Humans are social creatures. I am sure you have heard this statement many times in different forms and shapes. It is so obvious; we crave to be socially accepted, we dream about friends, a perfect relationship, about belonging to a popular group.
And one day we find this perfect relationship, the perfect person we want to spend the rest of our life with, and… we start isolating, closing up in the four walls and two peoples’ world.
Well, that’s what the last bachelor’s night and the bachelorette party are about. We say bye to our pre-relationship life, our pre-marriage friends, pre-marriage world. We want to be the one and only forever to our partner; we want them to be the one and only to us.
It usually doesn’t take long before we get disappointed, sometimes even bored. It turns out that our perfect partner is not always happy or willing to go shopping with us; even if he does, it’s not as much fun as shopping with girlfriends. It happens that even the best night out with the loved one is quite different from grabbing a beer and talking to buddies. Not worse or better; just different.
And we secretly miss those crazy shopping escapades, those funny, worry-free beer talks, fishing trips, girls’ nights out. We start thinking, that maybe our perfect partner it’s not so perfect after all. We start imaging how perfect would our life be without the perfect partner, full of freedom, spontaneous ventures, fun, and laughter.
Why do we think that we can have only one kind of life or the other? Why do we think that we cannot have two of the worlds that are important and dear to us?
I recently spoke to a young and smart woman, who said: “it is completely understandable that parents can have many kids and love them all. It is absolutely normal that we love both of our parents. Why it is not OK to have a few people in your adult life, a few people that you love equally but differently?”
Good question. Why cannot we have a perfect intimate partner, and a perfect girlfriend we spend time and share a big part of our life with or a trustworthy male friend we love and cherish just as much as the intimate partner. Why cannot we share different parts of our lives with different people?
Isn’t it crazy to expect one person to be everything to us: a lover, a parent to our children, a fun companion, a fishing buddy, an intellectual discussion group member, a friend, a confidant, a financial supporter, a fashion expert, a handyman, a cook, a housekeeper, an opera lover, you name it?
No wonder we often get overwhelmed, disillusioned, simply tired of trying to be everything and everywhere. I remember quite well being a child and doing different things with different people. I had playmates, and cousins, and parents, and siblings, the neighbours’ kids, and the school girlfriends. They all took a big part of my life; they all had different roles. It was normal and OK.
Somehow it’s not OK anymore to have many different and equally important people in life when we get into a serious intimate relationship. We often play a game of “if you loved me enough you would have preferred spending all your time with me rather that with your buddies or girlfriends”. We want to feel the most important, the most desirable.
It doesn’t work, however. Nobody can be everything. It’s way too much to expect from one person; way too much to expect from ourselves. Let it go. Let your perfect partner have a great weekend away with his buddies. Allow yourself to spend time with your friends and have fun; a different fun from that with your loved one, but still fun. A silly, relaxing, invigorating fun. You may like your partner better when they come back. You might even like yourself better after spending time with someone else. Humans are social creatures after all. Aren’t they?
By Eva Sadowski
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