Successful Relationships Prelude

Recently I was chatting to a good friend of mine, I'll call him Lars because I'm not sure if he's ok with his name being all over the internet, about relationships. Lars said that he had recently been bombarded with people talking about romantic relationships, and had as a result being praying and thinking about it quite a lot.

After much thought Lars came to the conclusion that he was not ready for a relationship for a few reasons, including the fact that he didn't want to enter into a relationship for selfish reasons, he didn't want to change friendship dynamics within a group of friends and finally because he wanted to respect the other party in terms of entering the relationship in the right way.

These are all valid points, and as a result of our conversation I have been thinking about what it takes to enter into a relationship. I believe that everything which happens in life is an opportunity rather than something that is planned or set out, and depending on how you use that opportunity you will either learn or be hurt [that's not to say that learning doesn't mean being hurt at times, it's just that you can make it count in your favor].

Now a lot of single people spend their time complaining about the fact that they're single, but that seems like a waste of time to me. If you want a girlfriend / boyfriend and you don't have one don't spend your time complaining, rather spend your time prepairing for a girlfriend / boyfriend. So what does it mean to prepair for a serious relationship? Well I've never entered into one, but here are some things that I think are important to prepair for a relationship, and then things that should be addressed when entering into a romantic venture.


Expectations

This is something that I often harp on about. If you don't know what you want out of something, you're probably going to end up disappointed, and at the same time, you are only ever disappointed if your expectations aren't met. Now before you can have expectations one needs to find out if they are reasonable expectations. Example, if I go to the shop expecting to buy milk, and I walk into a clothes shop I am going to be disappointed because a clothes shop can't meet my expectations. If I had however said "I'm going to a clothes shop, can I expect to buy milk here?" I would have quickly deduced that this is an unreasonable expectation and then when I did go to the shop in question I wouldn't have been disappointed at all.

While this is quite a sill example, the same principle applies. So before entering into a romantic relationship, making sure you have reasonable expectations is imperative. The other thing is that what you feel is reasonable may not be reasonable to the other person, which is why talking to the person in question is necessary. This brings us to my next point...

Communication

As with everything this is very important. As I've said before half the world's problems could be solved if peolpe just sat down and took the time to understand each other. While this is something that is important within a relationship, it is also important in the build up to a relationship, and in fact in every aspect of life. If I can use my time as a single person to improve my communication skills the amount it will benefit my future relationships will be exponential. As a result I think that communication development is important as part of preparation for a relationship.

Understanding / Tolerance

A good friend of mine, Pierre, said that the two keys to a good relationship are understanding and communication. I am inclined to agree. Everyone has life experience, and as a result has preconcieved ideas about everything they come into contact with in their life. Example, I love rollercoasters. If however, the first time you ever rode on a rollercoaster it was terrible, you would probably hate it. That doesn't mean that rollercoasters are terrible, or that I shouldn't ride rollercoasters, it just means that all your experiences with rollercoasters have been bad and as a result you're going to hate them. Now as a friend, I need to realize that you hate them, and shouldn't spend my entire life trying to get you to ride one.

Being understanding is important, and with understanding comes tolerance. If you hate rollercoasters and I love them, you need to deal with the fact that I'm going to want to ride them all the time and as a result you should forget about trying to convince me they are terrible and just let me ride them in peace. Mostly.


Now these are all things that can be improved or developed during single-hood but I also think that in order for any relationship to be succesful, it needs to be founded on honesty. I once had a wonderful experience where I and another person got together and we decided that we were going to be totally honest with each other all the time, and we had one of the best relationships ever simply because we were open to conversation, but we also knew that no one had a hidden agenda. Ever since then I've been totally open with my friends. I'll always be honest with them, and give them my full support. I always speak my mind, and am open to discussion about my views. The other thing is that I'm quite happy to admit I'm wrong, so if I say something and someone convinces me otherwise I am happy to apologise and admit I was wrong. As long as the other person plays by the same rules I've got no problems.


To be honest I'm not totally happy with this blog, I'm still thinking a lot of this throught, and I don't have all the answers. Please feel free to give your opinion, and let me know if you think any of the above is totally wrong or totally right, or if there is something I haven't considered.