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Romantic dinner
With Valentine’s Day pending, Christina has an unusual take on what it means to have a successful romance.
“Everybody says that to be a good relationship it needs to pass the test of time,” she explained. “But I don’t buy it.”
A 40-something divorcee with a successful career, Christina has been in and out of several romantic liaisons, but despite their demise, she does not regard them as failures. What’s more, she rejects the idea that people like her are “afraid to commit.” “Just about everything in life is temporary, so why do we insist that, to be considered successful, a romantic relationship has to be permanent?” she challenged.
After her divorce, which amicably ended a decade-long marriage, Christina decided to stop approaching romantic commitments as long term, let alone “forever.” “I make it clear to the guy from the start that if he wants marriage or some other sort of soul mate thing, I’m not his kind of woman,” she continued.
“So, what is your definition of a successful romance?” I asked.
“One that works for both people until it no longer works for one or both of them,” she replied.
Ups and Downs
As anyone who’s been in a long-term romance realizes, every pairing has its ups and downs. And more than a few couples have told me that the security afforded by marriage or an otherwise committed bond helped them stick with it through the low points until better times emerged. When I shared this viewpoint with Christina, she replied, “So the argument is that if I’d hung in there longer, maybe things would have rebounded, and that by moving on I deprived myself of what might have turned out to be a good thing.”
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Her counter argument, of course, is that plenty of people in troubled liaisons hang in there for a long time only to discover that the relationship does not rebound, or sometimes even deteriorates further. A lousy marriage or partnering can’t be defined as better simply because it persists for a long period of time. “I live more for the moment, or at least the near term, and you never know when life will show you the exit, so I’m not interested in putting my happiness on hold,” she argued.
Christina has enjoyed several romances that she describes as “wonderful,” and she doesn’t feel their eventual expiration detracted from that assessment. As she put it, “Do you consider a fun vacation a failure because it ends?”
“Your analogy is a bit off, but I get the point,” I told her.
“Probably, but this need to put the handcuffs on a romance shows how people don’t want to face the fact that we all keep changing and, sooner or later, everything in this life ends,” she insisted.
In the Moment?
Christina’s brand of fierce independence and her determination to live in the moment clearly represent a minority view. What’s more, couples who want to have children can make a compelling argument for why committing to a permanent bond is important, but absent that, the rationale for “till death do us part” is clearly weaker. As is the strength of marital commitments in general, which the divorce rate demonstrates.
Christina concluded by stating, “Permanence is a cultural expectation that doesn’t match up with reality. The fact is that many, if not most romances end, whether officially or just in people’s hearts.”
Another reminder that, regardless of our expectations, commitments and institutions, the heart has a will of its own.
For more, visit philipchard.com.