Efficient Awesomeness

Love and Relationships (Part 2): The Phases Leading to a Meaningful Relationship

Love and Relationships (Part 4): Independence vs. Relationships

Love and Relationships (Part 5): The Couple’s Accountability System

Love and Relationships (Part 6): Finding the Right Person

Love and Relationships (Part 7): The Clueless Lover

Love and Relationships (Part 8): The Relationships Virgin

The Relationship Virgin

admin — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 03:18:28 +0000

LOVE AND RELATIONSHIPS (PART 8): THE RELATIONSHIP VIRGIN

Please read Love and Relationships (Part 6): Finding the Right Person to help clarify some of the terms. Remember from Part 6 that the Relationship Virgin is: “a person [who] is so cautious of all the bad relationships they’ve gathered from sources other than themselves, that they have accumulated a list of exactly what they want in a mate and what they don’t want in a mate. They usually create an unobtainable perfect mate in their minds, and are scared away from ever beginning a meaningful relationship with anyone or they think no one is ever good enough to begin a relationship with in the first place…I don’t mean these people are physically virgins, but that they are too cautious with their love lives.”

The Relationship Virgin doesn’t quite need to make their ideal mate list if they haven’t already. He or she often over thinks and researches their knowledge of love and relationships through everything but themselves, such as friends, family, books, movies, magazines, internet, etc. And they’ll accumulate so much knowledge without the actual personal experience to back anything up that it becomes very convoluted in their minds about their love lives. This often comes with the Relationship Virgin having listed everything they want in their perfect mate, often so perfect, it is a bit unrealistic for them to ever meet them during their first attempts in the dating world.

You’ll often find many pre-teens in this category, usually females, though most of them get out of that mindset when they start dating different people and start refining their wants in their mates. On the other hand, I’ve known some who never get past that phase who go into their early twenties (or later, as The Forty Year Old Virgin would have us believe) with the same mindset, never having quite had any personal experiences to help refine their lists. In this early-twenties age range and beyond, the Relationship Virgin come in two different extremes, too, though most of Relationship Virgins I’ve observed usually lie somewhere in between both.

On one side is the Awkward Intellectual, who tries to reason their advances into the dating world and over-intellectualize everything so that they become very awkward in social settings and have trouble finding mates or even friends.

On the other end is the Stubborn Independent, who consciously or subconsciously believes they can’t get their ideal mate, so they believe their best course of action is to not date at all, often saying they’re not looking for anyone at the moment.

This isn’t to say that either the Awkward Intellectual or the Stubborn Independent are bad in any way, for most of my friends who fall somewhere between these categories, are some of the most interesting individuals I know. And they probably are so interesting because they’ve been so independent.

It’s not a bad thing to want to be independent either, or to be intellectual in the way you approach your goals, but I’ve noticed that many a Relationship Virgin, no matter where they lie in the spectrum often think relationships wouldn’t add that much to their lives, and they probably think this because they have such trouble finding a suitable mate.

Advice for Relationship Virgins

The solution here for the Relationship Virgin is to reanalyze any lists he or she may have about their ideal mate, and then re-substantiate their list with personal experiences, and cutting out the stuff that wasn’t personally experienced.

And if you don’t have a physically written list yet, write it out, I’m most certain that you have one in your head somewhere already, and you’ve been adding to it for many years. Then for each point on the list, draw it back to where you may have first been drawn to this point. Then determine if it’s something you actually experienced yourself, was this a trait your parents showed you and you know exactly what it feels like to experience it and appreciate it? Or was it something you gleaned from a friend, relative, book, magazine, or movie, where you learned some lesson that the source was able to share with you and you didn’t really experience it for yourself?

I’m not saying it’s bad to take advice from sources other than yourself, but you really have to evaluate what kind of lesson you’re grabbing from it. If a friend of yours is not particularly great at keeping meaningful relationships and shares all their dating secrets with you, don’t take everything they say to heart, especially if you haven’t experienced the same things as they have. Whatever proves to be useful for them in their dating realm and whatever proves to be a meaningful relationship for them is not necessarily going to mean a successful dating secret or meaningful relationship for you.

