Why are Relationships becoming so difficult?

Transactional nature is brought into the home

Relationships with your partner cannot be transactional in nature. They should be based on mutual understanding and connection.

What is transactional nature? “I have done this and that for you. What did you do?” “I bring this and that to the table. What do you bring?”

See the insanity of this concept. You can’t even control the situations in your own life, yet you want to have a sense of proportional control over an equation in which there is another person involved.

Lack of clarity about life situations

Alright, see it this way. If someone says, “I want a person who earns this much because that is compatible with me, as I earn around the same amount,” it sounds fair.

But you don’t know what life is going to bring you. What if you get laid off and don’t get a job right away? What if you develop an illness (I’m not wishing that upon you; it’s just a possible what-if) and are confined to bed rest for a long time? And now you are asked, “What do you bring to the table?”

When you accept someone based on the conditions they are in right now, you are not only accepting the person; you are also accepting the conditions they are in at that moment. But there is no guarantee that those conditions will remain the same. You could be conditioned by completely different circumstances throughout your life.

There is no guarantee about the situations you will face in life. Similarly, there is no guarantee about the situations the other person will face in life.

A date got cancelled

This need for a guarantee really influences people’s decisions, but it isn’t even realistic. There are no guarantees about future circumstances.

A date got cancelled because of this. One of my friends told me she found a guy in my husband’s friend circle cute. She had seen him at my wedding party, and I had a chance to chat with him a few times. So, I jumped in and suggested that I could set up a date for them.

She said, “Yeah. What does he do?”

I said he was an early-stage entrepreneur who was doing well for himself in the initial stages of his business.

To which she replied, “He isn’t stable yet. If you could guarantee that he is going to remain successful, I could consider it.”

She said this as a joke.

To which I said, “Leave his work aside. I can’t even give you a guarantee about my own life. No one has handed me a guarantee of how many years I will live. So how can I give you one for him?”

There are No Rigid Ratio Rules

Everyone’s timeline is different. It really is. There will be times when you need to focus on your individual growth. At that time, if your partner steps in and takes on 100% of the responsibilities, wouldn’t that be helpful?

Vice versa, there may be times when your partner needs you to step in and take on 100% of the household responsibilities. And sometimes, it will be 100/100. It depends on the situation you are in together.

Try to understand why more is being asked of you. Is it neglect? Is it lethargy? Is it avoidance? Or is it genuine?

How would you make a wise decision? By acknowledging the situation you are in and figuring out what would work for you as partners so that you can operate smoothly and grow together.

Even if the sense of this gets lost in conversations, come back to the central idea: you are not standing against each other; you are standing together as a team.

Most importantly, practise some clarity about life. If you do this before you build a relationship, that’s even better. But if you haven’t done it beforehand, at least introduce it while you are in the relationship you wanted. Don’t put the weight of life’s situations on your relationship.