Opinion

There's no magic bullet when it comes to love

Saturday, December 23, 2006

EDITOR'S?NOTE -- Last week's Mike at Night was inadvertently repeated from an earlier column. This column was written for last week. Our apologies to the writer:

It's hard to open up any kind of magazine anymore without finding "points" or "tips" or "lists" about what you should do to have a happy, long-term relationship with the one you love. It's everywhere on the internet as well. MSN.com has some kind of list about love and relationships practically every day. The idea is that if you follow the recommendations listed you can't help but have a wonderful, mutually-fulfilling, glorious, heart-connecting, soul-searing, long-term relationship with that special person in your life. Or if you don't currently have a special person, the recommendations also tell you how to get one and how to keep one. Unfortunately, none of them work.

 

They don't work because the people making the lists aren't you. And the relationships they have don't mirror your relationship. You're a unique individual. There has never been anyone just like you in the history of the world, and there never will be. Consequently, the relationship you form with another person is just as unique. What works for some people doesn't work for others. These lists are similar to food recipes. I grew up in a family of great cooks and they had recipes for practically every dish known to man, or at least it seemed so. But they never, ever went by the exact recipe. They only used it as a guide. They would add a little more of one item and subtract a little from another item to suit their own tastes. That's what we should do with these relationship "recipes" as well. There are valid suggestions in practically all of them but to try and follow them to the letter often CAUSES problems, rather than solving problems.

 

The reason why relationship lists don't work is that love is not a rational, intellectual, sensible process. Love is emotional. In fact, rather than being rational, it's often irrational. Rather than being sensible, it often appears, at least to others, "crazy", "off-the-wall" or even "stupid" to others. That's because they don't really know us, regardless of how close they think they are to us, and they don't know the nature and quality of our relationship either. All kinds of people give love advice, often when it's neither asked for nor desired. Most of the time these people believe they are acting in our best interests. The problem with that is they don't really know what our best interests are. You see, we never reveal all of ourselves to anyone, regardless of how close we are to that other person. So all they know about us is what we've allowed them to know. Because I write a column, I think I need to be as open and honest about my life as possible with my readers to let them know that we all go through the slings and arrows of life and that no one has all the answers. But even I, as transparent as I often am to others about my life, don't tell people everything there is to know about me. There's only one person in the world I've ever shared EVERYTHING with. So, regardless of who you are, if you're working with incomplete information, you can only provide incomplete answers.

 

One of the things our friends often tell us if we're talking to them about intimate problems we're facing is the well-worn phrase, "Well, if it was me, I would do such and such. Again, the problem is that it's NOT them, it's us. And it's not their relationship, it's our relationship. We know what we feel, we know what we like, we know what we want, and we know what we desire and no one else knows that except us and possibly the love of our life, if we are open enough to share with them our most intimate thoughts, fears, hopes, and dreams. So anyone else trying to help us can only deal with our love and our relationships using partial information and, consequently, they can only provide partial solutions, if they are able to provide any solutions at all. Everyone is motivated by different things and some of those motivations are based on their own interests instead of ours. Some of us have "friends" who don't want us to be in a happy, fulfilling relationship because they're not in one. They don't want us to have the good things in life because they don't have the good things in life. It takes a true friend, and true friends are as rare as the Hope diamond, to want the absolute very best for us, regardless of the state or condition of their own lives.

 

So, the next time you come across one of these lists that promises you eternal happiness and joy with the one you love if you'll just follow the list, take it with a grain of salt. Use it as a guideline rather than a recipe because no one else on the planet is you, no one else knows you like you do, no one else understands you like you do, and no one else wants love, peace, and happiness for you as much as you do. Take what you can use, add to some of the suggestions, take away from others, and construct your own list that suits the unique you and the unique relationship you're in.

 

That's your best hope for a lasting, loving relationship with the love of your life.

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