ITK

[j4]

I don't need to know, but I'm interested to know:

What (if anything) do people regard as essential for a successful relationship?

(I'm thinking more in the general sense than the personal -- I'm not really interested to know whether individual people couldn't possibly have a relationship with somebody who worked for Microsoft, or whether they need somebody who will accept and indulge their Swarfega fetish.)

Or do you think relationships are so individual that they're impossible to generalise about?

(20 marks.)

Further questions:

Do you think there's a (moral?) judgement implicit in a suggestion that anything is "essential" for a successful relationship? By stating the question in those terms, are we imposing our own definition of "success" on other people? (I'm assuming a broad context of Western culture; at the moment I'm not really interested in hearing, say, how the Mgosh tribe regard a "successful" relationship as one where the female bears twenty children and then eats her mate.) Or do questions like this merely make us disappear rapidly up our own solipsistic arses?

(40 marks.)

Note: You may define "relationship" as broadly as you wish, but please make your working definition explicit. Do not attempt to write on both sides of the paper at once.

Comments

Re:

[j4.livejournal.com]

commonality of purpose

When you say "purpose" do you mean long-term goals for the relationship, or general goals in life, or just general direction in life, or... something else?

But then again, is making that judgement imposing anything on anyone, unless it actually affects them somehow? Our current opinions of, say, Henry VIII's relationships obviously have no effect whatsoever on him or his various wives, all of them being hundreds of years dead.

A judgement on Henry VIII's relationships obviously has no effect on the individuals who were involved. However, depending on who's making that judgement and what their audience is, it could be seen as a general moral pronouncement (if somebody says "Henry VIII was a bad person because he divorced his wife" it could reasonably be inferred that the speaker believes divorce is generally Wrong, in which case that's a moral judgement which they will apply to everybody), a judgement on what the monarchy ought to do ("Henry VIII was a bad king because yada yada"), a judgement on the established church ("The C of E was founded on selfishnes, greed and lust, when Henry VIII decided that he was tired of his old wife and wanted a better one"), a judgement on the RC church ("Since making adult decisions about the termination of a relationship wasn't allowed, Henry VIII had to found a whole new church in order to divorce his wife") ... I think I'll stop there. But the point I'm clumsily making with the aid of my half-remembered pre-GCSE History is that moral judgements about one situation or incident can generally be extrapolated to cover other situations, and even if they're not intended to be, they probably will be, so one ought to be careful about specifying the limitations of one's moral pronouncements.

I suppose it's still not imposing anything on anybody, in that anybody can turn round and tell you to stick your moral judgement where the sun doesn't shine. :-) But people may feel an imposition nonetheless.

Um, I think there was a point. I can't remember what it was, sorry.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

purpose

Some kind of intersection, or even just compatibility, of intent: something as simple as wanting to be together (for people) or wanting to perform a mutually beneficial transaction (for businesses), for instance.

I'll think about the rest...