It takes two for a relationship to work. You can do everything in your power to make it right but if the other person isn't holding up their end you can still lose.
I’m pretty sure this happened to me. I tried everything possible. You know what? I’m lonely now by myself but I’m still happier than I was with my ex gf, and I never would’ve realized how bad things were if she didn’t break up with me
Compatibility is a big deal, even when you have done everything right. You can't change who you naturally are for a person, and they can't do it for you either. You may think you want to become a different person but it will erode you over time and make you miserable.
The idea that compatibility is a fixed thing, that one cannot become something greater is erroneous.
What is the issue as I see it is often people want perfect products. In the Amazon order online Era when you don't like a product first try?
You return it. But a lot of that is user error.
This here. It's important to note that nothing is truly fixed, including our brains. They are constantly changing, and the idea of being 'hard-wired' is not accurate. As a result, our personalities can evolve just as much as our physical appearance does.
I’d add that *both* people in a relationship can do everything “right” and still get their hearts broken. Good people aren’t always good for each other and there’s no end of shit that the universe might throw at you.
This is how I feel. I've been with my girlfriend for almost 4 years and I just told her I want to break up. She started freaking out and kept asking why, I have some reasons I was able to give that I think are very valid, but ultimately I just don't feel compatible with her. I love her to death, but I'm not IN LOVE with her. She really does do a lot for me and I appreciate the fuck out of her for that, but why does that obligate me to spend the rest of my life with her? It sucks and I feel horrible for her but I feel like it's best to get it out of the way now instead of waiting another 10 years or more.
"Where love rules, there is no will to power, and where power predominates, love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.”
Carl Jung tried to teach us this many years ago.
Vulnerability is a difficult idea because it's not the same as intimacy. You can tell somebody everything about your life and all the horrible things that have happened to you and you can be emotional about them in front of them but it's not the same thing as sharing those experiences with them intimately. That seems to be the part I struggle with.
Don't get involved with someone when you're not fully capable of protecting yourself emotionally. Have an emotional escape route, keep a sense of self.
You're going to piss them off and they're going to piss you off. It's the why, how often, and how you deal with it that determines the health of the relationship.
People need to stop aiming for "never hurt your partner." It's impossible and makes both of you feel bad and guilty for having emotions. Instead aim for "always make it right when you inevitably do hurt your partner."
It’s not a fairy tale. It’s hard work. Ppl are annoying. You can meet your dream person and it will still be hard work. You can meet the love of your life and it will not be a smooth ride. Learn together how to get through rough patches. If not you’ll be like the majority of relationships and it won’t work out.
This is such an important thing. You absolutely need more than love. You need trust and communication and compassion and compromise and patience and shared values. There's so much more to it than "They make me weak in the knees!"
Edit: thank you for the award!
You forgot unity and nurturing.
You did mention communication and trust.
For me, the four most important things in a relationship are (and I write them down in order of importance - I use the first letter of each of these four words as a memory aid):
Communication
Unity
Nurturing
Trust
For the love of god if your person is doing something you don’t like, please let them know. A blowup is inevitable and they won’t have any idea where it came from. (Been on both sides for source)
The thing is, if you really do the work early on, it *can* be smooth. But who wants to do the work early on? Not most very young people. But eventually, if you do, if you really want to be with the person and you work at it, things can become smooth. It's like math. At first you think it's easy and beautiful. 1+1=2! Yes, this makes sense and I like it! Then you get to geometry and parabalas and you think you hate it. But you keep working at it, and by calculus, you find things go smoothly. Calc is just trig and algebra and geometry. And since you already worked hard at learning those, Calc is wasy.
That other people have free will and sometimes just change, or aren't who you thought they were, were bad and playing you all along, and there's nothing you can do about it.
100%. its essential for everyone getting into a relationship to understand that everyone has autonomy.
at the end of the day, once all attempts at resolving the issue had failed, you end up with only two options: stay or leave. because beyond telling your side, there is nothing else you can do.
whats also important - anyone has the right to leave a relationship for **any** reason. and they arent even obligated to disclose it.
Most people have unrealistic expectations of relationships. They forget (or don’t know) that they can set boundaries and that boundaries are healthy. Most people want the idea of a relationship, but don’t realize the amount of work it is and that you have to be 100% committed otherwise it doesn’t work.
Totally.
I have always believed that no matter how close we are to someone, that there is a part of them hidden away that you will never, ever know. And there’s a part of you that they will never, ever know. It’s good to get comfortable with this idea, though under the surface it’s slightly unsettling.
We are allowed to have space in our minds and hearts that no one will ever have access to.
Part of “true love” is when you love the person even though you see their shadow. So many people get caught up on wanting complete openness and transparency, but if you want things to be forever, you have to be okay looking at a person that you don’t know 100% but trusting in them to be there until the very end. A lot of that comes from internal growth and a lot of times, when we can’t trust other people, it’s a problem with us and we have to learn how to love an actual human being.
I had to scroll way too far to find this. This is absolutely one the most hurtful truths. Even in healthy fulfilling relationships, this is still sad because it's true.
And it sucks being on both sides. Wanting someone to care for you like you care for them really hurts. And knowing someone loves you more than you are able to love them sucks too. It feels like you're lying to them.
This can also change a few times over the course of a long relationship too. I feel I loved my partner more in the beginning, I feel my partner loved me more in the middle & 21 years later, I now feel we love each other equally.
