On January 11th, 2016, I started a daily practice of writing a joke meditation of the day called Cracked Pot Meditations. I was still recovering from the treatment of cancer, and I was having very challenging cognitive issues, so I chose just to put something simple and easy to write every day. Posting it to the blog allowed me to have some accountability. Some of those meditations were poorly written and unedited. I have gone back and begun editing these and adding an illustration, starting with the April 27th meditation. I hope you enjoy.
Meditation for June 9th
8 Reasons Why Relationships Are Hard
Pursuing someone you have a crush on is fun, getting to know your new partner is exciting, and creating a comfortable relationship is rewarding. When we are single, we sometimes spend time wishing we were in a relationship. We want to be with someone with whom we can share our death.
Relationships are challenging, too. It’s not all sex, dining out, and antiquing. We sometimes are caught off guard when the honeymoon period winds down at the four to six month mark and we have to figure some real shit out. No more smooth sailing, suddenly you have to talk about serious stuff.
You either get through it, or if you’re an American, you break up angrily.
1. You will never be the person your partner met
You are constantly changing. Just getting into a relationship changes a person. Getting older, job changes, moving, deaths, having children, and getting sick are some of the things that can slightly alter one’s self.
Nothing is ever the same. Some people like the idea of relationships because they want a certain amount of consistency in their lives. They picture this schedule as never changing, but no one can repeat a week’s schedule. Everything keeps moving. Our idea of the other person needs to continue to evolve.
2. Your “Love” identity is not your “single” identity
Your laid-back, chill personality disappears once you team up with another person. You begin to take on some of your partner’s quirks, which isn’t cute. No one likes mirror couples. Trying to hold on to your identity in a relationship is hard, and it’s easier to lose your own and replace it with theirs. Learning to be yourself and be a partner can be challenging, especially if the couple doesn’t have a clear picture of the future.
Every second that isn’t at work will be accounted for with a partner. Even if your partner is at work, you can’t go out with your friends because you need to be there for them to come home. You no longer have fun because you are constantly anxious about spending too much time away from your partner.
When people ask you what’s going on with you, you can only answer by telling them what’s going on with your significant other; you no longer have a recognizable life.
It’s just easier to take in your partner’s personality. Wear their clothes and get a matching haircut.
3. Death before dishonor – except in a relationship
You now have to compromise constantly. It will behoove you to sacrifice yourself for the better of the pair. You don’t get to be true to thyself anymore if you want the relationship to work. You will lie all the time that whatever was decided is fine.
No more awesome action superhero movies, no more greasy cheeseburgers anytime you want, no more having all your time to yourself. No more not going to the dentist, doctors, and therapist because your partner will demand that you take care of yourself, so there goes the little free time you might have had. Every day will have to be run by someone with any plans, in case that person has different expectations than you, and so on and so forth. Even what you wear will be a discussion.
If you want the best shot at a good relationship, never be right, never say they’re wrong, and always be willing to compromise.
4. The future is never just about you anymore
Every decision you make will have to consider your partner. You can’t just go on some super long trip if you want, you can’t just quit your job and write a book in a shack in the woods, you can’t buy a weeks worth at a seedy motel and shoot speedballs, drink Hennessy, and smoke Newports with two hookers and a guy named Pedro DeLite if you felt so inclined because your partner might feel negativley about that decision.
“The Future” will always include your partner, even if the Vegas odds heavily suggest that your relationship will not work out. Believe you me, you’ll want to break up if you don’t see a future and start getting Save the Date cards in the mail.
The odds are against you, even with all this killer advice. Studies have shown that 70% of straight couples break up in the first year.
5. There’s no other reason to wake up
You no longer have a stronger priority than this person you decided to commit to. Your job, which is truly how you pay to live, is not more important than the person you share a bed with. You are now a “we.” You guys are a team, one component, and you go by one name instead of separate names.
This isn’t like combining personalities or the future no longer about you; this is about your day-to-day purpose of existing. Before you had hobbies, passions, and dreams, they get put into a box to never see the light of day because it is now what the two of you want.
You will have to put everything you are passionate about in storage, because now it’s putting puzzles together while watching all 256 episodes of Spectrum Love Island Real Housewives.
6. You’ll be bummed all the time
Something about love and feelings goes hand in hand. When you love someone, you are opening yourself up to being hurt. It isn’t the heartbreak that makes heartbreak so bad; it’s how big your heart had grown with your partner before your partner pulls your heart out, catches it on fire, takes a large bite out, and then throws it to the ground and stomps the flaming organ to a fine blackened heart paste. As world-famous rock and rollers, Nazareth sing, “Love Hurts.”
You are more sensitive when you share your life with someone. You worry about losing this person. You take silly things personally and when you were single, and being a juggernaut of not giving a fuck, but now you get weird if your partner gets a hot coworker, or starts to want to take on hobbies without you, or suddenly starts having an individual personality.
Then all of your future relationships will suffer because you will have built wall after wall to stop from being hurt like that again. Pretty soon, you are old and trying to get over that relationship from when you were 14, and you have three decades’ worth of walls cocooning you from an invasion. Still, you are so alone that you wish someone would ask for the drawbridge to be lowered, and they come in and hold you, and you realize you haven’t felt anything since you were a teenager.
8. You have to work for it
You can’t just wait till the turbulence ends; you have to talk, process, and act. It isn’t about kinky sex and beach trips anymore; it’s about learning how to grow together rather than grow apart.
The number one reason couples don’t work out is that one person gives up. One reason someone gives up is that they are taking that partner for granted and not acting with gratitude.
Most relationships don’t work out, but that doesn’t mean they were a failure. We have to learn, grieve the pain, and move on. There will never be “the One,” but we can put our best effort in, and we might have a nice, healthy relationship, as dull as that might be. Instead of walls to protect yourself from getting hurt, build bridges.
Don’t judge others struggling with relationships; everyone will be OK.
Also, you don’t have to be in a relationship, or have to be monogamous, or anything else that society says is traditional, as long as you aren’t hurting anyone.
I’ve loved them all.
Dude.