what is relationship work?

[AvocadoLime]

I know relationships take work; everybody says so. What does this work look like in a healthy relationship vs. in an unhealthy relationship? How does this work differ between a romantic relationship, a friendship, and a parenting relationship?

[Heather]

I'm not sure the "work" of interpersonal relationships differs by "kind" of relationship, so much as it differing from relationship to relationship, of any and every kind.

This is a good question, but also a pretty big one.

But if I had to shorthand this one, I'd say that by "work" what's really meant is "attention and effort." Attention and effort used for everything from simply spending time getting to know and understand each other better, supporting one another and building the relationship by becoming close and staying close, as well as things like unpacking, processing and resolving conflict together, co-building our lives, goals and dreams (which includes making and leaving room for the parts of our lives that aren't about each other or don't much intersect), and just being present and really on-board, in an active way, as a real team or a partnership.

How's that for a start of something pretty big?

[Mo]

You know, while I agree that *any* relationship can "take work" to be really healthy and successful for everyone involved, I sometimes cringe at that wording, because sometimes that can be used to justify a lot of pain in an unhealthy relationship.

What that "work" looks like to me (in a healthy relationship) is doing something like painting a room together - maybe you have to compromise on the color, and neither of you are SUPER into painting near the ceiling up on a ladder, but you switch off and it's fun to hold a bunch of paint chips up to the walls while you're deciding on what color paint to buy. At the end of the day you're tired and the paint fumes have gotten pretty gross, but the room looks fantastic and it feels great to go eat some pizza in celebration. It's something that took shared effort and maybe some momentary frustration but ultimately it's making both your lives better and more colorful. That sort of work doesn't really feel like work at all; it's taking time to listen to a partner and take their needs & wants into account, and trusting that they will do the same for you.

What "work" sometimes is interpreted to mean is more like having to pick up a partner's dirty laundry after you've asked over and over for them to at least put it in the laundry basket if they aren't even going to bother to do any of the laundry. Somehow it's just one person doing all the work of keeping things going, instead of a collaborative effort, so one person feels overwhelmed by problems in the relationship and tamps their needs down further and further because they think "well, this takes work and compromise, sooo I guess I'll keep compromising and continue to pick up these dirty shirts since it won't get done otherwise!" In this sort of situation, one person might be willing to take their partner's feelings into account, but it's not something that goes both ways.

I'm not sure if my extended "household maintenance" metaphor works for you or not, but that's how I think about it.

[Heather]

(I love that, Mo!)

[AvocadoLime]

Thanks. I think that makes a lot of sense. Would you say that applies equally to people in 10 year marriages and people in their first relationships in high school?

[AvocadoLime]

Oops, sorry, Heather, I didn't see your reply. I'm not sure it answers my question I mean what you said makes sense, but how do you know if you're putting in effort in a healthy way or an unhealthy way. Or that it's not being returned. I'm asking partly for myself and partly for a friend, who I think is unhappy in her relationship, but she says that relationships change and part of being committed means settling and if you don't feel a connection, well, you're committed so... (She doesn't know I think she's unhappy, and she hasn't said that all about settling in so many words, but that is the jist of what she has said many many times.) She recently asked me what I think of her relationship and I'm trying to figure out how to answer her, but her question is also making me think about what I want. I feel like I have pretty hard boundaries around things, so if for example, a partner were to ask me to stop hanging out with a friend, unless that friend was treating my partner in a horrible way or something, the person I would be cutting out of my life would be my partner. I am gender fluid so while I would be ok with a partner calling themselves a lesbian, if they were to insist upon calling me their girlfriend, that is not ok and again, I would stop seeing them. The idea of somebody spending years in a relationship with me because they had 'committed and owed it to me and every relationship is going to stop meeting many of one's needs eventually' is terrifying. I mean, it would suck to hear that somebody I loved no longer wanted to be in a relationship with me. I imagine it would suck even more if I'd built a life with them for over a decade. But I think it would suck the most to realize that a quarter of that time had only been, because my partner was putting up with it. I wouldn't want somebody I loved, or even somebody I disliked, to stick around in a relationship with me because they felt obligated to. Are my expectations/ideas about relationships just unrealistic? Or are hers?

