are an adventure, requiring open heartedness and trust, would I have made different choices? Probably. The expectation of hard work was so engrained in me that I didn’t question it. That’s the power stories have over us, informing our expectations and our sense of what’s normal. The stories that we don’t even notice can have huge power over us.
I have a better story to tell now, about mutual support and adventure, and what happens when someone actively wants to understand you. How good it is being understood and accepted as your true self, not having to pretend or compromise. How much good can be made from a willingness to cooperate.
Life is full of challenges. Love does not have to be part of the burden we each carry. It doesn’t have to be one more struggle, or a place of wounding and difficulty. How we choose to relate to each other makes worlds of difference to the kinds of life experience we have. Kindness is so incredibly powerful. In some ways it seems ridiculous to me that I’ve come to this knowledge so late in life. At the same time I know it isn’t just me, I see so much online and so many stories that go with the perspective I used to have.