But your friend has had so much more experience at dating than you have, and they must have some useful information for you to use, right? Not necessarily. The only person who can determine the right way to find their ideal mate is you, and perhaps you don’t have much experience in it so you don’t have any secrets to the dating world, but that’s easily fixed with a few attempts at the dating world yourself.

The reason why so many people have so many tips for lesser experienced daters is because of people being too scared to even try. So even a person who is a very bad dater who may very well be a Clueless Lover and have no idea how to really find a meaningful relationship will have tons of experience to back their dating tips and share it with anyone who has less experience. But is this really the source you want to base your love life off of? Wouldn’t you rather be more independent and figure out the right way to find your ideal mate through your own smarts and trials and errors?

I know, it’s hard if you haven’t had any experience and there are those who want to share theirs with you, and there’s nothing wrong with taking their advice, as long as you’re smart about it. But if you’ve found that even after taking their advice, or being too afraid to take their advice, you’ve really not gotten far in the dating world, maybe its time to step up to the plate and try a few attempts of your own. You’re not that clueless, you’ve been single thus far, and you’ve done a lot already, there’s no reason why the dating world should be any different than anything else you’ve already tried and succeeded in.

I was very much a Relationship Virgin myself, but one of the first things I learned in my relationship was realizing that all my accumulated lists of things that I thought I wanted in a mate were really moot. They weren’t truly substantiated, and they were compiled from mostly movies and magazines I’d encountered.

But the stuff that stayed on my list was all stuff that I had truly personally experienced with my friends and relatives. Some of that changed as I better understood myself and others, but those points never left my list. And at first I thought I was lucky that my mate ended up having many of the points which I knew I wanted, and then many points which I didn’t even know I wanted, but I later came to realize that what I really was lucky in was not that I found my particular mate, but that I decided to commit to the relationship and throw my Relationship Virgin worries to the wind.

If it turned out that my mate and I weren’t meant to stay in a lasting relationship, the experiences I personally experience in the relationship will prove so valuable in my search for my next relationship (if I so choose to find another one), that I would not be scared to revert back to a Relationship Virgin. And that’s simply because I have the experience to back up what I want, and know that I’m not deluding myself with the impossible-to-find perfect mate.

Of course, that’s not to say I wouldn’t be very disappointed and sad to break up. After having learned so much in the short six years we’ve been together, I would be very saddened thinking what I would miss learning in the years to come without my mate sharing it with me.

Advice the Awkward Intellectual

So what if you’re an extreme Awkward Intellectual and you just can’t seem to meet anyone? Practice. I was extremely awkward as a kid, and that stayed with me throughout school, and even now I sometimes feel that social awkwardness tendency when I’m in new and unfamiliar surroundings. But I overcame that by practicing. And I had some pretty embarrassing moments trying to practice, but with each embarrassing moment, I learned more and I became less and less socially awkward. And practicing this is doing anything that you feel socially afraid of doing, may it be asking someone out, or even just talking to some people you’re acquaintances with but don’t really know as friends.

There’s no one way to do it right, you just have to find your own way, and you won’t find that way until you try and practice. And it doesn’t even matter if you fail, you succeeded in the fact that you were able to do it. A failed encounter means nothing in the long run. But even a lucky encounter may mean a lifetime of lasting meaningful relationship(s), whether that be a lover or a friend. So why not just go for it and keep trying different tactics.

I used this tactic during job interviews. It was very excruciating at first as I felt I was horrible at interviewing, but after many failed interviews, I eventually landed a few good interviews and got a job. Then I had to deal with a bunch of co-workers, strangers whom I had nothing much in common with. But I tried different ways of talking with them and I eventually got really good at making small talk (something I was absolutely not gifted with at all before) and even making phone calls (don’t even get me started on how awkward I used to be in this field!). And if I can do it, anyone can do it. At first, it won’t be easy for most people, but if you keep trying, you’ll get good at it, there’s no way to fail except if you don’t try at all.