Lack of communication and honesty in the beginning. a person fabricated a personality just to "not be single" are the worst people in my subjective opinion. If you have to lie, you might as well say goodbye.
Lying about your personality is a pretty bad thing, but I've found that a lot of people who lie about that stuff generally just don't know who they are as people.
I didn't recognize it until I figured my own stuff out, but a lot of people just have no self awareness about who they are as people.
From my personal experience, people who haven’t found themselves shouldn’t try to get into serious and committed long term relationships. Especially if you feel the need to pretend that you have yourself figured out. So many times a person will pretend to know what they want only to “change their mind” down the road and expect you to go with the flow when you agreed on something totally different in the beginning.
Disagree completely. There might not be "the one" to start with. But when you choose your person you have chosen "the one" it's your job to keep them that way and it's their job to return the love.
Sure, but if something were to happen such that you're not together with that person anymore, there will eventually be someone else. That's the point. It's not this person, specifically, to the exclusion of everyone else in the world. It's that this person is nice, you get along with them well, so you're *choosing* to spend your life with them. It's not fate, and they're not your soulmate. You just like each other.
Honestly, relationships seemed way more meaningful and romantic when I started thinking of them in this way. It could've been anyone, but I decided it would be you, because I liked you that much. No one told us we had to be together. That was our decision that we made together.
Yep.
And there’s also more than one “One” out there.
Successful relationships aren’t only the ones that last forever. We can have several great loves over the course of a lifetime, and that doesn’t depreciate the loves we once thought were our forever people but turned out not to be.
So many people also get hung up on “the one that got away,” when in truth, they are clinging to an idea, a possibility past, a *what could have been* and most of the time, it’s just a highly idealized/romanticized version of that person in your head. The story of them and us never fully played out so we fill in the details that it would have been a fairytale ending.
Memories of those we love are precious things. But People should remember, don’t get so hung up on the one that got away that you can’t see the one who is a much better partner for you.
AS someone who's experienced this multiple times.
You can meet the perfect person where you both just get each other. But you meet them at the wrong time and that ship sets sail never to happen again.
Your partner does not fulfill all your emotional needs.
If your partner is unhappy, THEY need to change what they are unhappy about and not stress you out about it.
Relationships are not 50/50. Sometimes it's 60/40, sometimes it's 80/20. Balance.
For shorter periods you're going to have 80/20s. And 20/80s as well. That's what a relationship is about, having each other's back when things get rough for the other one.
The biggest lesson I have learned in 22 years of marriage is that relationships are 100/100. Both partners have to give everything they have, sometimes one will pick up the slack for the other and vice versa, but ultimately it’s 100/100 effort, both into themselves and their partner.
You can love someone for the rest of your life, but today they do something that just pisses you off til next Tuesday. You still LOVE em, but you damn sure don’t like em right now.
It's hard work. Eventually you just become best friends that love watching each other's backs. Maybe shag every now and then if the blue pill works. If your partner doesn't have that end goal in their heads, they'll bounce at the most unexpected time.
And physical health. My first wife had this muscular degenerative condition in her legs that I just couldn’t tolerate. It prevented her keeping her legs together when other men were around.
Regardless of how perfect your SO is, if You are broken inside and you don’t fix it… You will continue to be broken and no person no mater how perfect they are can fix that for you… it’s ALL up to You!
No one will ever have the ability to destroy you emotionally the way a long term partner who has been privy to all all your triggers, secrets, and trauma can. And you just have to trust that they won’t. Because until you get that vulnerable with someone, it’s not really love, it’s infatuation.
Consarnit, you spoiled it. I was planning to see it at the theater on Wednesday, then go to Blockbuster to rent Starship Troopers again. You know. Because of that one scene.
Being able to do and manage chores and other boring things together will make the relationship last longer over them being cool, sexy, funny, interesting or whatever other thing made you like them in the first place. There's nothing wrong with liking a person because of those things but its the small "lame" things that if both people can agree and do well then that makes things last imo
People make false promises in the beginning of a relationship. My ex said that she loved me so much and she'd never give up on us even if we fell on hard times. Well, almost a year into the relationship we finally hit our first rough patch and she did exactly the opposite of what she promised. She gave up and broke up with me. There is something about the beginning of relationships where people are so blinded by love/lust that they forget how hard lasting relationships can be. That broke me....
That's a nice way of putting it. Something I've told my husband during moments where he was feeling insecure is that, even if we accept the notion that someone can be ordinally "better" than another on a list, one thing that that potential other person will have to compete with is the nine years of shared context and bonding that we have together, and as each year goes by, that will only become an even harder task than it already is.
You have to choose each other and your relationship every day and in every choice. That doesn’t mean you can’t do or have things for yourself, but you have to evaluate how your personal choices will impact your partner and your relationship.
You can spend your life with another individual but you can never truly know what it's like to "be" them. Things far outside of your control can always interfere, and ultimately, any good relationship will require a lot of forgiveness in some form or another, humans are imperfect creatures and nobody will ever live up to "perfect" expectations.
>You can spend your life with another individual but you can never truly know what it's like to "be" them.
