Why Your Relationships Feel Like ‘Work’

There is an idea that you have been led to believe…

And it has silently ruined every relationship you have ever had.

The invisible diseases taints every conversation, meal, and experience. It taints every moment you spend with another person.

What is this silent killer? What is the name of this virus that has perpetually caused your relationships

To feel like ‘work,’

To be taxing on your body and soul,

Or to end in heartbreak?

The truth is that none of your relationships turned into failures. Things did not suddenly ‘change’ or go awry.

If you want to fly, would you drive a car off a cliff? A car that travels one hundred mile per hour off the edge of a cliff momentarily gives the illusion it’s flying.

And then reality kicks in. And the car plummets.

It crashes and burns.

Human relationships are much the same. One human gets to know another: They share conversations, laughs, and experiences. Before long, a bond starts to form.

The car looks like it’s flying. And then reality kicks in…

The relationships you have seriously invested in during your life — whether they be platonic or not — are a graveyard of failures. This is not because things ‘changed’ or your interests waned over the course of your relationship. Nor was it due to one major event that caused you to arrive at an impasse.

The real reason is much deeper.

The graveyard of your failed relationships exists because you tried to take flight using a car.

One may find discontent in any relationship: romantic partners, family members, close friends, or distant acquaintances. It doesn’t matter. The recipe that leads them to fail is always the same.

What is that recipe, you ask? To know the recipe, you must understand how a clock works.

You see, a clock functions through an intricate web of springs, gears, and cogs that are attached to one another.

Similarly, your relationships fail because an intricate web of beliefs and principles have set them up to do exactly that.

Fail

Chief amongst these beliefs is the idea that a relationship requires ‘work’ — that it requires:

The need for people to please, impress, and compromise with one another.

Ask yourself: What are you really doing when you do these things?

You are conceding to the idea that you in your current form are not enough.

Therefore, you must go out of your way to:

Impress your partner with X achievement, leave Y impression on their family member, or do Z number of things to prove that

I deserve to be with you — I am the right one for you. You should look to me as this amazing person you want to spend your life with.

Such a system will always fail because it functions on need and attachment. You need the other person to have a certain view of you. You are also attached to their company and the things they provide.

Only relationships that exist as a function of purity are exempt from failing. Exempt from feeling like ‘work.’ Exempt from being another cause of strain in your life.

Why should a relationship require ‘work?’

‘Working’ on a relationship is touted as some noble activity — but what does it really mean?

Trying to manage your work schedules so you can have dinner together and pick the kids up from school is one thing.

But your views on how much you should work and whether you should have kids is another thing.

One is about logistics, the other relates to a view that stems from some fundamental aspect of who you are.

Trying to impress or change each other is a road to failure. It is a move made in a desperation for those of us who cannot be content by ourselves, and, therefore, require something from an external source.

And when the external source doesn’t give you want, you frantically try to ‘work’ on things to keep them in your life.

A relationship of perfect harmony is one where each person needs nothing from the other.

And, therefore, they have no need contort themselves into becoming something they are not.

Humans play the game of compromise and try to ‘work’ on each other.

And the price paid is a most dear one.

But people also don’t like to seem alone. They crave intimacy.

They often opt for the pain that comes with a relationship over the pain of loneliness.

Thus, to find a relationship of wholehearted acceptance is to connect two flour-leaf clovers together.

That which you seek may never be found in another person.

If you not have found it within yourself, you will only harm yourself further by trying to find it from another.