There\u2019s a common thread that I\u2019m noticing in relationship talk that I\u2019d like to address.\u00a0 It\u2019s not necessarily polyamory specific, but I\u2019ve never let it stop me before, so here we go:<\/p>\n
\u201cRelationships are hard.\u201d<\/p>\n
I first ran across this in a Focus on the Family publication back in the 1980s when I started reading about sex, families and relationships.\u00a0 I was a teenager and was still in the David St. Hubbins mode of believing virtually everything I read.\u00a0 So I bought it.<\/p>\n
Then as I got older and married, I was told a good marriage was hard from all sorts of quarters.\u00a0 Then when I started being involved with the online polyamory community in the mid-1990s, I was still being told relationships were hard with the added caveat that polyamory<\/em> is hard.<\/p>\n I\u2019m less inclined to go with this common wisdom these days.\u00a0 What\u2019s hard is when you don\u2019t know yourself well enough[1]<\/a>, haven\u2019t yet developed appropriate emotional self-sufficiency[2]<\/a>, and are making decisions from wishful thinking rather than facts[3]<\/a>.<\/p>\n I just don\u2019t buy that relationships are anywhere near the hard work that self-development is.\u00a0 Once you start focusing on the self-development part, the relationship part seems to be a pretty nice side effect of that.<\/p>\n Is self-development hard?\u00a0 I\u2019m sorry to say I find it so.\u00a0 Perhaps others don\u2019t.\u00a0 I\u2019m even a little embarrassed to admit that when I realized (well into my thirties) that I was not<\/em> being a grown-up, \u00a0that it wasn\u2019t about romantic relationships at the end of the day that got me to try to clean up my act.\u00a0 It was about setting an example for my kids[4]<\/a>.<\/p>\n The only thing that made relationships<\/em> hard were my own foolish choices and expectations.\u00a0\u00a0 When I cleaned that up, a great deal fell into place.<\/p>\n
[1]<\/a> Been there<\/p>\n