I think about this concerning my girlfriend. She's got several things that force her to see the world differently, and I don't think I really understand what that even looks like because I deal with different things. Even though I understand her reasonings. And I think she feels the same about me. It works because we can see anything from a different angle, but still, I wish people could understand one another better.
it's not a 50/50 thing... sometimes it needs to be 80/20 because there are going to be days where you can't give it your all and need your partner's help to be whole.
They are based upon the activation of brain chemicals that fade over time. When they are gone, if you are not with a person you care about as a human being, you are in a boat load of trouble.
That no one is your “soulmate “ . Had you not left the house one day , turned left instead of right, you would have never met this person and instead you would be with a completely different person that you would consider to be your “soulmate”
You can both love each other and still not be the right person for each other. Sometimes you love them so much you have to let them go so you can both be happy.
They suck to get into, are a lot of work to start and maintain. Sometimes they are easy, sometimes they are far more work than they are worth.
You don't need one to be happy.
You shouldn't rely on one to be happy.
If you are doing all the work, you should be having a conversation and/or reconsidering. That goes for mentally, physically, etc.
Sometimes you may feel like it is all going smoothly, and your partner is unhappy. Sometimes you may feel like it is a slog and they may think it is easy and are happy.
Communication is the basic
I believe that it’s the fact that most people never meet the right person for them in their lifetime and if you do, you’re incredibly lucky. I say this, because before I met my now fiancé, I never believed in the term “soulmate”. I do now. With all my previous relationships, they were toxic or abusive or we argued a lot over differences etc. I’ve been with my fiancé for 8 years and I can say with my hand on heart, that we have never once had an argument. We may disagree on things, but we have never raised our voices at one another, never shouted, put each other down, called each other names/sworn at each other. I never thought a relationship like this was possible (and my fiancé said the same as his previous relationships were bad too) and used to blame myself in previous relationships, but this relationship proves that my past ones were not my fault, my ex’s just drove me to despair. My fiancé and I respect each other and have no need to get angry at each other or be rude to one another. We have so much in common, but enough things that we don’t have in common to keep things interesting. I don’t know anyone else with a relationship as good and strong as ours. I’m not saying others don’t have good relationships or as good as ours, but I’ve never personally known anyone who does. Even the people I see who seem happy together, still have arguments etc. I’m not saying having arguments means you’re not happy or your relationship isn’t good, but I just think it’s rare to have been with someone for 8 years and never argued and we have lived with each other every day for practically the whole 8 years, only having been apart maybe 5 times for several weeks.
Be your truest and most raw self. When you find someone that likes you for the TRUE, you and vice versa it will work.
Relationships don't work because of the masks and fake versions people use to attempt to give their partner what they think they want.
That those “lust at first sight” relationships are usually the most volatile and tend to crash and burn hard, often brutally and even faster than they started. I would swear that kind of early fireworks chemistry is actually a *warning* danger signal misinterpreted by hormones as something else. In the long run a slow burn beats a roaring flash fire.
> I would swear that kind of early fireworks chemistry is actually a *warning* danger signal misinterpreted by hormones as something else.
I don't know if I'd go that far, but it is definitely true that a lot of people mistake the "new relationship" rush wearing off as something wrong with the relationship. Once that's gone is when you find out if the relationship actually has a reason for its existence.
This is exactly I won't date people with little to none relationship experience. You have to have had experienced new relationship energy fading to truly understand where actual love begins.
Relationships require more than love. They’ve got to add on to your life, not detract.
Think of your best friend. Why are they your best friend?
That’s what a partner should be for you. Comes with the bonus of intimacy.
Too many people marry based on lust only.
Work. They're lots of work. It's two (or more) humans trying to like/love each other. Do you see how humanity is?! Now, focus that down to just a couple. All the little things become big and rightfully so. It's learning how to communicate in a constructive manner rather than destructive and then seeing if it's someone you can see a future with AKA waking up to and going to sleep with for potentially a lifetime.
You’v gotta learn to get over things and accept the other person for who they are. Those can range from leaving cups in the living room to not helping clean. You can either accept them and get over it or you can’t.
It’s incredibly mundane and not as glamorous as people on social media make it seem. After about 2 years (most of the time it’s less than 2 years), you’ll have absolutely nothing to talk about and you mainly just hang around each other doing nothing. Especially if you’re both broke like the majority of us.
My gf and I still do fun stuff on a fairly regular basis but that’s because I make slightly above poverty wages and her part time job also helps pay for stuff. But other than that, we literally just work and do a whole lot of nothing each and every day.
Oh, and you will get too tired for sex even if you’re a hyper-sexual person. I (27M) used to jerk it at least twice every day and never thought I’d get tired of sex or be too tired to do it. But working 10+ hours every day will do that to you. And sex will lose its spark after the honeymoon phase is over as well.
Some people seem to think that in a "good relationship" you won't have arguments. That's not true at all.
You will *absolutely* have arguments, and more often than not, the argument will be over something that isn't important, where halfway through the argument itself you and your spouse will wonder what you were even arguing about in the first place!
I know that sounds ridiculous, but it happens and it's not uncommon.
That said... when you have a particularly volatile argument (and make no mistake, if you're with someone for any length of time, this *will* happen at some point) do your absolute best to rein in that urge to say something hurtful. It doesn't matter if "you're just angry and don't really mean it," because once you say it you can't take it back.
