Quote: Original post by kutraj
Just thought I'd add my 2 cents to the earlier discussion. I think the problem is that people today get into relationships because of a kind of social pressure that seems to act on them. I dont know if most people (who get into relationships) are emotionally ready to get into one, and if they even try to sustain it beyond a point.
A lot has been written about the current generation's seeming inability to grow up and form meaningful relationships. Although written from a female perspective and focusing exclusively on the shortcomings of the modern child-man, ignoring the similarly obnoxious princess-woman, I like this article:
Child-Man in the Promised Land
Quote:
We can argue endlessly about whether “masculinity” is natural or constructed—whether men are innately promiscuous, restless, and slobby, or socialized to be that way—but there’s no denying the lesson of today’s media marketplace: give young men a choice between serious drama on the one hand, and Victoria’s Secret models, battling cyborgs, exploding toilets, and the NFL on the other, and it’s the models, cyborgs, toilets, and football by a mile. For whatever reason, adolescence appears to be the young man’s default state, proving what anthropologists have discovered in cultures everywhere: it is marriage and children that turn boys into men. Now that the SYM can put off family into the hazily distant future, he can—and will—try to stay a child-man. Yesterday’s paterfamilias or Levittown dad may have sought to escape the duties of manhood through fantasies of adventures at sea, pinups, or sublimated war on the football field, but there was considerable social pressure for him to be a mensch. Not only is no one asking that today’s twenty- or thirtysomething become a responsible husband and father—that is, grow up—but a freewheeling marketplace gives him everything that he needs to settle down in pig’s heaven indefinitely.
Perhaps successful relationships are grounded in something deeper than narcissism and personal pleasure. Maybe relationships are about building something bigger and require a sense of responsibility, of duty, which is sometimes difficult to reconcile with the notion of doing what feels right (spelled comfortable).
Quote: Original post by kutraj
The thing is that most relationships dont last very long because the people involved get bored of each other, which again brings us to the question of 'why did they find each other interesting in the first place?'
Sparks are only momentary and flames eventually burn out. Few have the luxury of falling into lifelong relationships that remain "interesting" forever. I think relationships require both people to forget the idea that they will ever find a perfect partner and to instead find peace in sacrificing something in order to create something larger and inherently valuable. Love in this view is something that two people do, not merely feel (or expect to feel).
