How do relationships work?

If you put a woman on a pedestal and try to protect her from the rat race, you are a male chauvinist.
If you stay home and do the housework, you are a pansy.

If you work too hard, there is never any time for her.
If you don’t work enough, you are a good-for-nothing bum.

If she has a boring repetitive job with low pay, it is exploitation.
If you have a boring repetitive job with low pay, you should get off your lazy behind and find something better.

If you get a promotion ahead of her, that is favouritism.
If she gets a job ahead of you, its affirmative action.

If you mention how nice she look sits, it is sexual harassment.
If you keep quiet, its male indifference.

If you cry, you are a wimp.
If you don’t, you are an insensitive bastard.

If you make a decision without consulting her, you are a chauvinist.
If she makes a decision without consulting you, she is a liberated woman.

If you ask her to do something she doesn’t enjoy, that is domination.
If she asks you, it’s a favor.

If you appreciate the female form, you are a pervert.
If you don’t, you are gay.

If you like a woman to shave her legs, wear sexy lingerie and keep in shape, you are sexist.
If you don’t, you are unromantic.

If you try to keep yourself in shape, you are vain.
If you don’t, you are a slob.

If you buy her flowers, you are after something.
If you don’t, you are not thoughtful.

If you are proud of your achievements, you are full of yourself.
If you are not, you are not ambitious.

If she has a headache, she is tired.
If you have a headache, you don’t love her anymore.

If you want it too often, you are over sexed.
If you don’t, there must be someone else.

It is a joke but like all jokes built on truth. So what do we learn from all this? Well we learn that you can’t win no matter what you do. You both need to be looking at things from the same direction so that you see the same things. Then you will be happy. Not many couples actually do this. Most of us have to do a bit of compromising and adapt to the relationships requirements. This compromise is necessary but it is where we get everything wrong.

Every person has an invisible mental list of their needs, wants and don’t cares. The needs must be met to keep them happy where as the wants are simply the icing on the cake the don’t cares you don’t even think about. Not having your needs met leads to unhappiness and eventually the destruction of the relationship for you. Not having wants met usually means you adapt to replace those wants with attainable wants but still dream about them when you can. Defining these lists is an ongoing process throughout your life and when push comes to shove you can find that sometimes they change due to circumstances. Usually because you didn’t actually really think about them properly and sometimes it is because you are getting older and your requirements have changed. Needs lists are usually short while the wants list is much longer. Don’t cares is everything else on the planet so is too big to even quantify and is rarely discussed.

For example you may have a need for a redhead with big boobs. You also want sex every day. You meet someone who meets this and you get on well eventually getting married. Then you discover she has dyed her hair and she is really a brunette and her boobs are falsies. Do you divorce her? Of course not, well not generally, because the red hair and the boobs were false needs. She had what was needed and it wasn’t even on the list.

Usually though the issue is one of trust or behavior. She wants the nice guy with the easy come easy go attitude but doesn’t like the fact he won’t settle with one woman. So she decides she will get closest to him and she can put up with his womanizing. She puts faithfulness down as a want as she believes she can handle it. It leads to arguments, getting pregnant to tie him in, one of them killing the other or just breaking up all because she needs him to be faithful and eventually it wears her down. Swap the sexes in all these examples if you wish as they work both ways.

This means that you need to be honest from the outset. Tell it as it is but at the same time bear in mind you are dealing with another human being, one that deserves respect so you need to be careful in your choice of words. You also need to take into consideration where you are on the relationship ladder so you don’t frighten them off with your wants of kinky sex with midgets. Each relationship has a ladder and at each rung certain things become available. A bit like games where when you master one skill other options become available. The first rung is where you actually are introduced or bump into the person and depending on the options taken and the result you could move on to the second and so on. Either continually moving up the ladder or jumping off onto another ladder.

So while you are being honest you are also relying on your partner to be honest as well. After all if there is something on their needs that you just cannot meet then ultimately that relationship is in trouble. While they fool themselves that it is a want or something that you will change then you are basically living a lie. It leads to distrust and arguments. But you cannot keep asking questions to ensure that you are all on the same page as repeated questions makes it sound like you don’t believe them and is associated with jealousy. Also if you are at the point of moving between different rungs of the ladder then questions can be taken out of context and can frighten some off.

With all this it’s a wonder that relationships work at all. Most people have few needs, honesty, trust, treated fairly, a couple of brain cells and decent conversation. Wants range from kinky sex to being left alone for hours on end. It’s only because we are so adaptable that relationships last any length of time at all.

However, we know that relationships nowadays are not lasting as long as they used to. Why is that? Well in my highly biased viewpoint it is because of the changes wrought in society by our successive governments means that despite the fact you never actually really had anything in common with someone else that one of you had a child which is the only ticket you need for a life on someone else’s tab. It means you can have all the benefits of having a relationship but without actually having to put up with him. So taking the step, what was a big deal long ago, of having a baby is nowhere near as risky as it was. So in an attempt to force him to meet your needs when he wasn’t before you make a choice for all three of you.

It’s actually a wonder and a sign of how adaptable people are than any long term relationships work at all.

As a matter of interest though. It does explain how the bad boys get so much nookie. Girls like bad boys, they are looking for protectors and someone that will ensure they are kept well. Bad guys appear tough and exciting. That and the fact they are willing to lie like crazy means that they can always ensure that they appear to be meeting their women’s needs. It doesn’t matter it is a lie because she believes it and by the time she finds out the truth he will be ready to move on to the next. Lying gives short term gains because telling the truth means that they would miss out to the decent ones who tell the truth.

Maybe this is a reflection on why our society is going downhill. All the bad guys are having the babies, with multiple mothers, and not giving them positive role models as they drink and smoke their way through their dole money while the kids grow up whilst the couples we should be encouraging and the ones paying for it all are having only one or two children and struggling to make ends meet. I’m not convinced either that this is all a bad thing when you look at the bunch of wimps the rest of us have become.

Anyway, my view is simple. I’ve decided that I’m too opinionated to keep an intelligent woman going so I’ll just have to settle for a less argumentative one that will put up with my quirks. I’m honest and what you see is what you get so as long as that is OK at the start it will cut down on the arguments. The reason I can’t lie is that I’ve found that if I make myself to be someone else there is always something wrong with that so I get earache for being something I’m not and I have the hassle of remembering and keeping my lies together. If I am who I am I still get earache but at least I don’t have to worry if it’s because I’ve been caught out or it’s the alter ego I know it’s me. Nice and simple.

So I suggest that those who want to build and keep a long and lasting relationship be honest with each other, excluding is her ass fat in this, it’s always a trick question, be trustworthy, you always get caught out, and find things you can do together and each have something you can do on your own and keep talking to each other, you don’t always have to agree, it’s better if you don’t but don’t fall out over things. Remember and be clear on both your needs. Keep the basic and the rest will fall into place depending on both your needs. Nothing too complicated with that is there.

Taking all this into consideration I really wonder how any of our species have managed to have any long term relationships at all. We must all have very few needs and the ability to ignore facts staring us in the face.  Oh wait! A definition of our society as a whole.