What to Do with Differences in Relationships? Appreciate Them.

After being together for almost thirty years, Marietta and I are still learning to dance together in our day-to-day life. My mother tried to teach me to wait for my partner, to walk with and not ahead, to get a glass of water for my partner as I get one for myself, but I was not a good student. I want to leave when I’m ready. I don’t want to wait for Marietta, yet I expect her to wait for me.

            I am bad, but in my opinion Marietta is worse. It is emotionally expensive for us to be together. One of us has to pay some price to have the other in our lives. Perhaps the price is waiting. Perhaps the price is to hurry and in hurrying leaving behind something important, like the plane tickets.

            Connections in any relationship require some price we were not or are not expecting to pay. It is easy to begin to blame and pathologize our partners when we cannot contain the resentment for the price we are having to pay.

            Marietta and I just got these two new bicycles, made especially for old farts like us, cruisers, big comfortable seats, handle bars allowing us to sit up, seven speed gears without a derailleur and pedal brakes. Our goal at sixty-seven is not to ride far. It is to ride and breathe hard while riding for at least thirty minutes a day.

            So, I come home early from work one day and I want to go with Marietta for a bike ride. She wants to go too. I really enjoy Marietta’s company and I’m glad she wants to come along. In my mind we should leave right away before the sun sets. Our bikes are not equipped for a night ride.

            But Marietta has to finish what she is doing, go to the restroom and change clothes. At least fifteen minutes. That’s what it costs if I want her to come along. Or she has to stop what she is doing, hit the john, throw on some tennis shoes and be on her bike in five minutes.

            Which of us was going to pay the price?

            The point is that always in the joining of two people there is a price to be paid. One will must bend to the other. Always someone needs to go to the bathroom at an inconvenient time or wants chocolate when you want vanilla and there is only room in the picnic cooler for one carton of ice cream.

            This may seem obvious to many of you, but it has not been to me for sixty-seven years. I have thought that love meant that no price was required. It was my job to serve the pleasure of my partner and their joy to serve mine. That’s simply not true. I see now.

            One strength of a successful relationship is that the partners know how to share the sacrifice that is required by their connection and their differences.

            The sacrifices can be minimized by planning and by creating clear and reasonable expectations. And by appreciating and celebrating differences.

            Too often I want to blame Marietta for some needs she has by attributing them to her being a woman. And there may be something to that. For example, when we began to live together, I noticed that we consumed four to five times more toilet paper than I did alone.

            Marietta often commiserates with her female friends about their tunnel-visioned, self-absorbed, know-it-all husbands.

            There is a short-cut that is taken when we label these differences as masculine or feminine that makes it easier to defend one’s ego while at the same time acknowledging differences. But this comes at the expense of the opposite sex, 50% of the world’s population gets bashed in the process. And what’s more it is often not true. Many women have what are generally considered masculine traits and many men have feminine traits.

            I was in a theatre recently observing people and I saw this square-jawed woman, chewing gum and moving about with a mannerism that reminded me more of a cowboy than a model. I’m sure she is aware of her choice to occupy space and create the assertive tone that she does. Should she feel as if she is less of a woman because of this? Don’t many of us tend to make that value judgment when we observe her or a man with feminine mannerisms and dress?

            If we have strong fixed notions about masculinity and femininity and we tend to see differences in our relationship in those terms, we are likely to make negative judgment s of the opposite sex, while at the same time making judgments about people who do not fit our stereotypes.

            So where does that leave us? It puts us back to having to deal with differences between us and our partners with the shortcuts of attributing the differences to a sexual stereotype.

            So, what if I am a box and my partner is a ball. I envy my partner’s ability to move about. They bring so much to me with their mobility. (As I refer to partners, I choose to use the plural pronoun they and them rather than he/she to avoid sexualizing differences).

            I hope my partner admires my ability as a box to contain things. If you put me together with a bunch of other square boxes, you store a great deal of material. Putting things in balls and putting balls inside a container will not be nearly as effective. There will be a great deal of empty space in the container. And if you remove part of a ball, it is no longer a ball. It must remain full and whole in order to be a ball.

            The point here is simple. Two people will always be different. This can cause problems. Because of their different needs and preferences, there will always be a cost to their connection. If we see that our partner’s difference brings us value just as the ball brings value to the square and the square to the ball, then the price of connection is more easily paid.

            Too often one of the partners feels like they are blamed for the problems in the relationship. The paragon/screw-up relationship is a difficult pattern to resolve. The ball constantly blames the box because it can’t move about as easily as the ball.

            The box agrees and wishes to move like the ball but it also frustrated by the corners that seem to always get in the way.

            The mud of the relationship or what’s wrong seems to always cover one partner. The clean partner seems to always point at the dirty partner. Yet, at the same time the dirty partner is expected to be attracted to the clean partner whose finger is pointing at them.

            But the person who shames them (or one pointing a finger) is not attractive. For a time perhaps the partner in the mud is attracted to their pure partner because they hope for absolution. After not getting absolution, the muddy partner begins to lose interest.

            Or the muddy partner offers some mud to their clean partner. Come play in the mud with me. Be a fellow screw-up. I would enjoy playing in the mud with you and maybe we can take a bath together.

            If the paragon accepts this invitation, real communion is possible. However, as it often happens, the muddy partners attempt at slinging mud only backfires and they end up pouring more water on dirt deepening their mud puddle.

            Paragons must want to see the dirt that is on them that they cannot see. They must be the one to say, yeah, I’ve got dirt I need to know about and acknowledge. It is their job to know their character flaws and define their soul work. If they choose to deny their part and refuse to get in the mud with their partner, little good is likely to happen.

            Boxes do have corners that limit them. If they want to move better, boxes need to knock off some of their edges. Balls cannot open themselves easily and they are not very stable. If they want to become more stable, they need to develop some points and if they want to contain something, they must discover an internal hinge and a top. All this will limit the balls mobility.

            As we bump up against our partner, we learn where our edges are, if we are a box and if we are a ball, we learn how to define our points better from our partner the box, but only if we value their difference and acknowledge our limits and do this without using sexual stereotypes that eventually become prejudicial and return us back to labels and blame.

            A box is a box and a ball is a ball. Our differences are what they are. We become resources to our partners when we appreciate and value these differences. (And there are always differences). We become enemies and pass blame back and forth when we expect others to be like us.