All you need

 I often will spend time contemplating relationships. How they fit? What makes one successful and the other not? Yet, it seems I am left with a successful relationship that leaves me stumped. My own.Now as you are reading this, I ask that you try to consider the things I have to say as a neutral observer. Believe me or not, I’ve done my best to consider things as neutrally as possible.

A good way of understanding the differences between my wife and I is understanding languages. Language has flow and it has structure. Understanding flow is difficult because it is something you have to feel. Structure is different. Structure involves rules. Structure is logical and is required to convey meaning. One can bring about structure from flow and the opposite is true as well, but both are required. My wife is flow and I am structure. The other part of that is we have both always held onto the belief that flow people or structure people carry with them some profound flaw. Neither of us believes that rationally, but emotionally that is certainly the case. I desire to be understood and she desires to have someone match her energies and we are often frustrated.

So, if on the most fundamental basis of our personalities differ, how are we still together? Not just that, but also how are we still happy? We love each other. That's cliche, but let me explain. I think the reality of love is that love suffers. It is great suffering to look deep on yourself and realise there are parts of you that need to change. Love confronts you with a person who is different than you in some of the most hideous ways. Then, through the crucible of human connection, you come out on the other side something different. The difference we feel now is distinctive because of the people we were going into our relationship

She comes from a world where asking questions is anathema to life itself. I had to bring about question after question with someone who hates questions. I scrutinised everything. Not with the intention to make her feel judged, just in an attempt to help us survive. She had to get past the sense of judgement she felt when I questioned her. She had to trust that asking questions didn't mean she was unworthy or that she was unsafe. She had to listen to me and to structure. When she figured out that structure, the gas sputtered out of our arguments when, after explaining myself she would say, "I can understand why you feel that way and I'm sorry." 

My problems were different. I came from a world where my feelings where anathema to life itself. I came from a belief that my feelings were a constant thing I had to hold back and that everything needed a veneer of intellectualism to validate it. She had to make me believe that my feelings were safe. When I realised I could be unhappy, angry and sometimes even savage I was more often happy, joyous and encouraging. When I knew the judgement of my character had already been made and the state of feeling wouldn't change that, I could really give her "me." "Me" in the most honest and brutal fashion. We could find flow together and it so very easy to be with her. 

I remember one of my favourite movies where a guy is asked to describe "the girl of his dreams." After listing some aspects where his girlfriend falls short, he summarises with, "Shes better than the girl of my dreams-she's real." Would I have chosen someone who knew structure? Would she have chosen someone with better flow? Well we didn't did we and I know I speak for both of us when I say that the reality of what we ended up with is exceedingly better than what we fantasied in our youth. 

What then is the conclusion? What makes us work? Patience, a deep river of emotion, humour, forgiveness and shared values. That is what I am going to tell my kids. If I have taken the right lessons, that is evidently all you need.