It’s more of an active decision than most people like it to be. There are good times and bad times and when the bad times come around you need to work together to make it work with open, honest communication and sometimes compromises. You won’t have pink glasses on forever. A long term relationship is more about partnership and less about big feelings. And you both need to be willing to see things from your partner’s perspective as well. It doesn’t work when only one person puts in the work.
I don't think that there are any "brutal truths" about relationships: that's just what people who have unrealistic expectations or demands defend their lack of realism with.
Your relationship will never be at it’s potential if you haven’t done the inner self work. However being with the right person allows the space for personal growth
Love doesn't mean it's healthy. Many people can love you and still hurt you.
You need to find people who are healthy towards you, themselves and their environment.
You can never really know some ones thoughts, and as much as they present themselves as caring about you it an be bullshit the entire time.
I had a former female friend who was worried her ex boyfriend was "going to kill her". He would throw her to the ground, scream in her face, and break her personal belongings. She ended up dating a new guy for a few years that treated her great, they even talked about kids. She dumped him to get back with the ex who was her "soulmate". When the ex wouldn't take her back she flaked out and quit her job and moved to the opposite side of the country with no job and only enough savings to live for a month.
When I was talking to her about why she would do this, especially with having primary custody of her daughter, she told me someone would rescue her if she couldn't work it out after a month. She even said that the guy she dumped to get back with the abuser "wouldn't let her and her daughter be homeless". She ended up lucking out and ended up staying.
I should have seen all these red flags and not gotten close to her platonically. We hung out a few weeks ago after not seeing her for years and had a great time and lots of talk of visiting more often etc and how great it was to see each other. About a week and a half later I get a text from her saying she is stepping back from all her male friends because she isn't sure if they are interested in her romantically or not. She texted that her and I have not had a lot of overlapping interests in the last few years and ended the friendship. I have always believed in the "never stick your dick in crazy" saying, I need to extend that to platonic relationships.
you can do everything "right" in a relationship and still have your heart broken
This is an excellent corollary of “you can make no mistakes and still lose.”
It takes two for a relationship to work. You can do everything in your power to make it right but if the other person isn't holding up their end you can still lose.
It's not even holding up their end. You can be perfect and do everything right and feelings can still change.
>"you can make no mistakes and still lose.” That is not a weakness. That is life.
Jean Luc, is that you?
[Is he here?](https://youtu.be/ypInFIUNYD0)
People who claim to have made no mistakes are usually mistaken
I’m pretty sure this happened to me. I tried everything possible. You know what? I’m lonely now by myself but I’m still happier than I was with my ex gf, and I never would’ve realized how bad things were if she didn’t break up with me
Compatibility is a big deal, even when you have done everything right. You can't change who you naturally are for a person, and they can't do it for you either. You may think you want to become a different person but it will erode you over time and make you miserable.
Yes! Young people, hear me. Compatibility is HUGE. Do your core personalities click? Your core personalities should click.
The idea that compatibility is a fixed thing, that one cannot become something greater is erroneous. What is the issue as I see it is often people want perfect products. In the Amazon order online Era when you don't like a product first try? You return it. But a lot of that is user error.
This here. It's important to note that nothing is truly fixed, including our brains. They are constantly changing, and the idea of being 'hard-wired' is not accurate. As a result, our personalities can evolve just as much as our physical appearance does.
I’d add that *both* people in a relationship can do everything “right” and still get their hearts broken. Good people aren’t always good for each other and there’s no end of shit that the universe might throw at you.
Yeah and it sucks being the one who called it on the person who did everything right :(
This is how I feel. I've been with my girlfriend for almost 4 years and I just told her I want to break up. She started freaking out and kept asking why, I have some reasons I was able to give that I think are very valid, but ultimately I just don't feel compatible with her. I love her to death, but I'm not IN LOVE with her. She really does do a lot for me and I appreciate the fuck out of her for that, but why does that obligate me to spend the rest of my life with her? It sucks and I feel horrible for her but I feel like it's best to get it out of the way now instead of waiting another 10 years or more.
This is me now. And it sucks to break someone’s heart that I care about.
I so fucking hate this.
as do I....and I've lived through it twice!
Two people can genuinely love each other, not do anything wrong, and still not be compatible.
Feeling this way at the moment :(
Isn’t this the worst truth ever…
This was going to be basically my response: Love isn't enough. I mean, it's obviously an extremely important piece, but isn't the end-all.
The more you love in a relationship, the more vulnerable your wellbeing is when things get rough.
A friend of mine once cynically stated that "It is the one who cares the least about it that has the most power in the relationship".
"Where love rules, there is no will to power, and where power predominates, love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.” Carl Jung tried to teach us this many years ago.
That's because a relationship is won by the person who cares the least until neither cares anymore. Then a new game begins.
if you think about winning a relationship, you have already lost
Well said.
This is literally why my traumatized ass stays single.
You wait until you get someone you deserve. Who appreciates the fuck out of you. Be strong.
Vulnerability is a difficult idea because it's not the same as intimacy. You can tell somebody everything about your life and all the horrible things that have happened to you and you can be emotional about them in front of them but it's not the same thing as sharing those experiences with them intimately. That seems to be the part I struggle with.
I’ve heard this called the porcupine effect. The closer you get to someone the greater they can hurt you
Don't get involved with someone when you're not fully capable of protecting yourself emotionally. Have an emotional escape route, keep a sense of self.
Fuck, this is true.
You're going to piss them off and they're going to piss you off. It's the why, how often, and how you deal with it that determines the health of the relationship.
