photo by me

Do people realize how good they have it while they have it?

I see people in relationships who don’t realize how good they have it. Sure, I don’t know what happens behind closed doors, for the most part, but having been around some of them for years on end has given me a nice view of the relationships.

There are some who realize how good it is and cultivate the relationships. They make the relationships more important than anything else. My brother, for instance, doesn’t live to work. He uses work to make his life better with his family – to have more time with them, to be able to take trips with them, to give them the better things in life. When I see the way he and his wife interact, it makes me smile. Sure, they have rough patches just like anyone else. But they like one another. A lot. They like to spend time together.

And then there are others. It seems like a push and pull all of the time. One person seems to give more to the relationship. One person seems to love more, to give more, to want more for his or her partner. The other person only complains and puts down his or her partner. It seems so one sided and the person who is complaining doesn’t seem to realize just how good that relationship is.

What bothers me about this is that these people have no idea what a bad relationship is like. They haven’t lived through being hit by someone who says they love them. They haven’t been told how horrible they are, how ugly they are, how fat they are, how stupid they are or any other number of things by people who purport to love them.

Instead, they are supported through difficult times by someone who loves them. Yes, sometimes there are arguments. And yes, sometimes that person won’t agree with them – but who would want someone who agrees with you all of the time?

It just makes me think that these people are unhappy with themselves and instead of dealing with whatever is making them unhappy within, they project it on to their partners. Because it’s so much easier to blame than to fix something.

One Art
by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

–Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.