The ‘perfect relationship’ has long been the elusive dream that everyone’s looking to turn into reality. When it starts to look more like a race against time and as though the gods aren’t looking out for you, your hopes of finding a ‘perfect relationship’ may just take a hit. It’s no surprise that no relationship is perfect. Although when you’re in one, it can seem like there’s nothing more perfect than what your infatuation is making you see. Let’s talk a bit more about what the perfect relationship feels like, if it exists, and just what a good relationship truly is.
What Entails A “Perfect Relationship”?
To love is, first of all, to subtract a person from the human community, to depopulate the world, and to ignore everything that is not beloved. The chosen one has to prove every day that the lover was right to put him on the pedestal and disdain other potential suitors. Think of how you behave/stay/work around your mother or other everyday members or close friends in the comfort of your house or in that zone of familiarity. You are you, the pleasant with the unpleasant, the sweet with the sour, the charming with the annoying, et all. You are a package, a realistic one as are the others. Now, imagine the dinner you have been dying to get an invitation to. The one that your crush will be at. And you do. Suddenly the ‘I-don’t-care’ attitude is replaced with fixing everything that seems less than perfect. You change a dozen times, work on your hair, your skin, even your attitude. You polish and you refine, you control and you restrain, you rehearse dialogues in your head, even brush up on information data bank to be more informed, and you put your best foot forward as you enter that party. Your crush does that too! Cupid strikes and the two of you hit it off.
When “perfect relationship” becomes a reality
There is the two of you putting your best face forward and then there is Cupid, making you see nothing else but the best in the other. And the stages of love that Stendhal talks about begins; from admiration of the ‘other’, you go to hope (what would it be like have the beloved in my arms) and then to love as the beloved returns the feelings of passion. For, what is more charming than to enjoy the pleasures of love, of seeing, sharing, touching, and to be loved in return. You credit a thousand perfections to your beloved as he/she does to you. What about the package, the other side, the imperfect one? The not so pleasant, the annoying or the opposing, the mismatched part? They don’t exist or are not noticeable or fade into irrelevance! And in their defense, we can say that they believe in this perfection with all their strength. She is not delusional when she tells him he is the most desirable, sensual man on the planet, even if all her friends think he is quite dull. He is not lying when he tells her she is brilliant and beautiful, even if no one else agrees.
Does Love Need To Be Perfect All The Time?
And so you put him on a pedestal and he puts you on a pedestal. Neither is allowed to climb down! Any attempt to climb down is seen as a betrayal. ‘You have changed’, is something we have often accused our beloved with, or have been charged with by them. When the intensity of love wanes, we stop idealizing and begin to see things we don’t like in our lovers. It’s not so much that we don’t like who they really are, it’s just that it had seemed, in love’s illusion, that they were everything we really liked. And so while we fight about sex, housekeeping, money, how many drinks per party or how many stag nights a month, we are actually negotiating the nitty-gritty of living together with the ‘real’ person that we actually meet every single day once the crystallization wears off. Poet D.H. Laurence says, “We’ve made a great mess of love since we made an ideal of it.” Ideals act as a barrier to instinct, passion, and an appreciation of human nature as it is.
Love is not perfect
The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 13 “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” While relationships aren’t perfect, perhaps the closest we can hope to get to a perfect love is one that always perseveres. We love as much as human beings can love, that is, imperfectly. Love is imperfect and thus it is endlessly deformable. Flexibility allows a relationship to survive through changing needs and desires. Loving has two phases, loving the person because of who he/she is and loving the person despite who he/she is not.” We have been sold this idea of ‘perfect eternal love’. And if it is less than perfect then we must fix it. And to fix it there is a billion-dollar industry! From cards to lingerie to diamonds to vacations, to perfumes, to…well, the list goes on.