[moonlight]

AvocadoLime, your expectations sound very realistic and very health. Someone telling you not to see a friend= abusive. So cutting that person (the one telling you what to do) out of your life= healthy. A partner self identifying as a lesbian= something about them and them alone and thus something only they get to define. So respecting that= healthy (and totally cool).

But looking at what you've said about your friend's relationship, it doesn't seem great. I'm not sure I have enough information to classify it as unhealthy, but I would certainly call it unhappy. Do relationships change? Yes. Does being committed mean settling? Only if you want it to. I can't understand why someone would want to stay in a relationship if they didn't feel any connection at all. I suppose the sense of familliarity and an aversion to change could play into it. But ultimately, if you don't feel any connection with someone, be that connection sexual, emotional, spiritual, or simply because you like to read the morning paper together, I don't think maintaining a relationship makes any sense.

And, if your friend really is unhappy, then that sucks. Her unhappiness might be because of the relationship, or it might be a result of something else. But ultimately, barring when people are suffering from mental illnesses like depression, I believe we can choose to be happy. (And believe me I understand that depressed people can't just choose to be happy). Because happiness doesn't come from the external, sense world. Happiness comes from within. An example that I read somewhere I can't remember is that if someone is shouting at you, and it is making your feel bad, you can change the way you think so that you stop feeling bad. The person shouting is vibrating air particles, which are reaching your ear and you are interpreting as shouting. This is making you feel bad, but why? Well it's because you are attaching the "bad" judgement to it. But look at their lips quivering, the spit escaping from their mouth and their face turning red. It's actually kind of funny. It's also kind of funny that they think they can vibrate some air particles at you and cause you harm.

Now, someone shouting at you isn't okay and I am not condoning it. That is simply an example to illustrate the amazing power that you have to change how you feel by changing how you think. So, the point of that was that while your friend's relationship may be making her unhappy, ending it might not make her happy and there are ways to stay in it and be happy.

[Keda]

I get what you're saying at the end there, moonlight, and I agree to some extent, but not all the way. It's totally true that all the meaning we attach to stuff - to our interactions with other people, circumstances, events etc. - is all socially constructed; none of it has a basis in the "real" world, it's a result of our perceptions and interpretations. And yeah, you certainly can change the way you perceive and construct certain things: most people here have done rather a lot of that as part of becoming (better) feminists. But the fact that perceptions aren't real doesn't mean they don't have real power; language, after all, is all perception - what do you perceive that random bunch of sounds as meaning? - but you just try abandoning language or making your own - it doesn't work so well.

So yeah, sometimes changing the way you understand the world can be a really positive thing to do for your own wellbeing. But it's rarely easy, and I'd say that in many cases, where you're being made unhappy by the meaning you attach to something in your life - depending on the meaning and the thing in question - it's gonna be a better idea to change or remove that thing, than to go through the long, hard emotional work of changing your perceptions. Internalised sexism? Change the meaning for yourself. Poster on the wall that reminds you of something scary? Give the poster away.

So I think for the OP, it's her friend who's in the best position to decide what parts of her life are making her unhappy, and what the best way of dealing with those things is. But definitely, if she feels like there are a bunch of issues there, or some really big ones, which aren't essential parts of her life, then she'll probably have a better chance to move on and enjoy life, and be successful in whatever matters to her, if she changes or gets rid of the bad things, than if she attempts the work of reconstructing a huge ol' pile of bad stuff. After all - doing that reconstructing would be very much like what Mo was talking about: instead of talking to her partner and agreeing to what needs to be done by both of them to help her be happier, or agreeing that the relationship just isn't good for her any more, she'd end up doing all the "relationship work" while her partner just sort of chugs along doing nothing to help.

I know you weren't trying to suggest that that's what AvocadoLime's friend should do! I just wanted to point out that while the "change yourself, not the world" approach definitely has huge value, it does have to stop somewhere; and I think in a relationship, "change the (relationship) world" should be a pretty accessible and first-line option.

[Redskies]

Similarly to Mo, I often wish there was a lot less emphasis on "relationships take work".

