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j4I 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.
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.
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no subject
Date: 2004-02-16 06:20 am (UTC)It seems to me that it would be very hard to have anything which could be classed as a "successful" relationship without this... but I'm willing to believe that there are people who manage it, and who would class their relationships as "successsful".
Defining "successful" is more tricky, and I'm not sure I could do it. Can't use "sharing living space without killing one another" since there are plenty of people in "successful relationships" who don't live together. Can't use "the propagation of the species" because, viewed in that light, none of my relationships are, or ever have been, successful. "Enjoy spending time together and plan to continue to spend time together"? Bit wishy-washy, isn't it?
no subject
Date: 2004-02-16 06:30 am (UTC)Doesn't matter whether that means it's a monogamous heterosexual relationship, a totally open pan-sexual relationship, one where you live in each other's pockets and spend all your free time together, one where you live on opposite sides of the world and tentatively cyber once a decade... - it's about agreeing what each of you expect, and sticking to that (and if you're finding those 'rules' don't work, sitting down and re-working them rather than 'cheating')
That's probably a sub-set of communication, but all too often people don't do it.
I'd also say giving those around you at least a loose idea of those rules could be useful - for example, if you have given your partner complete freedom to go and play with other people, but the 'rule' is that you do not want to hear the gory details, the last thing you want is a concerned friend coming up and warning you with great concern/sympathy that your beloved is 'cheating' on you because they saw them getting friendly at a club with someone.
That's possibly something that's more dependent on the sense of privacy held by those in the relationship, and possibly in itself a part of the rules (ie, whether you consider it appropriate to discuss your relationship with those not in it)
no subject
Date: 2004-02-16 06:33 am (UTC)That's kind of near the definition of 'successful relationship' for me - you need someone who a) doesn't offend all your deeply-held beliefs (politics, religion, food, operating systems, whatever) and b) will accept the things that make you tick (they don't need to indulge them, just accept and not actively despise). I don't think any definition of relationship would work without those two things. Most relationships are so individual you cannot generalise (etc) but I think broadly speaking there has to be some common ground and no big clashes. Opposites might attract but they will probably have rather a volatile home life (and volatile!=successful over a lifetime IMO). Even total drama queens can't manage fifty years of tears every night without suffering.
I don't think there's necessarily a judgement implicit in 'essential', or 'successful'. What appears to be a totally destructive awful relationship from the outside could be deemed 'successful' internally, if the parties concerned are completely comfortable with the set-up. But I think that still takes 'essential' criteria - they must (all) be in agreement with the way things work in that relationship, and accept the interests/thoughts/ideologies that exist within it. For example, sub/dom behaviour looks 'wrong' to a section of the community but it works internally. Sub/sub is probably doomed to failure, passivity and apathy. ;-)
There's room in (most) relationships for non-overlapping ideals, but I think you need a largeish overlap to make it work. But I'm not an expert, by a long chalk!
Re:
Date: 2004-02-16 06:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-16 08:21 am (UTC)The old favourite communication, I guess. For, as someone said above, values both of talking about "deep" stuff (for want of a better identifying word) & just chatting generally. Although levels of that differ from person to person (some people being less chatty than others), I'd say not being able to communicate at all would indicate lack of success.
My personal opinion is that a relationship that consists of, oh, lets say around 50% or more of fighting is not doing well. To me, that would indicate a pretty fundamental mismatch somewhere along the line. Fighting from time to time, fair enough, but if it's becoming *all* or most of what you do together, then that's bad.
Being happy. I firmly believe that being happy is really damn important in life, because I don't believe that there *is* any kind of "point" to life. So enjoy yourself while you're here (yes, I do surround this with other stuff about being nice to other people & etc etc, but let's not go into my personal morality & what grounds I may or may not have for it here :-) ). So a relationship which is making the people involved unhappy isn't successful. The correct solution to this may be to work through the problems, or it may be to give up, but the situation itself is not a successful one.