Advice for the Stubborn Independents

Alright, so what if you’re not socially awkward and that’s not holding you back from a relationship. You’d just rather be independent is all. Sure, many Stubborn Independents make many reasons for not being in the dating world. And I’m sure many of them have good reasons for it. I won’t list them, I’m sure you have many of them to justify your single status.

But hear me out on this one point. Have you ever considered what you may be not gaining by staying single? This isn’t to say that you can only gain positive experiences by being with someone, but you surely do gain huge amounts of experience by simply dating someone who is totally not right for you (and think of what you’d learn from someone who is actually compatible with you!). You certainly can’t deny that having to deal with someone else most certainly ups the experience you will get than simply being alone.

I know a lot of Stubborn Independents who never even dabbled in dating, and they proclaim to me that they aren’t looking for anyone at the moment. To which, I think, if they really knew what they could gain from even a failed relationship (let alone a good one), they wouldn’t really say that. Why would you postpone the chance of finding a great companion who may prove to be the love of your life and be the one who helps you grow into a better person?

Sure, there may be some bad dates and you may feel like there is no one who will ever mesh with you, but if you postpone your search or never even look, what will you really gain from it? More time to learn stuff of yourself?

I’ve learned more stuff being in a relationship than being out of one. And I continue to learn more of myself everyday. And if someday I decide that I need to be on my own to learn more of myself, I can make that decision, but isn’t it better for me to do that after knowing the flip side of being single and being able to make that decision with the experience to back it up?

I think someone who’s been in relationships can make that decision better than someone who hasn’t properly experienced both sides yet. You wouldn’t say that your favorite ice cream flavor is vanilla if that’s the only flavor you’ve ever tried, right? You’d have to first experience chocolate and strawberry and rocky road and maybe even sherbet and frozen yogurt before you could really make that decision. I’m not knocking being single, it may be the best status for many people, but don’t throw out the possibility of being in a relationship (meaningful or not) until you’ve tried it!

POSTS IN THIS SERIES:

Love and Relationships (Part 2): The Phases Leading to a Meaningful Relationship

Love and Relationships (Part 4): Independence vs. Relationships

Love and Relationships (Part 5): The Couple’s Accountability System

Love and Relationships (Part 6): Finding the Right Person

Love and Relationships (Part 7): The Clueless Lover

Love and Relationships (Part 8): The Relationships Virgin

The Clueless Lover

admin — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 23:47:57 +0000

LOVE AND RELATIONSHIPS (PART 7): THE CLUELESS LOVER

Please read Love and Relationships (Part 6): Finding the Right Person to help clarify some of the terms. Remember from Part 6 that the Clueless Lover is: “the individual who thinks they are looking for the right person, but truly has no idea who or what they want in a relationship, and simply keep failing at each attempt. We’ll call this individual the Clueless Lover, and I don’t mean these people don’t know what they’re doing in bed, I mean they simply have no clue what it is they want in a relationship.”

The Clueless Lover, who doesn’t quite understand what they are searching for in a lover, leads to two extreme categories, the Relationship Pessimist and the Player, but usually I observe clueless lovers somewhere in between the two.

The Relationship Pessimist is an individual who, after many failed attempts at relationships and not magically finding that perfect relationship that they want but can’t quite describe, becomes depressed and stops looking for dates.

The Player is an individual who has been dating so long but without success that they become jaded to the dating world and don’t look for the qualities they unknowingly want in a mate and just date tons of people, often having emotionally unsatisfying, but physically-heavy relationships.

Early in my own relationship, when I didn’t quite understand the Player, I was often intrigued by them, curious of how they seemed to attract so many mates, until I found out that many of these Players would become Relationship Pessimists and completely stop dating all together. Many a time, I noticed that a Clueless Lover will go back and forth between the Relationship Pessimist and the Player in a seemingly unending cycle between depression and aimlessly doing something about it. I guess there’s not much point to the ability of attracting many mates if you don’t quite know what you’re searching for. And while the sex may be great, that won’t lead to anything emotionally or mentally satisfying in the long run.

It’d be more valuable to have the skill of attracting mates who would prove to be lasting and meaningful relationships. But the real trick to growth for the Clueless Lover, is simply to figure out what he or she wants in a mate, and not to stop at the topical details.

