One thing which we all are going to experience is ‘relationships’. Relationships are not just of one kind. Different people form different kind of relationships in our life. But we are going to focus on romantic relationships for now. Not everyone gets to be in a romantic relationship. This is because it is just not right for some people and some people just aren’t lucky enough. What makes relationships tick? We are not going to be talking about that. We are going to be talking about why relationships are hard and what contributes to its difficulties!
Some people say that if you get to be with the right person, relationships shouldn’t feel hard. Let me tell you what that is, it is bullshit. Even being with the right person does not mean it is going to be easy. In fact, it is going to be harder because of the expectations we hold of the person we think are really right for us.
What’s The Difficult Part?
Let’s think for a second. What is the most difficult thing on this planet? Is it to earn a billion dollars? Many people have earned it. Is it to go talk to your crush? Definitely a big task but no. So skipping thousands of assumptions and saving ourselves some time – the most difficult thing on this planet is another ‘human being’. You read it!
We are the most difficult things to handle on this whole wide universe. It is because we are such dynamic and moody creatures that no one really knows what is going inside our mind all the time. Relationships are hard, and this is one of the reasons why. Humans make things harder.When we enter into a new relationship, we go wanting it to be easy. No one would want to engage their emotional energies into a relationship which will only dry them out. No, everyone wants their relationship to be convenient and easy for them to handle, where everything feels smooth. But at the same time, we also enter into these new relationships with our fair share of disappointments. With a past that hasn’t exactly been good to us.
Love and Work, Which is More Difficult?
As I said, we all have a past. When we look for entering into a new relationship, we think about how we would not want our new relationship to be like our former one. This is a pretty important thing to understand. When we think like this, we expect our partner not to behave in any way like our former partner. But the thing is, we can’t control others and when our partners start acting like our previous partners, things start going towards the wrong end.
If it needs to be answered, between love and work, which is more difficult, the simple answer is love. Relationships are hard because they carry the element of love in it. There is a scientific reason behind why love is hard. What I would say love is – it is a light crossing through the prism. It is different at every stage of every stage of our relationships. In fact, sometimes, relationships also have to deal with a complete loss of love. But that is a different topic and we will talk about it sometime else.
Why is Love Hard?
Just to think, if relationships are hard because love is hard, wouldn’t relationships become easy if love was easy? No. Because relationships don’t only work with love. The primary foundation of any relationship is ‘RESPECT’. Remember it folks, if they don’t respect you in the first place, they are sure as hell not going to love you.
So why love is so hard. The scientific reason behind it is because of the way our brain works. So let’s start understanding this by talking about the fancy neocortex that we have inside our brain. For those of you who don’t know, neocortex is the part of our brain which helps us in learning new things. Now neocortex is really smart and deliberate, but it is very slow and expensive to run. It takes a lot of energy for neocortex to function.
With the help of neocortex, we become really good at planning, organising and completing important tasks which require a lot of thinking. But we can’t run our neocortex every single second. Because it would burn us out. It requires a hell lot of energy to operate this part of our brain. So for remembering it in short, when you think of reasoning and logic, think of neocortex.
Now there is another part of your brain, which is subcortical part. This part of our brain helps us in automating the things we have learnt from the neocortex. It is what muscle memory is basically. When we are learning something new, think that your neocortex is running really hard to understand and remember it, and later all your learning is captured by the subcortical part of our brain which makes the functioning of it direct and automatic. You don’t have to think really hard how to ride a cycle after you have learned it once. This is the magic of subcortical areas of your brain. Now you might be wondering how does all of this add to why relationships are hard. Keep reading, you will find out.
What Happens To Your Brain When You Fall in Love?
Since we know now how our brain functions, let’s see how it affects the way we love others. So when you fall in love with a new person, you are excited. You want to know everything about them, you really listen with a keen interest. You want to touch them, smell them, taste them and make them your priority. There is just something in your mind that tells you that you can’t get enough of them. Basically, you are high on neurochemical drugs. You are high on dopamine for wanting more of the other person. For attaining focus and attention, you are high on noradrenaline and testosterone for feeling their body against yours (sex). So when you fall in love with someone, you are neurochemically addicted.
