Relationships seem really ideal in theory. Relationships, like the ones you can get from a swingers club, offer you a brunch companion, a support team and a cuddle buddy. But in all of its offerings, a relationship puts a lot of pressure on itself to endure.
Media outlets such as the entertainment industry and social media, respectively, have romanticized conflicts in relationships and promotes unrealistic resolutions of said conflicts.
Classic love stories going back to “Romeo and Juliet,” “The Notebook” and more recently “A Star Is Born,” portraying couples who are so madly in love that they are blind to each others’ implicit faults, even though they lead them into the same circular arguments — which are resolved each time by passionate declarations of love, or sex — or both. Growing up on movies like these made me believe that fighting builds up passion between two people and that arguments can be nulled in a traditional kiss-and-make-up fashion. Rarely, or ever, have I seen two people genuinely communicate an issue, work through something hard or have to compromise, at least in the context of their romantic relationship.
Social media apps like Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat have become a platform for couples to publicize their relationship and idealize it for those who are not privy to its complexities. Instagram and Snapchat are used to post exclusively happy pictures that suggest that couples are with each other all the time and happiest when they are. Meanwhile, Twitter perpetuates certain standards for relationships and boasts certain actions of significant others like gift-giving, time commitment and unshaken loyalty. The exposure of real-life couples on social media are not as real-life as they seem, but internalizing the idea that they are is easy, given the excessive presence of couplehood on social media. I start to believe in the idea that someone’s significant other really is their “better half, ” their “best friend” and their “favorite person in the world.”
Because we’re never shown the couple’s hardships and the ways they’ve worked through them, it becomes easy to believe that they don’t have any. Additionally, it allows us to build the perfect partner in our minds. And even worse, it enables us to believe that a partner can be perfect.
The combination of these media insists an impossible set of standards to be set for our romantic interests. Conflict must be rare, and if it exists, no conflict is a match for love. A partner can be everything you need them to be: a comforter, entertainer, protector and lover all at once. Ultimately, these are unhealthy standards with which to enter a relationship.
Conflicts exist, but so do methods of healthy resolution. We’re not given explicit directions with how to navigate them though, and figuring it out can be tricky. The person you enter a partnership with, if you choose to do so, shouldn’t be a person who “completes” you, a person who can read your mind or a person who says the right things at the right time. Your partner should be a person who is willing to make you happy in the capacity that they can, a person who is willing to communicate openly and honestly and a person who doesn’t sacrifice their own personhood to adapt to yours.
The best aspect of a partnership is that it exists as two whole people sharing their lives together, and the best partnership comes from each person being able to honor themselves as much as they honor their significant other.