Advice for the Player and the Relationship Pessimist

Knowing that you want a hot, smart and funny mate isn’t really going to help you find your special someone. For the Player, because he or she can easily go out to the dating world and find a date, they must be more specific with their desires in their mate. But I don’t mean in the sense of describing all the physical features in your ideal mate, I mean figuring out what truly makes someone hot to you. And don’t list out a bunch of physical traits like blonde, big boobs, green eyes, tight ass, six packs, etc. What turns you on isn’t just physical, it’s also someone’s character in all their virtues and faults. And yes, someone’s faults can be very attractive to certain people.

And this kind of list will help the Relationship Pessimist, too, in that it will help better show them that their special someone has qualities that is definable and capable of finding. Haven’t you ever noticed that people in lasting relationships usually think all sorts of stuff about their mates, about how their mates are the funniest or the smartest or the nicest? Some which seem unattainable, but really, they believe it with all their hearts, and believe it or not, you can have that, too, if you know what you’re looking for.

I can’t tell you what you would truly find hot and attractive in your mate, this is something each person really has to figure out on their own, but to recognize that you need to do this is the first step in finding that special someone for the Clueless Lover. I recommend trying to write them out, and then refining your list until you can’t refine it anymore. Then with your list of qualities in your ideal mate, use it as a means of figuring out who to go on dates with and who not to. You may have to go on a few dates to determine if someone really matches your ideal mate, and these experiences may change your list, but that’s a good thing. As in anything else, your ideals should always be changing to better fit what you really want as you learn more and more about what you really want.

But the biggest idea here is to know when to say no to someone who you obviously have recognized as someone who doesn’t match your list. In fact, maybe this is why all those online dating sites are so successful with their clients. Their clients have to narrow down everything they want and don’t want in a mate, and then the sites find ways of matching their clients with like-minded people who match the given criteria. These sites also help match people, which isn’t really a problem for the Clueless Lover, so I say, do it the cheap way. Spend a few hours figuring out what you want in an ideal mate, and then use it to say yes or no to dates and then use your dating experiences to better refine your list. I’ll bet that sooner or later you’ll find your perfect someone, even if you don’t believe you can right this moment.

They’re really not that hard to find, people are all sorts of types and qualities, and someone out there has the right kind for you, it’s just a matter of figuring out what you truly want in your mate.

POSTS IN THIS SERIES:

Love and Relationships (Part 2): The Phases Leading to a Meaningful Relationship

Love and Relationships (Part 4): Independence vs. Relationships

Love and Relationships (Part 5): The Couple’s Accountability System

Love and Relationships (Part 6): Finding the Right Person

Love and Relationships (Part 7): The Clueless Lover

Love and Relationships (Part 8): The Relationships Virgin

Finding the Right Person

admin — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 17:10:30 +0000

LOVE AND RELATIONSHIPS (PART 6): FINDING THE RIGHT PERSON

This entry, and the ones following, are going to cover what I think many of my single friends misunderstand about romantic relationships. I write this for all the people who say they don’t understand why they can’t find love in their lives. And I write for those who, after having been misled by failed relationships or non-relationships, proclaim they don’t need love or aren’t looking for a relationship in their lives. This isn’t for those who have experienced successful relationships. I believe these individuals should already know what I have to say below (or some version of it), and could probably teach me a thing or two. But if you’re someone about to give up on finding love and developing meaningful relationships, I hope I can persuade you otherwise.

I think some of the biggest factors that keep people from finding or committing to meaningful relationships is simply not knowing what can be obtained from such a relationship. Not because they don’t want to be in a meaningful relationship, but because they don’t understand what a meaningful relationship is and how to favorably find a mate to share such a relationship.

FINDING THE RIGHT PERSON

Sure, there’s lots to gain from meaningful relationships, but what if you haven’t found the right person yet? My observations of myself and other twenty-somethings, I’ve found two different extremes that hold people back from finding the right person.

