Easy Peasy

I shared this with a friend last week, then checked it with my dad to see what he thought. It is something I believe, and I was pleased when Dad agreed with me. Considering he was happily married for fifty-five years, I would say his opinion comes close to that of an expert.

People are obsessed with love. Too obsessed, really. Too often we are fooled into thinking that because we love someone, are in love, that everything should be easy peasy. That is a complete crock. When a relationship goes bad, we begin to doubt our ability to love, we run from it, hide from it, keep it at arm's length, deny it, pretend it does not exist. That or we doubt our ability to be loved. That is a flip side of the same damn coin.

Why then, is it so hard to make a relationship work? Because people forget one simple fact : loving is something that we as humans do easily. Love is a wonderful emotion, euphoric and tingly, and in the midst of that haze, we overlook what really makes relationships work - liking someone, and trusting them.

I love my children. I do not always like them, and there are things I certainly would not trust them to know and keep quiet about. I love my dad, but there are also things about him that I do not like, and I do not trust him to accept everything about me.

We do this every day, with friends and family. We know who is trustworthy, who is likeable, who has qualities we gravitate towards. We do not cast all our friends aside, but we do have different levels of friendships. I know who I can trust and who I cannot with the more personal parts of myself. I know whose likes and dislikes are similar to mine. Not all my friends share the same sorts of interests, but that does not make them less worth knowing. Not at all.

To find that lasting relationship, you need to find someone you love, who you can also like and trust in the crucial areas. The like and trust are actually more important. My parents loved each other, very much. I believe that love would not have lasted if they had not liked eash other and trusted each other. When I put this to my father, his reply was immediate. "Your mother and I liked each other. We had similar views on the things that were important to us, politics, family, religion, money, and education. Sure, we fought. But the things we fought about were not really important. And I trusted her. I trusted her, and she trusted me. We had to. How else does a marriage last?"

I love a lot of people. I like many of them. I trust few. I still hope that someday, I will find a man who inspires all three in me, at the same time as it inspires them in himself from my perspective.

~Quick