This is all in the initial stage of your relationship. You spend all your time with the other person; weeks and months pass and your relationship becomes really serious. This is when thinks take an interesting turn. We all know at the initial stages of relationship, it is very exciting and easy to manage. But when things get serious and some time has eloped, it becomes a little harder. The excitement is just not there.
What happens is, our neocortex starts transferring all of our partners actions into the automatic part of our brain which is the subcortical part. So your brain just automates most of the person in front of you, and your partners brain will do the same for you. You can’t stop this from happening, this is how our brain is supposed to work. This will make you feel like your relationship has become a lot easier. This is where you are likely to start making really big mistakes.
Your brain will think that they know the other person in front of you and so it will stop paying attention like it used to. You won’t be fully present with them. This will lead you to seeing your partners actions and feelings the way your procedural memory lets you see and if you don’t understand the automatic brain, it is going to cause you some serious problems.
Fighting is Inevitable
When you stop being fully present, a series of miscommunications take place. This inevitably leads to chaos and fighting in a relationship. You don’t want to be disrespected by someone who isn’t understanding you properly right? Well, to tell you something, there is a good chance that you are doing the same thing as well. But fighting ins’t a bad thing till the time it starts threatening you or your partner.
There can’t be a relationship without a conflict. In fact, if you don’t fight or avoid conflicts, you will either seem too ignorant about your relationship or really threatening to your partner. A relationship can survive thousands of brutal fights, what it cannot survive is the threat of it ending. The real problem arises when you fight with your partner and either you or them threatens to leave the relationship.
This will give birth to the feelings of loss and insecurity and it won’t be good for you or your partner. But just to clear a few things, I am not talking about threatening to leave an abusive relationship. If you are in an abusive relationship, please don’t stay. You must get out!
When we start fighting because of the subcortical part of our brain, the neocortex doesn’t have a single clue about how we seemed to have reached there. So you don’t really know what you are fighting about but you fight like you are the hottest shit in town. You say things like, ‘I am right, and here is something that proves my point.’
How To Reduce Fighting
The simple way to stop fighting is to be present. To listen carefully to what your partner is telling you even though when you feel like you already know and understand what they are saying. One thing that you can try doing the next time you fight is – directly looking at your partners face or eyes when you do it.
It will be surprising for you to notice that you don’t really want to be that angry at them. So you will naturally reduce your tone and relax your face a little. This is why you should never fight on phone calls or texts. It just makes the matters worse. Don’t fight when you are not looking at each other. One more thing which you can add to this is, when you look at your partners eyes or face, refrain from saying anything. Just keep staring. It will calm them down as well.
Humans are visual animals and we need to be able to see things in order for our nervous system to regulate itself to keep itself calm.
Conclusion
It takes serious work to be in a relationship. What you need to understand is, we can become threatening to people even whom we love a lot. This will happen to you regardless of how your personality is or how good natured or different you are. The thing you need to remember is, there are no angels or devils in a relationship. A relationship is one single entity.
Since our memory is really faulty, we are perfectly capable for making huge mistakes. So remember this, the decision to be in a committed relationship which is safe and secure means being in it together. It means to have your partners back even when you are angry with them. The world is a scary place and we need to feel loved and secure, and that’s what a relationship basically is. An entity that makes you feel loved and secure.
A lot of relationships end before they are supposed to because people don’t really understand how relationships actually work. The most important thing to know is that every relationship is going to be hard, it will have its ups and downs, and to expect that it should be always smooth is unrealistic. When you have accepted this, you give yourself and your partner to work on what you guys have built together. Relationships are hard, and it is not necessarily a bad thing. It is what it is. You have to decide whom do you want to share all these problems with. There are expectations, there are countless number of things you have to consider when you go into a relationship, and there is no guarantee that things will be smooth when you get into a relationship with the right person.
The only way to ensure that you have a long-lasting relationship is to be respectful towards your partner and also be present when they are communicating their feeling to you. All the best with your relationships!
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