The first is the individual who thinks they are looking for the right person, but truly has no idea who or what they want in a relationship, and simply keep failing at each attempt. We’ll call this individual the Clueless Lover, and I don’t mean these people don’t know what they’re doing in bed, I mean they simply have no clue what it is they want in a relationship.

The second extreme is where a person is so cautious of all the bad relationships they’ve gathered from sources other than themselves, that they have accumulated a list of exactly what they want in a mate and what they don’t want in a mate. They usually create an unobtainable perfect mate in their minds, and are scared away from ever beginning a meaningful relationship with anyone or they think no one is ever good enough to begin a relationship with in the first place. I’ll call this latter individual the Relationship Virgin, and again, I don’t mean these people are physically virgins, but that they are too cautious with their love lives.

And there’s no shame in being one or the other, or even something in between. I simply give names to them to more easily identify these types, so that those who want to can try out the more appropriate advice I give for each type. In the next parts 7 and 8, I’ll explain in detail the Clueless Lover and the Relationship Virgin, and what they can do to find their right person.

POSTS IN THIS SERIES:

Love and Relationships (Part 2): The Phases Leading to a Meaningful Relationship

Love and Relationships (Part 4): Independence vs. Relationships

Love and Relationships (Part 5): The Couple’s Accountability System

Love and Relationships (Part 6): Finding the Right Person

Love and Relationships (Part 7): The Clueless Lover

Love and Relationships (Part 8): The Relationships Virgin

The Couple’s Accountability System

admin — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 17:52:44 +0000

LOVE AND RELATIONSHIPS (PART 5): THE COUPLE’S ACCOUNTABILITY SYSTEM

How can relationships help us become more independent? Because our relationships with other people and how we deal with them says a lot more about ourselves than just observing how we deal and live with ourselves. And learning more about ourselves and our relationship with others is a key way in understanding how to be independent and even gaging how independent we are.

This was a lesson that took me years to really understand. At first I thought, yeah, I know how I deal with other people. I think before I talk to others, I try to not say stupid things and to have meaningful conversation with others. I always tried my best to do what I thought was helpful to others and I always aimed to be caring and thoughtful. But what I thought I understood in how I dealt with other people was a version of myself that I wanted to believe I was, not quite the reality of how I was really dealing with other people.

For you see, there’s a different kind of mentality that happens when all you deal with on a day to day basis is having to live with yourself and being accountable to only yourself versus dealing with someone else who is very close to you and having to live with him or her in your life and being accountable to not just yourself but your significant other, too.

After all, if you’re the only one who observes yourself and measures your successes and failures, wouldn’t that make your judging system a bit too subjective? If you didn’t like something about yourself, you could simply not look at that part of yourself, or even worse, subconsciously hide it from yourself, so you’re not even aware that you’re missing this vital flaw that you would want to fix.

When you have a significant other, you open your horizons and the observations made about yourself become more objective, because you have to account to someone who isn’t yourself. Suddenly, you have a partner in observing how you act and deal with others, and even how you deal with yourself. And suddenly, you have someone else that you can closely observe and give feedback for, too.

It was realizing this in my relationship that helped me make leaps and bounds in understanding who I truly was when dealing with others and myself. I realized I had a flawed perception of myself, and I wasn’t really showing others this independent person that I wanted to believe I was. And I couldn’t have realized this without my significant other pointing it out to me, so that I could work on them and better myself. Although it wasn’t always pleasant for me to hear these truths, I eventually saw them as wonderful pieces of truth which would lead to helping me be a better individual. And the feedback I was able to give in return was truly beneficial for my own growth as much as my love’s.

It’s like having an accountability system to keep you truthful to yourself, and I can’t imagine why someone wouldn’t want to have that in their life unless they were afraid of what they would find out about themselves. And yes, while it may be scary to find out unfavorable stuff about yourself, you still have that significant other to help you work out those kinks and make yourself more favorable to yourself and others. In the long run, it all becomes very worthwhile.

A WORD OF CAUTION REGARDING THE ACCOUNTABILITY SYSTEM

Now, I do want to caution that this significant other accountability system works best if your significant other and yourself are truly committed to making it work for yourselves. It most definitely will not work to its full potential if only one of you wants to commit to it.

