Zen Habits: Relationships are easy

I've debated about a good venue for me to start expressing more marriage advice. Particularly, how to make impossible marriages succeed. I might start a new site for this, but for now I've happened on some very good marriage advice, and I think it suits me best to put it here. The advice comes from the site Zen Habits, and is a guest post from the author of the Simple Marriage website.

What do I like about this advice, after all that's been said by so many? I've had occasion to try out a great deal of different pieces of advice, and found some of better value than others. Ultimately a marriage is finding what works -- after finding out why you should make it work. And all the advice I've seen can only be categorized as things to try after you decide to make it work. But this advice rises across a different dimension, it is honest and empowering beyond just educated guesswork. It is zen.



The number one problem I've encountered in marriage is encapsulated in the great philosophical debate of whether or not people are intrinsically good, or bad. We can either believe everyone is a good person who needs fewer restrictions to become even better, or we can believe everyone is bad and requires boundaries and restraints. The advice I link to argues that relationships are really easy when you understand them correctly.

 Relationships are easy.
You may have read or heard the opposite, that relationships are hard work. I used to believe that was true. Not anymore.
Relationships are easy.
I understand that making time for someone else or giving up some of the things you love or getting your own way create some struggles in life – but once again, relationships are easy.

 We may find inspiration and loving capacity from believing people are intrinsically good, when they violate that trust we can often be left dismayed. We might be left with only one possible interpretation -- they really are bad and need to be dismissed, severed away or otherwise disposed of for our own protection. Or rather the protection of our own ideal about everyone being basically good. And that is when a relationship is hard, when we are fighting with our own dismay an disappointment in the other person.

Perhaps what people who believe relationships are hard work are actually referring to the difficulty of interacting and living with an immature, childish human.
Why would it be hard work to be in relationship with a mature, caring grown up?

 Or, even more difficult is being that immature childish human. Often in my relationship with my wife, we've both wondered who was going to be the adult. Sometimes someone has to be mature, take care of others, and come in with the calm leadership that both people should follow for the sake of peace and authority. Who is that going to be? The husband while the wife takes a well deserved break and reads a book? The wife while the husband takes a well deserved break and watches football? The best, and worse, comes when the two people, frustrated with each other, look outside the relationship for that adult guidance. That can come from a marriage counselor, or if you are desperate, a cop.

The relationship is relatively easy. The excitement of romance brought two people together in marriage. Falling in love is as easy as falling off a log. Given enough time to rest, no matter how bad the marriage got, we found that romance was still there, and we both enjoyed each other. But we were still who we were, too often feeling like children having to be adults to raise our children. All too often wishing someone could bear the burden, someone could carry the emotional load, someone could be the adult.

It all boils down to how you view what goes on within your relationships, specifically your significant ones.
First and foremost, marriage is designed to help you grow up. It’s not about happiness. It’s not about becoming more complete, despite what Hollywood and popular press would like you to believe. Marriage is about growing. Happiness will accompany you at times along the way, but it’s not the ultimate goal.
And second: your growth – your responsibility; your spouse’s – theirs. When you keep this in mind you realize that all you can control in a relationship is yourself.
Many times couples have sought my help in working on their marriage. They come in thinking their relationship is an outside entity that can be fixed. The problem with this is they’ve got it backwards – the relationship is working on them! That’s the way relationships are designed.
When you acknowledge this and live accordingly, relationships are easy.

 Its the line about what marriage is that makes this true Opine material. Marriage is about becoming complete, but that doesn't happen on the wedding day. It completes you in ways you cannot do without the person who was designed to become a part with you. The lock and the key, the electron and the proton, the snowy slope and the intertube. You can grow a lot living with anyone. You can learn to work together and become a better person with just about anyone. But to become complete requires a lifetime of working together to mutually respect each other's rights and responsibilities, as well as the children you two potentially have together. Someone who completes you, someone who belongs to that branch of human evolution which was guided over hundreds of thousands of years to complete with your branch of humanity, the man and the woman together. It requires a particular kind of relationship, and that relationship requires the other gender.

The connection happens, the complementary completeness builds. It happens naturally. And with most natural things, there are things you can do to nurture it, and then things you do to get out of the way.

And it starts by slowing down.
Do you have trouble remembering names when meeting someone new? Do you know why? Most of the time you’re too busy talking or thinking about what to say that you don’t even hear their name.
This happens in regular conversations as well. You’re busy or rushed thinking about something else and you miss the goodness of the moment with your spouse, or kids, or friends.
Slow down. Let their be pauses in the conversation while you think and respond. There doesn’t have to be a banter or speedy exchange of ideas in conversation.
Breathe. Listen. Breathe. Connect.
This will open you both up to more with each other.

 Marriage is natural, and what it changes in us to helping your spouse and children is the real value of marriage in society. My purpose in writing here is to help people trust in their marriage, to trust in their spouses. To find this value in marriage, all I can provide is a map. You find someone of the other gender who has the same understanding and commitment to marriage, and then you discover that relationship grow between you.

I realize the internet is a big place. This advice will fall on the ears of people who range from unmarried, uninterested in anything about marriage except for its ability to direct others to privilege their relationship, to the average couple struggling as we all should to build something meaningful, to honestly abusive relationships which are not healthy to remain in. And in between are some impossible looking marriages which require some very deep medicine.

But I have high confidence in the universality of the message. Because it will strengthen marriages that should remain together. And for those that shouldn't, it will strengthen the people and make the abuse even more recognizable to help them realize they really should leave and they really can leave.

And, for those people who have relationships that are not marriage (meaning not part of the map I laid out to discover marriage), it will still help. It will help value what you have, and realize that because your own value in your own relationship is the value that really matters. You may be deciding on something that isn't marriage, but the value you see in it makes it worthwhile. You'll fight for that relationship for what it is, and appreciate the diversity that marriage is something other than what you've decided on. Just slow down. You can look at a married couple and be happy for what they have, and still be happy for what you have. And you can influence government to have the same appreciation for tolerance and diversity.