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Sustained a visit last night from His Mage Throws Rocks. Bastard brought him home after training and we had a nice chat, and a mutual freakout at needles, and coffee/herbaltea/cocoa (him/me/Bastard). He was kind of stressed, what with already having been stressy before everything he thought he was working for in his personal life disintegrated.
I'd like to share the analogy I used last night, rambling and chatting as is my wont.
A relationship works like horses in harness, pulling a carriage or other vehicle. The horses can snap at each other, they can stumble, but it'll work as long as they're pulling in the same direction. Might not work as fast as you'd like, but it works. The relationship starts to break when the horses are being guided to pull in different directions, when they start straining at the poles or reins, or when you've got catastrophic breakdown, leading to the horses attacking each other such that they cannot pull, and start pushing at the poles to get at each other. Eventually the poles will break. Stress is put on a relationship when the horses shy at something unexpected, or when one is going at a pace the other can't match.
But no matter what, if the horses are pulling together, as directed by whoever is driving the carriage (even if you believe that there is no one there, they're still pulling together, and the carriage itself should be providing feedback to the horse about the position of the other horse(s)), the carriage will get somewhere. The horses can snap at each other, but as long as they're going in the same direction, together, and they're compensating for each other, they won't break the harness, they won't break the poles.
I'd like to share the analogy I used last night, rambling and chatting as is my wont.
A relationship works like horses in harness, pulling a carriage or other vehicle. The horses can snap at each other, they can stumble, but it'll work as long as they're pulling in the same direction. Might not work as fast as you'd like, but it works. The relationship starts to break when the horses are being guided to pull in different directions, when they start straining at the poles or reins, or when you've got catastrophic breakdown, leading to the horses attacking each other such that they cannot pull, and start pushing at the poles to get at each other. Eventually the poles will break. Stress is put on a relationship when the horses shy at something unexpected, or when one is going at a pace the other can't match.
But no matter what, if the horses are pulling together, as directed by whoever is driving the carriage (even if you believe that there is no one there, they're still pulling together, and the carriage itself should be providing feedback to the horse about the position of the other horse(s)), the carriage will get somewhere. The horses can snap at each other, but as long as they're going in the same direction, together, and they're compensating for each other, they won't break the harness, they won't break the poles.
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Probably a better model is a dog sled, where the team has to be matched by personality, ability, temperament, strength, and, most importantly the group hierarchy. Of course, this now means we are possibly discussing a polyandrous/polygamous relationship (or at least, a relationship with quite a few close friends). Actually it may not be a bad metaphor after all.
* of course, the really big carriages with large teams (definitely those with six or more horses) also need riders on the horses to help guide them since long reins just aren't as effective)
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Well, I don't think I said it was a good analogy, just one that was appropriate to the moment, and the relationships we were talking about (some 'splodey, some not).
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And the rigidity of the system is the reason why your team has to be trained as a team, otherwise the whole "pulling the carriage thing" fails. I mean, your metaphor still works if you have somebody train both of you to be married and to direct which way you are going to go, and that your horses are willing to be broken to harness/marriage, but I think that would be a highly unsatisfactory marriage for most modern westerners (then again, the state of marriage is becoming increasingly alien to modern westerners since the 50's and the explosion of the Nuclear Family paradigm). Which doesn't say they don't exist. They do.
Then again most modern, educated westerners, retain the fallacy that a marriage exists for romantic, rather than business, reasons. SOme of the happiest couples I know have been arranged marriages (very few of which fail). Then again, romance is the modern fairy tale (or in some cases, Faery tale).
Personally I think a relationship is all about give and take.
You give and she takes... [1]
Seriously the key to a successful relationship is communication and compromise. Things start falling apart when you stop talking to each other. And I don't just mean talking about the big things. It's also the little things, which can build up and break things apart. And compromise doesn't mean that you surrender your autonomy to the desires of your partner(s), just that you don't take your partner for granted.
Then again, this is me talking, so I'd ignore everything I just said (apart from the bit about the horses).
[1] And anybody who actually thinks I believe in that statement doesn't really know me. Anybody who knows I couldn't resist adding that line knows me too well.
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His Mage Throws Rocks was the fourth long-term relationship (in people I know well enough to call fairly good friends) to break up in the last few months. If it keeps up, soon Bastard and I will be the longest-running still-functional relationship in that group of friends, and that really scares me. Not going to happen, but...! The periphery of all these relationships breaking up is, of course, that those who are still together are examining their own relationships (and those of people around them) more closely than perhaps necessary for signs of cracks. So mostly the metaphor does what it's meant to because it emphasises that the flies and the flicking tail aren't as important as the fact that you're running in the same direction together, instead of taking different paths.
And it gets people thinking instead of freaking out, which is also good.
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There are reasons that the ancient Greeks took Cupid's arrows to be a curse.
Herein I utter a self-indulgent <sigh> [It still hasn't quite warn off yet, probably because we were, unfortunately rather too comfortable and relaxed with each other. Much badness.]
I got into habit a fair while ago of adding +1 to the scorecard when friends get hitched (formally or informally) and -1 when they seperate. So far I've only had one year in the negative. Then again, when friends start getting self-abusive I tend to talk their problems out with them and tell them they are being silly idiots, so I may be unfairly influencing the odds here.
Sound familiar?
Self examination can be dangerous. There are always cracks in anything. Sometimes trying to do something about them widens them when before you were both happy stepping over them in ignorant bliss. It's the chasms you have to worry about.
But above all else, communicate dammit!
Although if you think a flicking tail isn't important you've never been bitten by a horsefly.
Then again, I'm probably the wrong person to comment about these things. Sometimes I think that there might be someone out there for me. And then the Universe laughs and reality reasserts itself.
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