I had a friend who had gone through many relationships and had come to the conclusion that she truly wanted a relationship in which she could grow and learn. On top of that, she was an immensely independent female seeking the same in her mate. At the time, she was going out with a mutual friend of ours, who said he wanted the same, but in almost every action he did, he showed that he really didn’t mean what he said. This really hurt her relationship with him and many a time, she would run to me, asking for advice in how to grow in her relationship with her boyfriend.

At the time, I wondered why she didn’t ask the same questions to her boyfriend, but in hindsight, I realize that if her boyfriend was open to it, she could have asked her boyfriend instead of me. And together they could have grown and learned so much from each other, if only they had both wanted that from the relationship. Needless to say, their relationship didn’t last past a few months, and their friendship is pretty much obsolete now.

It can be very harmful to be in a relationship where you seek an atmosphere for growth and learning but your mate doesn’t, but if you have the right attitude about your own progress, you can also learn an immense amount about yourself, as my friend did, for she took the knowledge she gained from her failed relationship and often applies it to her current relationships.

While you can gain so much with a partner who shares the same goals for the relationship, its understandable that finding such a mate can be difficult or may take some time to find. But while you’re searching, you might as well work as much on yourself as you can and try to more specifically shape your desires for yourself and your ideal mate. No need to waste the time you have before you’re able to find that special someone who shares similar goals as you do.

The more effort you put into working on yourself and figuring out what you want in a mate, the more you will find and/or attract mates who will be more to your liking. Doesn’t it make sense that someone who has his or her goals and desires defined has more of a chance of obtaining them? I’m not even sure how one who had no ideas what they want would achieve anything, except by sheer luck.

POSTS IN THIS SERIES:

Love and Relationships (Part 2): The Phases Leading to a Meaningful Relationship

Love and Relationships (Part 4): Independence vs. Relationships

Love and Relationships (Part 5): The Couple’s Accountability System

Love and Relationships (Part 6): Finding the Right Person

Love and Relationships (Part 7): The Clueless Lover

Love and Relationships (Part 8): The Relationships Virgin

Independence vs. Relationships

admin — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 19:10:34 +0000

LOVE AND RELATIONSHIPS (PART 4): INDEPENDENCE VS. RELATIONSHIPS

How can you be independent while being in a relationship? Don’t independent people by definition not need to depend on anyone else? Isn’t being in a relationship having to depend on someone else, therefore completely opposite? There is a lot of confusion among people, especially young people like myself, with how to negotiate our independent lives with our relationship lives. Perhaps you remember the Seinfeld episode outlining the eternal struggle between “Relationship George” and “Independent George” (here’s an excerpt explaining it), where George Costanza struggles to keep the two spheres of his life apart. While the show was abstract in exactly how this struggle might manifest itself, the episode works beautifully to illustrate how important people take their independence, and what efforts they put into maintaining it.

What is independence?

The United States of America, the country in which I live, talks a lot about independence and freedom, or rather they say the words independence and freedom, usually together. However, very little discussion actually goes on in this society about what independence is, what it’s not, and how it can grow smaller or larger. Freedom, beyond that, is often spoken of as synonymous with independence, so much so that there’s actually been a complete bastardization of the two concepts. We use the word independence when we mean freedom, and vice versa.

Independence is not freedom. Independence is more synonymous with Self-Reliance, which is the ability to have a self-sustainable wellbeing. Most of us young’uns living in the U.S. first experience independence when we go off to college or get kicked out of our parents’ house, and are for the first time in charge of what we do with every moment of our time and realizing that we have to feed ourselves or die of starvation, or at the very least, invite the Hangry Monster to be our constant companion.

Freedom, however, suggests the ability to act autonomously, without oversight or regulation. That’s the feeling that many of us college students get when we realize that we still need to listen to what our parents say, because it is still our parents who pay for our college educations, and someone has to front us the money to buy the food we put into our mouths. We have that independence to buy what food we want and to feed ourselves when we want, and to go or not go to class whenever we want, but perhaps we don’t have the freedom to decide exactly which school we study at or what majors we want to study. Or if you have a more freedom-loving parent who lets you decide what school you go attend and what majors to study, perhaps your freedoms are held back from the college institution you are attending, which often have strict rules on how to pass classes and what classes are needed in order to graduate.