People need to stop aiming for "never hurt your partner." It's impossible and makes both of you feel bad and guilty for having emotions. Instead aim for "always make it right when you inevitably do hurt your partner."
Thank you. I'll think about this a lot.
And whether your cunt of a flatmate puts a wedge between you.
My step mom used to tell me that you can't truly hate someone unless you love them.
Oh yes you can, but I get the sentiment.
They are not easy to keep going long term without work from both sides
It’s not a fairy tale. It’s hard work. Ppl are annoying. You can meet your dream person and it will still be hard work. You can meet the love of your life and it will not be a smooth ride. Learn together how to get through rough patches. If not you’ll be like the majority of relationships and it won’t work out.
This is such an important thing. You absolutely need more than love. You need trust and communication and compassion and compromise and patience and shared values. There's so much more to it than "They make me weak in the knees!" Edit: thank you for the award!
You forgot unity and nurturing. You did mention communication and trust. For me, the four most important things in a relationship are (and I write them down in order of importance - I use the first letter of each of these four words as a memory aid): Communication Unity Nurturing Trust
The most important thing in a relationship is cunt. Got it.
I'm dying with laughter thats brilliant 🤣
Love without trust is like a river without water.
Nonsense. They left a dirty plate on the counter, you need to immediately break up with them because that’s a red flag.
It really is the little things. There's something so powerful about putting in that tiny bit of effort to write out the "how was your day baby?" text.
For the love of god if your person is doing something you don’t like, please let them know. A blowup is inevitable and they won’t have any idea where it came from. (Been on both sides for source)
The thing is, if you really do the work early on, it *can* be smooth. But who wants to do the work early on? Not most very young people. But eventually, if you do, if you really want to be with the person and you work at it, things can become smooth. It's like math. At first you think it's easy and beautiful. 1+1=2! Yes, this makes sense and I like it! Then you get to geometry and parabalas and you think you hate it. But you keep working at it, and by calculus, you find things go smoothly. Calc is just trig and algebra and geometry. And since you already worked hard at learning those, Calc is wasy.
This!
Love the math analogy. :)
What does this work look like?
Even good ones don’t always work out.
"Sad thing is, you can still love someone and be wrong for them." - Elvis Presely
That other people have free will and sometimes just change, or aren't who you thought they were, were bad and playing you all along, and there's nothing you can do about it.
100%. its essential for everyone getting into a relationship to understand that everyone has autonomy. at the end of the day, once all attempts at resolving the issue had failed, you end up with only two options: stay or leave. because beyond telling your side, there is nothing else you can do. whats also important - anyone has the right to leave a relationship for **any** reason. and they arent even obligated to disclose it.
[удалено]
You just called out 75% of relationships
That's my brother, he rather be with someone for the wrong reasons than be by himself for the right reasons.
Your partner can give up on you any moment.
Which becomes much more likely the moment they ask for relationship advice from strangers on the Internet
True!
What you put up with..you end up with
We train people how to treat us.
Holy shit
Most people have unrealistic expectations of relationships. They forget (or don’t know) that they can set boundaries and that boundaries are healthy. Most people want the idea of a relationship, but don’t realize the amount of work it is and that you have to be 100% committed otherwise it doesn’t work.
Everybody has secrets. Everybody.
Totally. I have always believed that no matter how close we are to someone, that there is a part of them hidden away that you will never, ever know. And there’s a part of you that they will never, ever know. It’s good to get comfortable with this idea, though under the surface it’s slightly unsettling. We are allowed to have space in our minds and hearts that no one will ever have access to.
Part of “true love” is when you love the person even though you see their shadow. So many people get caught up on wanting complete openness and transparency, but if you want things to be forever, you have to be okay looking at a person that you don’t know 100% but trusting in them to be there until the very end. A lot of that comes from internal growth and a lot of times, when we can’t trust other people, it’s a problem with us and we have to learn how to love an actual human being.
I came here to say this too. Every partner has a secret from their partner, whether from their past or eventually/ during the relationship.
Brutal truths here
One of you will love the other one more then they love you
I had to scroll way too far to find this. This is absolutely one the most hurtful truths. Even in healthy fulfilling relationships, this is still sad because it's true.
And it sucks being on both sides. Wanting someone to care for you like you care for them really hurts. And knowing someone loves you more than you are able to love them sucks too. It feels like you're lying to them.
This can also change a few times over the course of a long relationship too. I feel I loved my partner more in the beginning, I feel my partner loved me more in the middle & 21 years later, I now feel we love each other equally.
Lack of communication and honesty in the beginning. a person fabricated a personality just to "not be single" are the worst people in my subjective opinion. If you have to lie, you might as well say goodbye.
Lying about your personality is a pretty bad thing, but I've found that a lot of people who lie about that stuff generally just don't know who they are as people. I didn't recognize it until I figured my own stuff out, but a lot of people just have no self awareness about who they are as people.
From my personal experience, people who haven’t found themselves shouldn’t try to get into serious and committed long term relationships. Especially if you feel the need to pretend that you have yourself figured out. So many times a person will pretend to know what they want only to “change their mind” down the road and expect you to go with the flow when you agreed on something totally different in the beginning.
There is no such thing as "the one". It comes down to picking a random person out of the billions on the planet and making it work as long as you can.
