Reproduction of this essay in whole or in part for noncommercial purposes, with attribution and with notice of
copyright, is permitted; reproduction of this essay in whole or in part for commercial purposes, or without attribution,
or without notice of copyright, without the author's express permission, is not permitted.
Relationships Matter!
Relationships matter a great deal to me. It has happened to me that I have corresponded with a woman for seven
months, over 1100 pages of correspondence, about evenly split between her writing and mine; have sent her poems;
have grown close to her; have anticipated her arrival; have then met her in person, when we have fallen into each other's
arms; have loved her and made love with her virtually every night and spent other time with her for two months, getting
along well and being apparently happy together and not once fighting; and have then suddenly, out of the blue, been
left by her.
I could never do that. I cannot fathom the mentality it must take to do that. When I love, I love; and the relationship
matters to me. How can one simply leave a loving relationship? I do not understand that. But, it seems,
women can do that.
I don't think all or most women place less importance on their relationships, or on making their relationships last,
than I do. I just think I've happened upon a few who have. And I also think that it's important to understand that
those who study relationships find that good intentions often aren't enough to keep people together; relationship
management matters, too. If one expects more from another person or from a relationship than is realistic, then one
will be disappointed. If one places too much importance on inherent compatibility, instead of, so to speak,
creating compatibility; if one is prone to leave, rather than to stay; then it's going to be hard to have a satisfying,
long-lasting relationship.
But my relationships matter to me. A lot. And I think that while it is important to try to make a relationship
a good one, it is antecedently important to stay--you can't make a relationship a good one if you don't stay
in it, after all.
Oh, of course, there are bad relationships; people do sometimes get involved with partners whom they really have
no business being involved with. It happens. It has happened to me. (Oddly, the one I described above--the one
that ended most abruptly, with no sign that it was about to end--was also the one that I thought was really my first good match. Strange.) But most of the time,
people aren't simply compatible or incompatible; instead, people have their areas of similarity and their areas of
dissimilarity, and they have their little differences that bug each other, and what those areas of similarity and
dissimilarity are, and what those little annoying differences are, simply varies from relationship to relationship.
I think that each person has certain make-or-break features that must be present, or that must not be present, in a
partner, in order for that person to be happy with his relationship. Certain features are structural. If one person
wants to have ten children and the other one wants none, that's a problem. If they compromise on four children,
OK; but if their respective desires for lots of children and for no children are strong, that's going to be a big problem
for any relationship they might have. If one person is a born-again Christian and another is a militant atheist, that's
probably going to be a problem for them. If one person is a chain-smoker and the other abhors cigarette smoke,
that's probably going to be a problem for them. On the other hand, if one person's favorite color is red and the
other one's favorite color is green, that really shouldn't be a big problem for them. If two people break up over
what color to paint the living room, I think they're probably deficient in their relationship management skills.
It's not even a matter of apparently big differences necessarily torpedoing relationships. James Carville and Mary
Matalin, despite being Democrat and Republican--despite running President Bill Clinton's and President George H.W.
Bush's campaigns, respectively--have made their relationship work over the years. Governor Arnold
Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver have the reverse political difference.
My guess is that a big religious difference is more likely to create problems, alas. Evangelical Christians, for
example, want to believe that they will want to meet their spouses in Heaven. Their lives are built around their religious
beliefs. I've spoken with other nontheists and found that what I've experienced has happened to them, too: Although
some nontheists (not all, by any means) would be quite willing to be in a relationship with a strong religious believer, we
find that strong religious believers do not have the kind of tolerance required to be in a relationship with a religious
nonbeliever. (I've even seen ads from women who don't require that a man be a member of a particular religion but
who do require that a man be "spiritual." Whether appreciating butterflies and bats and frogs and minnows
and crayfish and maple trees and oak trees and cicadas and the phases of the Moon and the patterns of the stars, and
appreciating music and art and mathematics and chess
and science and the accomplishments of the minds of men down the centuries and centuries and centuries, and being
gentle and kind and patient and loving toward one's partner, counts as being "spiritual," is not spelled out.) This is,
of course, another reason for me to lament the rather curious permeation of American culture, to a much greater degree
than in Europe or in Canada, by religion.
I do hope to meet a woman who will value our relationship as much as I will, and whose constitutional inability to simply
walk away from me matches my inability to simply walk away from her. Even when you have a fight, it's just a fight; it
will end; you know that you love the other person, and you know that you want the relationship to continue; such things
just aren't issues for me. Maybe the fight lasts a day, or maybe it drags on for a week; but it will end; you will resolve
it; and in the meantime, the other person is still your beloved. The relationship doesn't suddenly cease to matter. Its
importance is paramount.
Relationships matter.
(© 2007 by Keith Brian Johnson)
Personal Home
Site Home