Freedom is relatively similar to independence in many ways, but both are essentially quite different. One can have independence, but no freedom, such as in situations where your ability to move are stifled by governmental (or some other institutional) arbitration, but in which you live an altogether happy care-free life where you’re happy in your position and do not feel lack. For many youngsters, this may be like being a happy college kid, living up their new-found freedoms with your parents money, drinking at happening frat parties while under-aged, and experimenting with new and psychedelic drugs. However, these college kids still have certain institutions watching over them, such as their professors, parents, college police or the actual police, who punish them when they are caught getting out of hand with things such as not keeping up with their academics, over-spending on their credit cards, making too much noise at a party, drunk-driving, and many others.

You can also have freedom, but no independence, such as being weakened and lost in the wilderness, constantly relying on the kindness, strength and abilities of others to get you by. Independence can be said to be the power we give ourselves to act, and perhaps freedom can be defined by the power allowed to us by the world and by others. This is not so common amongst youngsters or most anyone, since almost everyone lives under some sort of institution, but you could compare it to those young Americans who backpack through Europe, and work at odd jobs in order to continue moving through the countries. These kids aren’t necessarily hindered in their freedom to travel around, and they probably get to bypass paying taxes and all sorts of other institutionalized hindrances (since they’re American citizens, not European citizens), but as they may not have much financially, they are at the will of those who will employ them on a short term basis or those who are kind enough to give them charities so that they can eat and have shelter overhead.

In short, independence has to do with you, your mindset and attitude of the way you relate to the world. Are you strong enough to act on your own, or are you in constant need of the help from others, running around completely blind? Independence is not something that you have to run towards or fight for, it’s more ethereal. Unlike freedom, independence can never be taken from us, we have to give it away. At least this is the case if we are aware that we have our own independence in the first place, but that’s a whole different article to write about (which I may write in the future). As for independence in the realm of relationships, this intro about independence will hopefully suffice.

The Myth of Independence

When I was single (I’m in the sixth year of my loving relationship), I was an extremely successful student throughout school and I was quite successful at anything I put my energies into, whether it be sports or personal goals. I promised myself that I would never become one of those needy people in relationships like I saw on television or in the movies. I would be independent, I would continue my successes with the strengths of my own willpower, and I would try to find a potential mate who would support my independence and never “interfere” with my goals. Of course, my experience was mostly from having watched relationships on television, where in order to create conflict and drama, sitcom couples would entrap their spouses with clever coercion. I was blissfully ignorant that, in fact, real-life healthy couples dealt with more complex issues that couldn’t be summarized in 22 minutes of commercially-interrupted episodes.

Beyond that, there are independent “ideals” that exist in our society, perhaps foremost being the hero, and even more so, the superhero. Superman, Spider-man, and Batman are independent powerful individuals, capable of single-handedly thwarting evil plans. They, usually, do not act with oversight or regulation that is imposed on them, and even more importantly, they’re best known as loners. They kill, maim, entrap, coerce, and even steal when necessary. In the world in which we live, it is nearly impossible to act with such independence, but NOT because of the world itself. We are social beings, with a feeling of responsibility to allow for the natural flow of societal barriers in dealing with crime and injustice. Very few of us are heroes, and the heroes we have are ironically often very specific in exactly when and where they’re heroes. After all, there’s an inherent paradox even in independence and heroics, why sacrifice for others if it’s unnecessary, and does sacrificing yourself not entail a betrayal of independence?

Real independence seems extremely boring in comparison, which is why it’s usually never talked about. Real independence is a lifelong journey, requiring no bold moves, no heroics, no great acts of charity or innovation, and even more confusingly, it can be done in the most warm comforting relationships. However, real independence is just as rare to find as a real hero, but it’s much more powerful.