Both parties getting what they need, and a reasonable proportion of what they want, out of the relationship. Fulfilment, for some value of the word.
I've been thinking about this quite a bit recently, what with Stuff and stuff. I haven't really written it down before. [prods brain]
no subject
Date: 2004-02-16 08:36 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-16 08:46 am (UTC)Do you think this has to be an explicitly agreed ruleset? (From what you say it sounds like you do, but I just wanted to make sure.)
Re:
Date: 2004-02-16 08:56 am (UTC)*nod* I didn't mean that sort of thing wasn't important, I just meant I didn't really want people's personal specific kinks/squicks.
Sub/sub is probably doomed to failure, passivity and apathy. ;-)
Only if you assume that the sub/sub relationship is the only relationship in which both subs participate (and/or the only context in which they indulge their subby tendencies)...
Re:
Date: 2004-02-16 09:01 am (UTC)Bearing this in mind, would you say that accepting oneself in this way is necessary for a successful relationship?
Being happy. I firmly believe that being happy is really damn important in life, because I don't believe that there *is* any kind of "point" to life.
Do you think "being happy" is essential to a relationship between people who do believe that there's some kind of Greater Point to life?
(I guess that's a kind of unfair question; but I'm interested in what -- if anything -- people think is universally essential.)
BTW I don't mean to pick holes; I'm just interested in prodding brains. :)
Re:
Date: 2004-02-16 09:01 am (UTC)Not all? (This is not a disagreement, just a request for clarification.)
no subject
Date: 2004-02-16 09:11 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-16 09:18 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-16 09:18 am (UTC)Hrm. I think I probably would, actually. I think I'd say that accepting oneself in this way[0] is necessary for a successful *anything* in life, tbh.
Do you think "being happy" is essential to a relationship between people who do believe that there's some kind of Greater Point to life?
My gut reaction here is "yes". I suspect that this is because I would think that they were misguided, and thus that - well, that it was all a horrible shame, quite apart from anything else. This may be horribly self-worldview-centred of me. But then, didn't fulfilling the Greater Purpose ought to make you happy as well? I dunno; I think that sort of worldview is sufficiently far outside of my experience that I have trouble understanding it. This is likely a fault in myself. Put it this way: I don't think *I* would define such a relationship as successful. I guess the participants might, possibly. Wouldn't even they be inclined to think that they should have been able to have happiness *&* higher purpose?
Prodding brains is fun. :-) I prod mine a lot, & other people's when possible.
[0] Note that this doesn't necessarily exclude wanting to change or improve oneself in some ways.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-16 09:18 am (UTC)The problem with "universal" is that it's just so big, and I'm trying to cover things like business and family relationships as well as romantic and sexual ones. Even so, I'm having difficulty coming up with scenarios where "all" isn't necessary. Perhaps the relationship between a robber and their victim might qualify, but I'm really stretching "relationship" there.
Actually, I'm not sure my condition works in the presence of time. Indeed, time makes the notion of "success" a bit trickier to grasp. Can something be successful now, but not later, or does its later failure mean it was never successful, or is a momentary success enough to brand something "successful" for all time? I think I'm skating dangerously close to solipsistic-arseness here.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-16 09:49 am (UTC)Interesting point...
I wouldn't want to assume that a relationship has to last forever to be "successful". I suppose, really, this is a bit of a recursive thing as it comes back to whether the people involved think the relationship is/was "successful".
Also, to some extent "success" depends on what one's goals are...
no subject
Date: 2004-02-16 11:25 am (UTC)I suspect that for each party to have a good mental model of the other is, if not essential, at least rather hard to do without. Some kind of commonality of purpose, similarly.
I think the judgement question does flirt with solipsism: refuse to apply your definitions to other people and you end up not being able to talk about them at all. If we can't call a relationship that ends up in, say, the murder of one of the people involved a "failure" then we must either choose another word for it, which will surely quickly acquire negative connotations, or not talk about it at all.
