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

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

I think a relationship probably needs:

At least a bit in common. You need to be at least vaguely interested in some of what your partner does, I reckon. Otherwise what can you *talk* about? You don't want to be closing your ears as soon as they say anything. The ability to become interested in things because they interest your partner is a helpful skill here. I can tell different guitars apart because I have lived with a guitar geek for the last three or four years. Because the sheep likes guitars I am more interested in them.

Workable levels of dependancy. And what the workable levels are will vary hugely, but it's not going to work if one person is super-needy all the time and the other is lacking the ability, or time, or desire, to keep picking them up. Conversly, it will also not work if one person is trying to look after the other person all the time, and the other person *really doesn't want or need to be looked after*. There's always going to be some fluidity there - I didn't need minding at all ever hardly until this year, so Sean had to adjust to being the person who picks me up when I break (and goes downstairs in the night if I hear monsters, and so on). Ali's been looking out for scary-things since we've been going out, because my brain was already broked when we started going out, so when I fix this shoddy head that will change, because I will no longer need to be protected from a place full of people or an everyday mechanical device.

Certain views on stuff have to be compatible. I know I couldn't have a successful relationship with someone who was very much catholic, because either they'd want the relationship on very catholic grounds (if that makes sense?) or they'd be not living by the rules they've chosen. I'd not be happy with either scenario, because I very much disagree with a lot of what the catholic church says, and I also think (very much) that people should match their lifestyle to their beliefs. If someone thought that they doing a very bad thing every time we shagged but kept on doing it I wouldn't want to be a part of that. It really doesn't need to be a religion thing, but that's one I've got experience with and hence it comes to mind. There are certain viewpoints that people might hold that I just wouldn't be able to tolerate.

An extension of this 'un is money, and ultimate things you want, and whatnot. And I think an agreeing-upon these things is essential for a long term relationship to work, because if one person wants to settle down and have babies with the other, but the other wants to be an eternal club-goer and partier and wants no real commitments, it will eventually break. Compromises are makeable, but there's probably a point where there aren't going to be compromises enough.

I couldn't have any sort of successful relationship with someone who hated cats. That might be just me, though.

Friendship. This should have come top of the list, really. All the successful relationships I've been in (and if I can look back and say 'that was really good' it's a successful one) have been with people I was also very good friends with. The ability to be silly at each other, and laugh about daft things that happened five years ago, and the *liking* of each other that you get with a friendship is very important, I reckon.

Bloody hell, I've gone on a bit.

Anyway, they're the things that I think most people need in the *current* definition of what a relationship is. Which brings us sorta-neatly to the second question. I don't think there's a moral problem with saying 'this is what I think a successful relationship should have'. But my viewpoint is based on experience, both mine and that of all the other people I know (and people in novels, and whatever). But a lot of what I've listed above is probably only relevant in our time and our society. Skip back a century or two, and the things that people expect are very different. If we could skip forward we'd probably see that they've changed again. And in other societies right now, there are probably differences. But I don't live in other times or cultures, so I can only answer for where I am now.

[kake]

> You need to be at least vaguely interested in some of what your partner does,
> I reckon. [...] The ability to become interested in things because they interest
> your partner is a helpful skill here.

Knitting is a sexually-transmitted disease?

Re:

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

But one I'm not capable of passing on, it seems. Damn people-refusing-to-learn-to-knit....

Re:

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

Ooh, just realised that I didn't mention the working definition of relationship. And that's, for the purposes of this question, a 'romantic' (except romance is not really the word) or sexual (but I don't see sex as essential) relationship. But I think most of the points can be extended to other relationships as well - mostly friends. Family relationships all come with their own oddnesses, and business relationships can be odd. But I would impose most (not *quite* all) onto friendships, too.