Relationships Ups and Downs

Sometimes it doesn’t matter what you put into a relationship, it will break, and sometimes it doesn’t matter whether you thought you had a stable relationship or not, it just breaks. There are a number of reasons why relationships break and sometimes it isn’t due to anything that we do, or don’t do. It just happens. Sometimes the breakup is a long time in the coming and like the beginning of Spring signals that large ice floes are breaking up, our relationships sometimes also these warning signs and harbingers which we can see plainly and clearly indicating that our relationship is not as sound as we might wish it to be. And sometimes, what looks to be strong ice underfoot turns out to be thin ice and you will find yourself cast adrift in the middle of a sheet of ice that is cracking faster than you can hope to escape from. This in turn is similar to those relationships which breakup out of the blue with little to no warning about what was to happen.

All relationships are like this. No matter what you think when you first get together, you will hit a rocky patch. It’s not a matter of “if” but a matter of “when”, because this is not something that you can avoid. People are so different, that sometimes it takes breaking up to make it easier all around for us to accept each other, and accept each other’s flaws. Sometimes you can manage to salvage your relationship from the depths of despair before it is too late, but all too often we get so caught up in our own little worlds and in our own little lives that we take for granted the fact that our relationship is running smoothly. In these cases, unless the signs of an imminent breakup are there for you to see, you will more than likely be caught unawares. Even this doesn’t matter, as much as what you do when your relationship does eventually breakdown. So it doesn’t matter whether you saw it coming and knew that your relationship was on the rocks and it doesn’t matter if you thought you were on sound ground when suddenly you were thrown into chaos.

What matters is how you handled matters after this. Relationships are notoriously rocky things, just like a small boat. Both people in the boat need to row together to get anywhere, and both people need to work together to avoid rocking the boat. Only good sound team work, and compromise on the part of both people involved, will be able to get any relationship going places. That, and an acceptance that each person is his/ her own person, and not an appendage of the other person. Learn to give the other person the respect they deserve along with breathing room to be who they are, the person you were attracted to, to begin with, and you will be surprised by the results. Relationships might be difficult things to steer but together you will find that you are stronger and that it can be done, even in choppy waters. A good example is in the illustration I have given below.

I’m not exactly sure where I saw or read about this, but a couple who were having problems sought help from a counselor, who ultimately gave them one task to fulfill o help them through their rough patch. The counselor had gotten straight to the point. She told them to ether buy or rent a tandem bike (the bikes where two or more people can sit together in a row and cycle together), and to spend at least one or two days a week trying to ride the bike in their backyard. And when they had accomplished this, she told them to take it on the road and try and cycle around the block, or even around their park, once or twice. The upshot of this was that although in the beginning the couple had difficulty even deciding who would sit in front, eventually they were able to ride around the block more than once, without once having an argument or without once falling down. Why I like this example so much is because it shows just what you can do if only you work together, and not against each other. If you can ride a tandem bike without falling down you will have come to a compromise about how to make things work so that you didn’t fall down as often.