Learning Independence

You can not learn to be independent without the help of another. It’s a key paradox of life. On our own, we lack the abilities to act with independent spirit in the world. When we are born, we are allowed guardians who look after us, who make sure our learning stage is not stifled by danger and pain. When we move into the world, we’re not independently capable of achieving our goals, so we make partnerships with companies, peers, and even strangers in agreements where we share money, products, skills, and time. In this stage of entering society, we are not independent, but we’re learning. We’re learning how to problem solve, we’re learning what it looks and feels like to be static and frozen with fear. We leave the nest with a gigantic set of unknowns, and we slowly cross them off, making mental notes on all our experiences. We make compromises here and there only to be able to peak into an important area of understanding that we need to learn.

In each of us burns a desire to be independent. For some, the burn is hot and wild, lashing out at others and at the world angrily. For others, the burn is only warm embers, barely providing much energy at all. We all have the yearning to be able to act without needing to consult with another person, we wish to be supermen who can exist as puppeteers of the world instead of being subject to its whims. But with all the baggage that gets added to independence, most of it is bullshit, excuses. “If only my boss would do this,” or “As soon as I get enough money I’ll do that,” or the most common “I’d never be able to do that.”

There are two components of independence. The first is the will to act. Without the self-created willpower to drive forward, to act confidently in reaching for a goal, you’ll require others to provide that drive for you. The second component is wisdom. You have a goal, now you need to see your way through all the steps and past all the obstacles, and that takes well-earned knowledge and experience. You can have the deadliest weapon in the world, but without the wisdom to aim it, you’re powerless.

Relationships for Independence

Wisdom and willpower are two things that a relationship is geared to help you learn.

Love, both in graciousness and in receipt, is the greatest willpower possible. Learning to love, learning to act on love, and learning to reason through love are skills you can only learn with the help of another. All other driving desires are weak and unsatisfying in comparison, disallowing a confident, self-reliant intent and action. Once you’re free to say “I’m doing this because I want to help,” and that desire comes from a mature inner self for totally unselfish reasons, you’ve discovered a world of independence and willpower that cannot be found outside of a loving relationship. And when that independence and willpower is reciprocated to you by your loved one, there probably is not other freeing feeling you will ever feel in your lifetime in the realm of relationships or even in all other realms of experiences. You will have discovered a powerful and extremely meaningful independence and a never-ending pool of willpower that no movie or television show will every come close to showing you. Perhaps it can only be discussed and shared properly by people who have already experienced such an independence.

Wisdom is an ethereal power, but it is grounded in the wisdom we have of ourselves. You do things a certain way that you’re not aware of, and you’ll continue to be unaware of those tendencies until another is kind enough to point them out to you. In short, you fuck everything up without any one else’s help.

The truth is, a successful and meaningful relationship will further strengthen your independence, not hinder it in any way. Independence is not the decision you make to be alone, independence is not the rejection of society. Independence is when you’ve been given gifts of willpower and wisdom that empower you to act confidently, powerfully, efficiently, and effectively. It is a state of mind, in which actions become nearly effortless.

Relationship Dynamic

Acting independently and being in a relationship are not mutually exclusive states, and beyond that, they reinforce each other’s power and satisfaction. Please understand though that not all relationships will allow you to become more independent. If you are in a relationship that does not help you grow, that stifles your creativity and which leaves you feeling angry, depressed, or afraid on a consistent basis, please consider changing your situation. Working towards conscious confident independent action does not require you to act alone, or be alone. Because, ultimately, love is selfless, a truly loving partner cherishes opportunities to help you become more self-reliant, able, and independent. This includes helping you become independent even of them and their aid to you, not so that you can eventually reject them, but quite simply for your happiness and well-being.

POSTS IN THIS SERIES:

Love and Relationships (Part 2): The Phases Leading to a Meaningful Relationship

Love and Relationships (Part 4): Independence vs. Relationships

Love and Relationships (Part 5): The Couple’s Accountability System

Love and Relationships (Part 6): Finding the Right Person

Love and Relationships (Part 7): The Clueless Lover

Love and Relationships (Part 8): The Relationships Virgin