Surviving Survival

The other day, we were talk­ing about how so many cou­ples enter into a rela­tion­ship in ways that almost guar­an­tees fail­ure as the out­come. The pre­cau­tion­ary finan­cial arrange­ments many make for the pos­si­bil­ity the rela­tion­ship might fail pre­clude a true rela­tion­ship. Accept­ing that your part­ner must be your best (best as in very best) friend means all of your prior friend­ships must change is a dif­fi­cult real­ity for many to accept.

Per­haps the focus on finan­cial pre­cau­tion arises because of the trend to delay for­mal part­ner­ing until later in life, until both have estab­lished some degree of per­sonal prop­erty. Prenup­tial agree­ments, mak­ing sure that a man and wife take out of the mar­riage what they went in with, and equi­tably dis­trib­ute the assets they accrued dur­ing the course of the union, are more and more com­mon. Many cou­ples main­tain sep­a­rate finan­cial accounts. One site advises:

“Sep­a­rate accounts allow you to buy those golf clubs or those per­fect heels with­out a per­mis­sion slip or even approval from your bet­ter half. … Hav­ing sep­a­rate finances is for­giv­ing, allow­ing each party to make mis­takes or poor choices with­out drain­ing the other.”

Too many cou­ples hide pur­chases and debts from each other. That is finan­cial infi­delity. If you wish to view the rela­tion­ship as a con­tract as might be formed to join the rul­ing fam­i­lies of two medieval coun­tries this would make some sense to us. But as a part­ner­ship between two peo­ple seek­ing to share (note share) their lives we just can­not see it. Should it not be, we take what is mine, and merge it with what is yours, and build what is ours? Less than this there is never a com­plete part­ner­ship. There is always my world and your world. There will always be influ­ences pulling the part­ners in dif­fer­ent direc­tions. That would be apart.

There will be no end of advi­sors, lawyers, friends, fam­ily who will warn a cou­ple about the finan­cial con­cerns of enter­ing into a rela­tion­ship. Friend­ships and rela­tion­ships with friends can be as influ­en­tial, or even more, than finances on the long-term health of the rela­tion­ship. Before two peo­ple meet, they usu­ally have their own cir­cle of friends. They have their rou­tines and habits for their relax­ation times. They likely have totally sep­a­rate best friends. A rela­tion­ship, even a long-term rela­tion­ship, does not mean giv­ing up on these friend­ships. But a long-term rela­tion­ship will and must lead to a change in these rela­tion­ships. You can keep you friends but they have to take a sec­ondary role in your life.

After they meet, after the rela­tion­ship starts, there is a period of love and lust between the part­ners. This leads to a deci­sion to enter into what is hoped to be a long-term, in many cases hoped to be life-long, rela­tion­ship. Over time the nature of the love and lust changes, but in the best of rela­tion­ships it can actu­ally become deeper, even more than just love. For this to hap­pen it is vitally impor­tant for the part­ners to become friends; actu­ally not only friends, but best friends. If you do not see your poten­tial rela­tion­ship part­ner as the per­son who will be your best friend, you should prob­a­bly give seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion if this is the rela­tion­ship for you. How can you spend the rest of your life spend­ing more time with this per­son than any­one else if they are not your best friend?

When we met we actu­ally came from what many peo­ple seemed to think to be very dif­fer­ent worlds. Still Here Too was the socially engaged art stu­dent. Is Still Here was the some­what socially dis­en­gaged sci­ence stu­dent. Still Here Too was the peace­keep­ing INFP. Is Still Here was the some­what argu­men­ta­tive ENTJ. But meet we did. The tim­ing was right (so grate­ful); sum­mer term at uni­ver­sity so there were fewer dis­trac­tions than nor­mal. We spent so much time together fos­ter­ing the love and lust. It all led to the long-term com­mit­ment. But from there what has made it work is that we have always spent a high per­cent­age of our free time together. We seek activ­i­ties of joint inter­est. We fos­ter being each other’s best friend. We each have indi­vid­ual inter­est but they are sec­ondary to our inter­est together.

Some might say that we have given up our indi­vid­u­al­ity. Per­haps we have a bit. We have become one, we have gained so much. We have expe­ri­enced things together that we would not have indi­vid­u­ally. So any­thing that we might have missed, that we could have expe­ri­enced indi­vid­u­ally, is just a trade that we have chosen.

If you don’t join together, why bother with a long-term rela­tion­ship? If you are going to cre­ate escape tun­nels, you are not really plan­ning to stay in the rela­tion­ship. Don’t bother enter­ing into it in the first place. You will save both you and you part­ner a lot of pain.

Together is bet­ter in our opinion.

Is Still Here & Still Here Too