But a contradiction based on the extreme case is hardly enough to condemn the question as solipsist: when we start dividing relationships into success, failure and don't-know, it seems inevitable that there'll be an (at least somewhat) personal judgement there.
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.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-16 12:01 pm (UTC)I don't know. I knew people who said (and apparently believed) that you could expect to be unhappy in your life because you were living in a sinful world, separated from God, and you'd only be properly happy in heaven. Other people said that doing God's will would inevitably fill you with a deeper joy than anything in life could give you. ... I could never really get behind either of those, since the former seemed to make everything utterly pointless and the latter was IME Just Not True. <shrug>
I don't think *I* would define such a relationship as successful. I guess the participants might, possibly.
I think if they seemed to be fulfilled (which is not necessarily the same thing as happy) then I'd have to accept that they were just going in such a completely different direction from me that I didn't have the cultural context necessary to comment on it at all. What I find upsetting is people who seem to believe that they ought to be unhappy for reasons of Higher Purpose but are clearly not, well, happy with the idea of having to be unhappy. If you see what I mean.
Wouldn't even they be inclined to think that they should have been able to have happiness *&* higher purpose?
Ah, but that's sin, innit. Greed, wanting it all, thinking you know better than God, etc.
But then, I do want it all. Or at least I don't see any reason why I shouldn't try to get as much of it as I can without harming other people. After all, as far as I can tell you don't get a second shot at it.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-16 12:03 pm (UTC)Though to be honest I could probably say the same about myself. :-/
Maybe we should go out with each other, then at least we'd both be expecting the worst so anything would be a bonus. :-)
Re:
Date: 2004-02-16 12:06 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-16 12:17 pm (UTC)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.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-16 12:19 pm (UTC)*cough*
no subject
Date: 2004-02-16 12:35 pm (UTC)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...
essential for a successful relationship
Date: 2004-02-16 02:51 pm (UTC)Being uneducated, I would ask a simpler question:
What did you want out of 'it',the relationship?
A lot of women want strength, support, warmth and anything but that awful loneliness, and they are prepared to trade sex for that. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't: two people live a lifetime of bad sex and emotional abuse. A lot of men just want shagging and give nothing back, other than a natural talent for ejaculation and insensitivity: more bad sex and unhappiness. I wouldn't call that successful, even if everyone involved deludes themselves that this is the best that they can ever have in life, and flaunts a public facade of sexual satisfaction to the world of lonely single people.
Some people just want a good, uncomplicated fuck and get exactly that. Not often both sexes want that, and I suspect that's the reason why homosexual couples have active sex lives through year after year of a relationship. But, whatever the plumbing, two or so people are getting what they want and that's probably a good thing. I'd call it successful, even if the rest of their lives are a depressing ruin and they never have a partner longer than a week. Of course, there's no such thing as uninvolved physical sex, and the people who think they are getting it are so emotionally detached that - I suspect - they lack the passion that makes for good sex.
So now the difficult bit... both people giving and getting strength, support, and human warmth. Needs two emotionally-stable people. Doesn't absolutely need sex, but we're built that way and it binds us. Too bad that needs 'fanciability', pheremonal chemistry, mutual attraction or whatever you want to call it. Also needs trust and one hell of an ability to look into people and give them what they really want - have you got that? I know I haven't.
So let's stick with the simple questions:
~ Are you getting what you wanted?
~ Do you think they have it to offer?
~ Do you know what they want?
~ ...and will you enjoy giving them that?
Lotus, the expert in relationships.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-16 03:42 pm (UTC)But this somehow seems to make me generally unqualified to comment on how to relate to people, unsuited to intimacies, and seems to destine me to live alone. I guess that's what comes from a society based around genetic vanity-publishing, and simulations of such.
Re: essential for a successful relationship
Date: 2004-02-16 04:01 pm (UTC)A lot of women want strength, support, warmth and anything but that awful loneliness, and they are prepared to trade sex for that.
Hey, that's me, :). [Apart from the woman bit :)].