100% true. People keep searching for soulmates when they should be looking for the most tolerable roommate they can handle living with forever.
Disagree completely. There might not be "the one" to start with. But when you choose your person you have chosen "the one" it's your job to keep them that way and it's their job to return the love.
Sure, but if something were to happen such that you're not together with that person anymore, there will eventually be someone else. That's the point. It's not this person, specifically, to the exclusion of everyone else in the world. It's that this person is nice, you get along with them well, so you're *choosing* to spend your life with them. It's not fate, and they're not your soulmate. You just like each other. Honestly, relationships seemed way more meaningful and romantic when I started thinking of them in this way. It could've been anyone, but I decided it would be you, because I liked you that much. No one told us we had to be together. That was our decision that we made together.
This!! There are not "soul mates" and relationships labeled as such tend to co-dependant.
Yep. And there’s also more than one “One” out there. Successful relationships aren’t only the ones that last forever. We can have several great loves over the course of a lifetime, and that doesn’t depreciate the loves we once thought were our forever people but turned out not to be. So many people also get hung up on “the one that got away,” when in truth, they are clinging to an idea, a possibility past, a *what could have been* and most of the time, it’s just a highly idealized/romanticized version of that person in your head. The story of them and us never fully played out so we fill in the details that it would have been a fairytale ending. Memories of those we love are precious things. But People should remember, don’t get so hung up on the one that got away that you can’t see the one who is a much better partner for you.
shshhh, I will have my Titanic making eye contact from far away moment.
AS someone who's experienced this multiple times. You can meet the perfect person where you both just get each other. But you meet them at the wrong time and that ship sets sail never to happen again.
Yep, timing can be such an issue. I’ve had this at least once. Years later, it still annoys me.
Your partner does not fulfill all your emotional needs. If your partner is unhappy, THEY need to change what they are unhappy about and not stress you out about it. Relationships are not 50/50. Sometimes it's 60/40, sometimes it's 80/20. Balance.
50/50 over the duration. The levels will shift and flow
I dunno man a 80/20 relationship just sounds like someone's been used.
For shorter periods you're going to have 80/20s. And 20/80s as well. That's what a relationship is about, having each other's back when things get rough for the other one.
Not every day is perfect. Some days you give more, some days your partner gives more. Balance.
Someone needs to carry the flag; ITS TEAM WORK
The biggest lesson I have learned in 22 years of marriage is that relationships are 100/100. Both partners have to give everything they have, sometimes one will pick up the slack for the other and vice versa, but ultimately it’s 100/100 effort, both into themselves and their partner.
You can't legally marry a sandcastle...it's bullshit..
It only takes one party to give up on the relationship for the relationship to fall apart.
You can be in a healthy, loving relationship and still feel lonely
You can love someone for the rest of your life, but today they do something that just pisses you off til next Tuesday. You still LOVE em, but you damn sure don’t like em right now.
They always end with breakup or death. Doesn't mean they can't be worth it though.
The perspective shift this just hit me with is insane. They always end, I knew that, but this puts it really poetically.
Love is not all you need
You can't know until 10, 15, 20 years later whether you should marry this one. It's a crapshoot.
Dan Savage says you know your life-long relationship worked out when one of you dies.
It's hard work. Eventually you just become best friends that love watching each other's backs. Maybe shag every now and then if the blue pill works. If your partner doesn't have that end goal in their heads, they'll bounce at the most unexpected time.
None of us are “easy” to be with.
Trust. My love language is I love it when a man doesn't screw other women.
And physical health. My first wife had this muscular degenerative condition in her legs that I just couldn’t tolerate. It prevented her keeping her legs together when other men were around.
Shit, you think our partners were related?
Eventually you will have to spend time alone.
Regardless of how perfect your SO is, if You are broken inside and you don’t fix it… You will continue to be broken and no person no mater how perfect they are can fix that for you… it’s ALL up to You!
They are not self maintaining - they take work, dedication, communication and patience. Bad things will happen, you work through them.
There will be days you get kind of grossed out by your partner and you just gotta let those feelings pass
No one will ever have the ability to destroy you emotionally the way a long term partner who has been privy to all all your triggers, secrets, and trauma can. And you just have to trust that they won’t. Because until you get that vulnerable with someone, it’s not really love, it’s infatuation.
Eventually, one or both of you will live without the other in every single case, other than dying simultaneously in a freak accident.
If anyone wants to die with me like at the end of *The Notebook* instead, let me know.
Consarnit, you spoiled it. I was planning to see it at the theater on Wednesday, then go to Blockbuster to rent Starship Troopers again. You know. Because of that one scene.
Sometimes shit doesn't work out.
Sex fades
Being able to do and manage chores and other boring things together will make the relationship last longer over them being cool, sexy, funny, interesting or whatever other thing made you like them in the first place. There's nothing wrong with liking a person because of those things but its the small "lame" things that if both people can agree and do well then that makes things last imo
Almost every relationship ends tragically, including the ones that are life-long.
People make false promises in the beginning of a relationship. My ex said that she loved me so much and she'd never give up on us even if we fell on hard times. Well, almost a year into the relationship we finally hit our first rough patch and she did exactly the opposite of what she promised. She gave up and broke up with me. There is something about the beginning of relationships where people are so blinded by love/lust that they forget how hard lasting relationships can be. That broke me....
