Relationships are hard. Whether a romantic relationship is seen as a nice warm glow which embraces the soul throughout the night, or if it is rather felt like a swarm of biting gnats that are chasing and buzzing around one’s head throughout the day, a romance is often one of the biggest challenges in life. 

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<center><h2>Can we talk about our relationship?</h2></center>


Loving someone with all of our heart; it can put a lot of pressure on that someone, and here I’d like to explore the option of loving the _relationship itself,_ instead of trying to box someone into remaining the object of our desires. By focusing on the relationship, we might be able to free those that we love, and in doing so we may be able to enjoy that individual’s company more often, and perhaps even keep them comfortably in our lives.

<center><h2>Getting a Grip on Love, While Letting Someone Go</h2></center>
 
Looking back on old relationships, it was often easy for me to see then what I might have considered to be flaws in the other person, finding things that they did-or-didn’t do that might have caused the relationship to end. However, a true self-examination might have shown me that I was not perfect either, and such a logical introspection might have also allowed me a more holistic look at the relationship itself, instead of just judging the other individual being, blaming them for nearly everything.

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<center><h1>Do You Love The Relationship?</h1></center> 

During some of my romantic relationships in the past, I had focused every bit of my being onto another individual, then I would claim them, and begin waving around my expectations and needs like battle flags, and of course they had responded with flags of their own-- but wait. Why was I building a fortress and powering up my weapons, when I was supposed to be in a ‘love’ situation?

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For reasons like this, romantic relationships may seem to have no logic to them, and any critical reasoning is often buried under numerous layers of emotions, becoming unavailable to the participants. Even the simplest math becomes hard if adding two together makes three, but a relationship has been formed by the union. 

<center><h2>One Plus One Equals Three</h2></center> 

Whenever two things are together, a relationship is automatically created, and this relationship between two things becomes a separate thing of it’s own. Unlike the emotional beings who created it though, the relationship doesn’t get offended, doesn’t love or hate, and doesn’t take sides in arguments. A relationship only needs attention, and cannot survive alone. Indeed, two must be involved in it, giving it all of their love constantly.

The initial relationship is formed automatically upon contact between two beings, and those beings will either like their relationship or not. They might both love it, or they may both hate it but _the relationship_ is the default creation of the two individuals, and is actually the cause of their mutual attraction to each other, good or bad.

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<center><h2>Love Isn’t Blind, It’s Just Confused</h2></center>

Romantic love knows nothing about physical beauty, and knows no boundaries at all, but they say that it’s blind for a reason: Romantic love can’t see that it is the _relationship_ that is actually loved, and romance makes the mistake of trying to love an individual being instead of loving the often-illogical connection between the two beings. Inevitably this misdirection of focus will lead to expectations, or might tempt the individuals to try to make the other **fit** into a pre-conceived version of what romance is supposed to be.

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<center><h2>Don’t Like the Relationship?</h2></center>

If two individual’s mutual relationship itself is what attracted them together in the first place, then with an objective examination of that relationship, the two can stop fighting with one another long enough to re-focus critically upon that relationship; _do we still love it?_ Do we even _like_ it anymore? Should we try to fix it, or can we?

Relationships can change, and do change naturally. Individuals change along with it, and over time those individuals can lose their love for a relationship even while still caring for the other individual, but the alternative-- trying to change somebody else-- has never worked for anybody. 

Relationships can be changed by the individuals, and the individuals can be changed by the relationship, but individual beings should always be free to change when and if they are ready to change, not when they are told to by another.

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<center><h2>If You Love Someone, Let Them Remain Free</h2></center>

Trying to get another to adhere to my version of romance had ruined many of my romances in time. To pretend that I wasn’t whole without someone’s love had led to endless manipulation on my part, as I tested their love for me, not aware of what I was doing to the relationship. Ultimately, by my meddling in someone else’s business, the romantic relationship had been turned into an adversarial one.

_If we need for another individual to love us romantically, then we may be actually causing the problem with the relationship._ 

What a burden that is for us to put on another being; to suggest that their lives be forever committed to making sure that we are loved enough. Instead, maybe we should look again at the relationship itself-- a relationship that truly is depending on us, and really can’t live without us. 

We can either nurture the relationship or ignore it, but by keeping the relationship as the focus, we automatically exit the fortress and drop our shields, and our dear human companions are spared from our shackles of emotion, and are no longer taxed by our imagined needs for victory, so that together we can build a beautiful relationship together. 

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<center><h2>Summary: Loving the Relationship</h2></center>

The relationship between two beings is what either repels them or attracts them to one another, and that relationship is a fragile, ever-changing thing. In romantic attractions, that relationship is unforgettable, yet is so often forgotten by it’s creators. Those emotionally-guided stewards of the creation can either change with their relationship willingly, or they can transmute it into something less romantic, a relationship with their expectations, demands and manipulation of the other as it’s controlling premise. 

To love one’s lover romantically then, is for them to love the connection, the illogical bond that keeps those two beings together in life. To love that romantic connection is to give the relationship a romantic theme, and such a relationship requires nurture, attention, and a lot of love. True love.  

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<center>_all pictures above thanks to Pixabay_</center>
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<center><h1>_@therealpaul_</h1></center>