RELATIONSHIPS (for the girls out there, and for men too)

I was commenting on Kayni's latest blog entry but I kept going on and on that nagbainak so I cut and pasted it here. You might wanna read Kayni's entry to get a background.

I remember my grandma's comment regarding the inability of celebrities to stay happy in a relationship (or to stay faithful in a marriage relationship), unlike their generation before. She said maybe it's because of the things we eat nowadays. Hehe!

I am a believer of the religion :) "Love is a choice." I believe that Cinderella could also have been happy with the chimney sweep (borrowed from the movie EverAfter:). I heard people say, choose the one you think is best and make the best of it. Sounds simple enough. But that's in principle. Of course, it gets complicated in real life. Personally, I (and I'm sure many others) chose the person my heart and mind told me to choose, married him (rather had him marry me, lolz), and promised that everyday, I will make an active choice to love him and make him happy no matter the circumstances. With this, I am also making myself happy. It's not always easy, but it's the price to pay for a relationship to work. If both are working towards that goal, I think, we can be happy with anybody. But the 'what ifs' and 'maybes' have to be blotted out from the picture. (No "what if I married Henry and not Richard, maybe I would have been happier, and those kinds of illusions.) It's not other people that make us happy per se anyway, rather it is us who makes the choice to be happy or unhappy in a relationship or in anything for that matter. In the end, the prize for the sacrifices is greater than the price we paid.

Of course, people have different circumstances but it is a given that when we get together with someone, we have pre-conceived ideas in our heads that we think our partners ought to be. When we are inlove, we convince ourselves that our partners are like that.... that they are everything we expect them to be. But when we live together for a few months or even a few weeks, we find out that most of it is just an idea that we have. The reality is that the person in our head is so different from that person in our bed. Usually, when a relationship falls apart, the people involved will find out that they actually loved an idea in their head. So we look for this idea somewhere else and then sometimes we'd convince ourselves again that we have found him/her. But then again, something will happen and we'll wake up from this other dream... and it just goes on and on.

In my marriage, I learned that Love is a choice I have to make everyday. For myself, I resolved to love my husband and not look at what he is not but to learn more about who he is and choose to be happy with what we have together... because he is probably doing the same thing for me. We need to discover more things about our partners, learn and participate in their interests, e.g. watch PBA with them (but you don't need to root for the same team) even if you so want to watch your soap opera, or The Buzz, or Sharon, or Deal or No Deal. I know people say 'I want to find someone who will accept me and love me as I am." Good! Do the same. Be someone like that. Accept and love your love as he is. And then tell him you love him every chance you get. (Kahit pawis na pawis galing sa paglalaro ng basketball!) I know it sounds a bit naive, even corny to some. I just believe that if couples do this, it will heal the simple discontent in most marriages.

As I was saying, it is much easier for us to notice the little negative things than to see the good things in one's partner especially when you set your heart on seeing this person you have in your head. But we always have a choice. You have to choose to accept and love him everyday. CHOOSING TO LOVE is the name of the game when it comes to successful relationships. Relationship ends when a couple stop making a choice for the relationship. After all, true love is a thing of the disciplined mind, not a feeling of the most-of-the-time undecided and two timing heart.