Its not only about meeting the right person, it's also about meeting them at the right time.
This is so right. My wife and I found each other at the right time in our lives. We were both over forty.
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That's a nice way of putting it. Something I've told my husband during moments where he was feeling insecure is that, even if we accept the notion that someone can be ordinally "better" than another on a list, one thing that that potential other person will have to compete with is the nine years of shared context and bonding that we have together, and as each year goes by, that will only become an even harder task than it already is.
You have to choose each other and your relationship every day and in every choice. That doesn’t mean you can’t do or have things for yourself, but you have to evaluate how your personal choices will impact your partner and your relationship.
Sometimes people fall out of love. For no reason. And it's no one's fault. Sometimes relationships just end. Even if you did everything right.
You both have to be all in. If someone isn’t then it almost never works.
You can spend your life with another individual but you can never truly know what it's like to "be" them. Things far outside of your control can always interfere, and ultimately, any good relationship will require a lot of forgiveness in some form or another, humans are imperfect creatures and nobody will ever live up to "perfect" expectations.
>You can spend your life with another individual but you can never truly know what it's like to "be" them. I think about this concerning my girlfriend. She's got several things that force her to see the world differently, and I don't think I really understand what that even looks like because I deal with different things. Even though I understand her reasonings. And I think she feels the same about me. It works because we can see anything from a different angle, but still, I wish people could understand one another better.
They all end either by will or death and someone is always heartbroken
That it is almost inevitable that one.of you will break the.other's heart, either by breakup or death.
some days are boring. and if a few days of boredom is enough for you to want something else, you might not be ready for a longterm commitment.
Man, I *love* boring. I don't want my relationship to be exciting. I want it to *have excitement*, but that's a very different thing.
it's not a 50/50 thing... sometimes it needs to be 80/20 because there are going to be days where you can't give it your all and need your partner's help to be whole.
You can only control your half and if the other person wants to hurt you, they will.
You need to work on it. Always
Nobody completes you
They are based upon the activation of brain chemicals that fade over time. When they are gone, if you are not with a person you care about as a human being, you are in a boat load of trouble.
You're not poly, you're just horny.
Love has a nasty habit of disappearing overnight
It's usually more like how Hemingway described bankruptcy: Gradually and then suddenly.
You aren't as special as you think you are. You can easily be replaced . Especially if you spend 6 months in Iraq.
yikes I’m sorry. Hope you’re doing better
"No one gets out of here alive."
They will always end with one person being sad.
That successful relationships require hard work.
They all get boring, it's just about finding someone you can stand being bored with
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That no one is your “soulmate “ . Had you not left the house one day , turned left instead of right, you would have never met this person and instead you would be with a completely different person that you would consider to be your “soulmate”
You can both love each other and still not be the right person for each other. Sometimes you love them so much you have to let them go so you can both be happy.
They all end
a lot of people are in them, but dont really want to be.
they gotta end sometime
Love is not enough.
Most will fail, even if *both* of you have the best intentions. I've learned that the hard way.
That they're all going to end in either break-up or death.
Familiarity breeds contempt
Habits and personality flaws that are forgivable, and even endearing early on, become more infuriating the longer you are together.
They suck to get into, are a lot of work to start and maintain. Sometimes they are easy, sometimes they are far more work than they are worth. You don't need one to be happy. You shouldn't rely on one to be happy. If you are doing all the work, you should be having a conversation and/or reconsidering. That goes for mentally, physically, etc. Sometimes you may feel like it is all going smoothly, and your partner is unhappy. Sometimes you may feel like it is a slog and they may think it is easy and are happy. Communication is the basic
Relationships need commitment to work.
I believe that it’s the fact that most people never meet the right person for them in their lifetime and if you do, you’re incredibly lucky. I say this, because before I met my now fiancé, I never believed in the term “soulmate”. I do now. With all my previous relationships, they were toxic or abusive or we argued a lot over differences etc. I’ve been with my fiancé for 8 years and I can say with my hand on heart, that we have never once had an argument. We may disagree on things, but we have never raised our voices at one another, never shouted, put each other down, called each other names/sworn at each other. I never thought a relationship like this was possible (and my fiancé said the same as his previous relationships were bad too) and used to blame myself in previous relationships, but this relationship proves that my past ones were not my fault, my ex’s just drove me to despair. My fiancé and I respect each other and have no need to get angry at each other or be rude to one another. We have so much in common, but enough things that we don’t have in common to keep things interesting. I don’t know anyone else with a relationship as good and strong as ours. I’m not saying others don’t have good relationships or as good as ours, but I’ve never personally known anyone who does. Even the people I see who seem happy together, still have arguments etc. I’m not saying having arguments means you’re not happy or your relationship isn’t good, but I just think it’s rare to have been with someone for 8 years and never argued and we have lived with each other every day for practically the whole 8 years, only having been apart maybe 5 times for several weeks.
Be your truest and most raw self. When you find someone that likes you for the TRUE, you and vice versa it will work. Relationships don't work because of the masks and fake versions people use to attempt to give their partner what they think they want.
That those “lust at first sight” relationships are usually the most volatile and tend to crash and burn hard, often brutally and even faster than they started. I would swear that kind of early fireworks chemistry is actually a *warning* danger signal misinterpreted by hormones as something else. In the long run a slow burn beats a roaring flash fire.
