Arts & Entertainment Facts and Tips

Being in a love relationship

Being in a relationship isn’t just about getting married and having kids. It’s about love and companionship. However when you were growing up thats probably as good an explanation you got for men and women being together. The old birds and the bees story. Of course as we mature, we soon realise that is not the case but we are still none the wiser in the ups and downs that being in a relationship can bring. You will have so many questions, is he the one? Is this just physical or is this love? None of the more popular sources that people seek advice from seem to help either. With the abundance of happily ever after romantic movies and music videos. Over the next few paragraphs I will disect two very common views about finding the right person for a relationship. I have chosen two entirely different tradtions but both show the importance of not following any rigid structure about how to make your relationship work.

The Soul-Mate Relationship

The idea of the soul-mate originates in no one single tradition. It was present even in ancient Greece, when Aristotle once said ‘Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies’. In Christian traditions, this concept of soul-mate was another way to express the bonds of ‘eternal spiritual love’ which were part of the marriage ideal. This concept has also been developed within the modern new age tradition, which marries a belief in re-incarnation and karma with the idea of a twin soul. The principal idea behind the soul mate concept is that two souls reuniting is the highest form of relationship one can aspire to. The search for our perfect partner is in fact the search to return to ourselves more deeply. Cons - In some cases, the idea of the soul mate ideal can be very dis-empowering when people realize that no relationship lasts forever. Pros - The idea that finding our partner helps us to better understand ourselves is a very positive one. The real insight of soul mate relationship is to understand that all that we need is contained within ourselves. Finding a soul mate is really just sometimes like finding a mirror to find out who we really are.

The Arranged Marriage Relationship

Another popular tradition, especially in Asian culture is the idea of arranged marriages. Here, unlike what some people think, all parties involved have given their consent. This is often confused with forced marriage. The idea is that you will grow to love one another over an extended period of time together, rather than datng and falling for someone. There are of course some drawbacks here too, especially since sometimes parents motives for choosing their childs partners are not entirely in their childs best interests and more like family politics. There are also some advantages. Communication between family members regarding the marriage can often lead to a great deal of understanding of how relationships can work and also the whole notion of love growing in the relationship eliminates any chance of disappointment at a lack of romantacism.

What can we learn out of these relationships?

So if you are not even more unsure after reading this then I hope you can see we have a lot to learn from these two examples. It is a very common perception today that love is purely about romantic gestures and what we have seen from films is how love really is. It is, in actual fact far from the only way, as these two examples show and it is very important that we realise this and not set ourselves up for disappointment if we don’t get it.