Relationships are never easy.

We never get a handbook with rules and answers to conflicts and how to ‘play the game’ so to speak the moment we hit the right maturity level for dating. We never seem to ask the right questions when we start off a relationship until it’s too late. Sometimes we never even bother to ask ourselves why it ended. A lot of us out there find ourselves through a dozen or so relationships before we reach the one that gives us the most answers that or the one that teaches us how the ‘game’ works. There are a few exceptional and rare cases of first relationships blossoming into lasting ones but most of the time, our first ones always end up in the bin.

There are a few things I’ve learnt along the way…perhaps I’ll share them here. I don’t guarentee that it will be the same for other people – after all, every relationship is different…

Note: All these work hand-in-hand and neither take precedence over the other.

Change
While people do change, never ever make the mistake of trying to change someone just because you think they should. They never will – if you do that. Change should be something that is done because that person wants to change and for their own special reason(s). When someone changes out of force, it will only led to resentment and heartache. Be careful that you do not fall in love with a figment of your imagination when you enter into a relationship. People come with warts and all – and true love means learning to understand and in good time, accept those flaws as part of what makes that person special.

Now it won’t be easy. There will be times when you really really hate this particular characteristic of your partner – it could be a simple thing as your partner growing a beard OR it could be something big like your partner’s fascination with oogling other women. Instead of blowing your top and demanding for things, perhaps what is better is that you try to understand why you’re really peeved off in the first place.

Are your intentions/thoughts justified or is it because YOU just don’t like it and you think your partner should suit your desires first before their own?

Compromise
A relationship is never about you, your needs, your desires, your thoughts and your feelings alone. We all know that but we never seem to be able to put that into practice most of the time – even me. When we enter into relationships, we enter into the whole “it’s also about your needs, your desires, your feelings and your thoughts” – it isn’t just about me, me and me anymore. Suddenly we find that individualism 100% of the time isn’t healthy for a relationship. Perhaps these phrases sound familiar.

“You never can give into my needs! Why does it have to be about you, you and YOU all the time? What about me?”

“I can’t understand why you’re so demanding all the f***ing time. Why can’t you just say okay for once and be happy about it? Why must you always have the final say?”

Well, for starters, relationships require people to be less selfish and more considerate of others – a trait which a lot of us have problems picking up. It is, after all, a dog-eat-dog-world out there and most of us have been ‘trained’ to think in the context of me UNTIL we reach the stage when we start dating and suddenly, everything we have ever known to be ‘okay’ is now wrong. Some of us then try to fix things in our next relationship and end up being horribly abused to the point where we actually got trampled all over. Confusion, confusion, we tell ourselves.

How do we balance the fine act of drawing the line between being a doormat and compromising? How do we maintain our individuality without having to put up with things we don’t like?

Communication, flexiblity and understanding someone…
Talk it out. Find out whether whatever it is that is creating the conflict is important to you AND the relationship in the bigger picture of things. Trial out certain things for a time period. Experiment a little with stuff – as long as it’s clean and harmless, what’s wrong with trying new things?

For example, if your partner likes the idea of having a beard and you don’t, why not let him grow a beard for a month and see how it goes? You might be surprised at the end result – you just could grow fond of the idea. If you don’t like the idea, then talk it out with that person. And yes, I speak from experience.

What’s important is that people talk things through in a relationship…and that people change their perspective of things.

A relationship is already tough with so many things to worry about so it pays to be open about your feelings and thoughts. When I mean open, I also mean that you yourself have to learn to understand that your partner will always have different desires and train of thought from you. If a relationship meant going out with someone like yourself, you’ll never find that someone – because lets be honest, here — there is only one you in this world unless you intend to clone yourself. Besides, don’t you think it’ll be boring to go out with someone like yourself?

But I’ve done all those things and still, it doesn’t work out…
Lets just say that you’ve been the perfect partner and yet somehow you are unhappy, depressed and just not satisfied…the relationship is just sapping all that energy out of you…you’ve talked about the problems and stuff yet things still remain the same. You’re tired of the fighting, the bickering, the negativity…

So maybe it’s time to go?

Staying in a relationship because you fear loneliness, loss of the social status of belonging to someone, the unknown and all that merely points to the fact that you’re staying for all the wrong reasons. When you stay in a relationship for all the wrong reasons, you open yourself up to more heartache and pain. Relationships are meant to be avenues for you to grow positively and mature in the right direction NOT slump back into the negative unknown or get yourself embroiled in negative things.

Also people are attracted to confidence – how confident are you when you stay in a relationship because it is all you have ever known? Besides, if you don’t take that leap when you’re not getting anything out of a relationship, how will you ever know that you’ll get a better catch?

For me…
It has not been an easy year for me (or Nil, I would think) but we have definitely come a long way from where we once were – at least I’d like to think so. We are beginning to understand that we look at things from two very different perspectives, that it is alright to fight once in a while, that we have weird quirky habits, that we are great (yet bad) in some instances, and that sometimes we will never get our way. Yet we are striving to adapt to each other and the idea of having another person in our lives.

After all, that’s what being in a relationship is all about – the fine act of balancing ‘yourself’ and ‘another person’.

Apologies for the long entry…but leave your thoughts in…if you have the time.