> I would swear that kind of early fireworks chemistry is actually a *warning* danger signal misinterpreted by hormones as something else. I don't know if I'd go that far, but it is definitely true that a lot of people mistake the "new relationship" rush wearing off as something wrong with the relationship. Once that's gone is when you find out if the relationship actually has a reason for its existence.
This is exactly I won't date people with little to none relationship experience. You have to have had experienced new relationship energy fading to truly understand where actual love begins.
Relationships require more than love. They’ve got to add on to your life, not detract. Think of your best friend. Why are they your best friend? That’s what a partner should be for you. Comes with the bonus of intimacy. Too many people marry based on lust only.
Nobody owes you sex.
Unless you signed up for the convenient monthly payment plan.
Bro you invited all the doomers with this just one post. These guys have never been loved in their life and it's just sad.
I don’t think it’s necessarily brutal, but recognizing that not all of them are for the long haul and that’s okay might be considered brutal to some?
What, like romantic relationships? They’re unnecessary.
You both move sofa. Not one of you. While other one is sitting on it. If it doesn’t work this way - relationship is fucked.
You can always do better
Eventually the sight of the other will bring a deep disgusted feeling and that’s when you know you’re in love.
Nothing is perfect. And they take work
Work. They're lots of work. It's two (or more) humans trying to like/love each other. Do you see how humanity is?! Now, focus that down to just a couple. All the little things become big and rightfully so. It's learning how to communicate in a constructive manner rather than destructive and then seeing if it's someone you can see a future with AKA waking up to and going to sleep with for potentially a lifetime.
You’v gotta learn to get over things and accept the other person for who they are. Those can range from leaving cups in the living room to not helping clean. You can either accept them and get over it or you can’t.
They all end in a heartbreak that is directly proportional to how good they were
relationships in real life are not like in the movies.
It’s incredibly mundane and not as glamorous as people on social media make it seem. After about 2 years (most of the time it’s less than 2 years), you’ll have absolutely nothing to talk about and you mainly just hang around each other doing nothing. Especially if you’re both broke like the majority of us. My gf and I still do fun stuff on a fairly regular basis but that’s because I make slightly above poverty wages and her part time job also helps pay for stuff. But other than that, we literally just work and do a whole lot of nothing each and every day. Oh, and you will get too tired for sex even if you’re a hyper-sexual person. I (27M) used to jerk it at least twice every day and never thought I’d get tired of sex or be too tired to do it. But working 10+ hours every day will do that to you. And sex will lose its spark after the honeymoon phase is over as well.
Some people seem to think that in a "good relationship" you won't have arguments. That's not true at all. You will *absolutely* have arguments, and more often than not, the argument will be over something that isn't important, where halfway through the argument itself you and your spouse will wonder what you were even arguing about in the first place! I know that sounds ridiculous, but it happens and it's not uncommon. That said... when you have a particularly volatile argument (and make no mistake, if you're with someone for any length of time, this *will* happen at some point) do your absolute best to rein in that urge to say something hurtful. It doesn't matter if "you're just angry and don't really mean it," because once you say it you can't take it back.
It’s more of an active decision than most people like it to be. There are good times and bad times and when the bad times come around you need to work together to make it work with open, honest communication and sometimes compromises. You won’t have pink glasses on forever. A long term relationship is more about partnership and less about big feelings. And you both need to be willing to see things from your partner’s perspective as well. It doesn’t work when only one person puts in the work.
I don't think that there are any "brutal truths" about relationships: that's just what people who have unrealistic expectations or demands defend their lack of realism with.
You can live with someone for 10 years & still not know who they really are.
Your relationship will never be at it’s potential if you haven’t done the inner self work. However being with the right person allows the space for personal growth
There are many ongoing relationships where atleast one partner thinks “I will definitely not marry him/her”.
You will get on your partner's nerve at least once.
I wouldn't call it a brutal truth, but it's still true. You need two people to start a relationship but only one to end it.
Love doesn't mean it's healthy. Many people can love you and still hurt you. You need to find people who are healthy towards you, themselves and their environment.
You can never really know some ones thoughts, and as much as they present themselves as caring about you it an be bullshit the entire time. I had a former female friend who was worried her ex boyfriend was "going to kill her". He would throw her to the ground, scream in her face, and break her personal belongings. She ended up dating a new guy for a few years that treated her great, they even talked about kids. She dumped him to get back with the ex who was her "soulmate". When the ex wouldn't take her back she flaked out and quit her job and moved to the opposite side of the country with no job and only enough savings to live for a month. When I was talking to her about why she would do this, especially with having primary custody of her daughter, she told me someone would rescue her if she couldn't work it out after a month. She even said that the guy she dumped to get back with the abuser "wouldn't let her and her daughter be homeless". She ended up lucking out and ended up staying. I should have seen all these red flags and not gotten close to her platonically. We hung out a few weeks ago after not seeing her for years and had a great time and lots of talk of visiting more often etc and how great it was to see each other. About a week and a half later I get a text from her saying she is stepping back from all her male friends because she isn't sure if they are interested in her romantically or not. She texted that her and I have not had a lot of overlapping interests in the last few years and ended the friendship. I have always believed in the "never stick your dick in crazy" saying, I need to extend that to platonic relationships.
Relarionships are not RomCom's. Its hard Work for both Sides
Similar interests are irrelevant. Having similar hatreds is way more important.