I define work as something that is undesired but has to be done.
If the answer is yes, I’m curious as to the ratio of work vs good fun times.
Where is the line between a good ratio vs a bad ratio?
I ask because I’m fairly certain that the part of the brain that tells a person: “I’m willing to put THIS much work into a relationship for the over all benefits.” Is pretty much absent in me.
So my question is:
How much work in a relationship is healthy?
And how much is too much?
I realize that these questions are subjective. I’m just curious as to an over all opinion.
I think it’s the attitude toward the work, not the amount of work, that matters. The “work” of my relationship may not always be something I want to do, but it’s generally something I get satisfaction out of doing: I prize not just my husband, but our relationship, which I think of as a sort of pet, a separate thing that he and I take care of together. It’s like learning to play an instrument: your end goal may be performing, but you need to enjoy the hard work of practicing to get there, or you won’t ever make it through. That doesn’t make the work not work, of course, but it changes how you think about it.
How much is healthy depends on the relationship and why the work exists. My first marriage was hard work a lot of the time because my husband was disabled and that created huge stresses in our lives. My current marriage is too young to be set in stone but our relationship so far has been easier because it doesn’t have those external stresses.
It’s too much when you feel like all you’re doing is working at it and it’s not worth it. I’d say it’s too much if only one person is working, too. And though I felt occasional twinges of resentment, I’d say it’s too much if resentment becomes the overriding emotion.
I don’t think of my marriage in terms of work or not-work. It’s more of an organic growing thing than a structure that I have to keep rustproofing and inspecting and changing the oil on. The “work” is an essential part of the whole relationship, of the experience of being married. Even during times when we are having a disagreement, there’s nobody else I’d rather be having that disagreement with, if that makes any sense.
We’ve been married almost 20 years. The other day we fell into one of those hysterical laughing paroxysms, the kind that are almost painful, over something nobody else would have understood. Just one of those moments is worth about six months of “work,” and we have a lot of them.
What does that mean in the context of real life relationships? Like, no matter how closely a relationship resembles a romance novel? Wouldn’t a romance resembling a romance novel require MORE work? Some of those romance cover poses, man…
It’s my impression that romance novels generally end when the couple gets married. They’re more about the exciting courtship phase of the relationship and not the “long-term” bit.
I’m not really the best person to talk about long-term romantic relationships, but any time you’ve got two (or more) people living together then things aren’t going to work out well unless they’re able to make compromises and work out whatever problems may arise. No matter how well two people get along or how much they care about each other, they’re not going to both want exactly the same thing 100% of the time.
I read too many romance novels. A few of them have been sequels. Most sequels are bad and depressing–because for there to be a romance novel, you have to have conflict, and it sort of has to be internal to the couple, at least in part, so it’s depressing to read about the perfect couple who finally realized how right they were for each other ten pages from the end of the first book, who are now fighting about whatever it was that took them until ten pages from the end of the first book to get together.
Actually, not all romance novels end with the wedding, or the proposal. Some end when the couple figure out that they are meant to be together, and the wedding has taken place much earlier in the novel–maybe it’s a historical romance, with an arranged marriage, or someone’s father left them money if they marry and live together for a year, or whatever.
But yeah, most romance novels have a certain amount of angst in them–especially if one partner is rich and successful and the other one is mousy and inexperienced.
And yes, most romance novels are all about the finding of the true love, not about the work which holds a good relationship together.
And I’ll admit to more knowledge of romance novels than of actual relationships–but I suspect most relationships do require work.
