clouded vision

maturity seems like a major factor in whether or not a relationship works out. all around me people are getting together and doing the couple thing... and all around me, relationships are just not working out. i think a big part of the collapse sometimes is that people just weren't ready for the kind of relationship that they were trying to be in. i used to think that it was age - that the people got together or got married too young. but now i'm amending that. i think maybe it has more to do with the people not being developed enough - at that certain point in their own development where they are ready to be patient with someone else's changes, or where they are really comfortable with who they are as a person, or where they haven't experienced enough to emphasize the importance of weathering the bumps and bruises with a resolve to do well by the other person... i just keep seeing those same problems over and over in the failing relationships i witness from the sidelines.

notice i said failing, not failed. people stay together, like whitney and bobby, 'cause apparently they like the ins and outs and ups and downs. they complain to their friends and family, but continue to stay together unhappily ever after. they won't accept responsibility for how they contribute to the relationship's problems. they won't communicate honestly in word, or in deed, with their partner. they act vindictive. they shut down because they don't want to go through the drama of actually facing and working on the problems with their partner - even if a real happy resolution for the both of them could possibly mean going their separate ways.

and what's interesting to me about this is that these things are happening with people who are capable of handling bills and jobs and careers... not all of these people are just point blank immature, as in childish or sophomoric. but when i look at the things they do and the reasoning behind their decisions, they just seem immature, as in unripe or naive.

i'm not immune. looking back i've done my share of holding on when i shouldn't have, poking my lips out and digging my heels in when i should have walked away... it's so much easier to see now that i'm removed from those situations. it's so much easier for me to see what's wrong because i'm not in those relationships. i used to explain it to my friends as the "happy cloud," which is short for "the happy cloud of sex." it doesn't even have to be good sex, either. pheromones start flying all over the place, and they attach like cataracts to your eyes and plug up your ears like seawater, so you don't see or hear the dumb things that are going on in the relationship, or you can't see yourself in the mirror, or hear the dumb things you say yourself. the happy cloud doesn't work alone. you don't think mrs. brown has the sole rights to being stubborn for the sake of not being wrong?

but at some point, shouldn't the cloud dissipate? it's like all these people are extremely masochistic, and they like walking around with these huge boulders on their backs. why stay in something that doesn't make you happy? why simultaneously give up on trying to make the thing work? even in my weakest moments, i've had breaking points where the isht i was going through was not worth me staying, and i resolved within myself to let go. i think i'm more developed now than i was then. i think that, from experience, and from being more comfortable and secure with myself than i've ever been, that i'm far less likely to make those old holding-on mistakes. i also think that simply knowing about the happy cloud changes its ability to affect me. and i'm thankful for the passage of time and the benefit of experiences, good and bad, that help me to see these things about myself and to tread carefully and more wisely through the waters of my own future. i just wish i could bottle this, and spray it all up in the relationships of my family and friends that need it most.