I think people often do a different kind of not-good work. I don't think that people should have to work at convincing themself that they're happy, or that they want to be with their partner. If it takes work to make yourself happy to be around them or interested in their life whenever you spend time together, that's bad work. If you're not being yourself, your whole self, or who you want to become, because it wouldn't fit with who your partner is, that's bad work.

Sometimes it's necessary to do hard work: for example, managing a really tough life situation, or being really honest about how you feel or what you want, or being open enough to really hear something you don't want to hear but which a partner needs to tell you, or just to take the time and attention to keep each other in the loop about how you're each developing as people, with changing interests and needs, and figuring out how to adapt the relationship so it still feels good and rewarding to everyone in it.

I think relationships are a little like growing a plant: you put some time and effort in to care for your plant. You look at your plant and you really like having that plant, and the effort and time is so worth it - maybe you even enjoy some of the plant-care tasks, or maybe you don't, but you feel good about having done them because now you think your plant is fabulous. But what if you look at your plant and you don't like it all that much, or you wish it had big colourful flowers instead of green spikes? Or you look at your plant and all you feel is resentment of the time and effort you put in, when you actually really wanted or needed to be doing something else? Then, I'd likely think of that plant-care as "bad work", and suggest maybe it's not the kind of plant you want, or the kind of care that particular plant needs is just not for you, or maybe at this point in your life a plant and plant-care is just not a thing that fits.

Re. "commitment", I think the real question is "to what?" As a person who grew up in the midst of a profoundly unhappy marriage, I'll acknowledge a strong bias against "commit to being together in a relationship permanently, no matter what". Obviously, people - including your friend, AvocadoLime - get to choose that kind of commitment if they want, but I wish it wasn't the common model for commitment, with so many people thinking that is commitment. Personally, I feel similarly to AvocadoLime about the possibility of being with someone while they mostly felt they should or had to - Do Not Want, bordering on terrified. People are fallible, so it's not possible to completely rule out the possiblity that someone might do that, even if asked not to. The good news, though, is that it's perfectly possible to make commitments - including some big and significant commitments, if that's what the people involved want - to and with people which don't contain that expectation, and which explicitly include commitments to having everyone's life be as rewarding and happy as possible.

[Heather]

Oddly enough, Redskies, per your last analogy, my partner and I have a pair of African Violets we have had for years. He got them when I had said something about how the care and keeping of our relationship was sometimes like the care and keeping of African violets (I won't bore you with my plant geekery, if you're curious how they're kept y'all can Google).

And since we've had them, we have found that they really are similar in terms of the efforts they require from us -- and the attentiveness, and co-communication about them, etc. So similar, in fact, that if we find one or both of the plants is looking neglected, it usually happens at about the time we're neglecting something about doing our relationship actively, or about checking in in big ways.

So, they have turned into this kind of organic alarm system that reminds us when we need to do some of our "work," (again, prefer "effort" or "attention" but whatever) as well as when they need water, light or other kinds of fussing with.

[moonlight]

Keda, I love what you're saying up there in response to my response.

Heather and Redskies, I love the plant as an analogy/alarm clock for relationships. I've actually been ill lately and some of my house plants haven't been doing very well. This is a pretty neat coincidence! I think my house plants might be able to work like an alarm clock for my mental health!

[Redskies]

Heather, I love that you have real plants as a relationship symbol/alarm. How brilliant.

Very much agree about work and instead saying that relationships require regular-enough care, attention, effort and nurturing.

moonlight, I had a similar thing - some growing herbs died entirely from neglect, and I thought, wow, that's not my usual style, I am clearly doing unusually poorly.

[Heather]

I believe the brilliance should be credited to the plants.

(Who are clearly more generally brilliant about relationships than people are, look how well they manage their own!)

[Keda]

Just to throw a spanner in the works, the only plant that I've owned myself so far was a lovely yellow thing which did reasonably well with me, until I went to visit family and gave it to a neighbour to look after while I was away. It absolutely blossomed under her care, and when I got back it desperately needed repotting, but I couldn't afford a bigger pot, so it died.

I do hope someone will tell me if my totally off-topic asides start getting on anyone's nerves!