Hot Affair: How much work does a relationship need?

The Hot Affair Experiment.

A while back we started the Hot Affair experiment. About trying one relatively small task at a time, to get the thrill back. You can pick and choose as they come along, or you can try each one and see if you get where you’re looking to go. One rule: No Pressure! There are no shoulda, woulda, coulda’s in this experiment.

Just joining us and want to start at the beginning?

#1 Pampering Yourself

#2 Swallowing the Snark

#3 Rituals. Traditions.

I had this conversation on Twitter this morning. (For those of you unfamiliar with Twitter, it’s a Social Media outlet that operates much like a cocktail party where people are talking in 140 character sentences, or tweets). Sometimes on Twitter there are text-like abbreviations. For ease of reading, I have fixed these and filled in the blanks.

EC: The only relationship test you need–what is your baseline happiness level when you’re together? (Are you trying too hard to “make it work”)

SP (me): Relationships shouldn’t be hard work. If they are right, they just need time and friendship. If it’s work, it always will be.

CM: I wish I knew that 20 years ago. Totally agree. The work of a good relationship is different than a struggle.

SP: The “work” when it’s good, is really about making sure to spend time enough together, just being. We are all so busy, we can forget.

EC: YES. And it’s easy to talk yourself out of that when you want it to work so bad (for fear of being alone, insecurity, etc).

SP: Yes. Unfortunately, just wishing never makes it work. And sometimes physical chemistry is mistaken for liking them.

EC: Like, am I happy when you come home? Yes? Awesome. No? Then that’s never really going to change, with “work” or not.

SP: For some people, “happy” is good enough. For me, life is too short to accept just “happy.”  Must be AWESOME!

EC: And it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, if you don’t believe it can be awesome you settle, and if you settle it will never be awesome.

Most of us believe that oft-repeated line, great relationships take a lot of work, but I don’t agree.

I think great relationships are easy.

They are founded on a genuine friendship, a real liking, with a healthy dose of physical chemistry thrown in.  Being in a great relationship doesn’t require ‘work’ as much as it requires time and openness.

Time means REAL time, just hanging out, going grocery shopping, making dinner, walking, even working or reading alongside one another.

Openness is just that. The willingness to open up, be real, tell the truth and allow someone to really know you.

Mixed with a strong lusty chemical attraction, a relationship will just BE great. These things aren’t work, per se, they are a way of relating.

For many of us though, it’s not as easy as that.

We confuse physical desire with liking the person, or we try to force the desire when there is no chemistry. Most of the time the warning signs are there from the very beginning.

You know you are thinking too hard, working too hard, but the desire for a relationship overrides good sense. Often, all sorts of things that are just slightly out of whack but easily dismissible at first because the sex at the beginning can be so HOT. We stay involved so we are not alone, and find that we are even more lonely than if we had stayed single in the first place.

And then there are those, like me, who never believed that relationships really could be awesome, that love was a fairytale that we were supposed to buy into. That the best everyone did was to find someone that seemed all right, that you could get along with. Not really friends, or partners, just lovers.

The problem with this is that it works. For awhile. Often for a long while. Long enough to make babies or buy a house. Get deeply intertwined. And then it can just stop working.

Most often because we recognize how much focused attention it takes daily to keep it humming along, and we just don’t have the energy for it anymore. And leaving is difficult. Some of us never do. And those of us who decide we simply can’t live that way anymore, have a lot of ‘difficult’ on the way to being single again.

This is why people say relationships take work, because if they’re not right from the beginning, they never just flow. These relationships need coddling, intervention, coaching and prodding. Just to stay at the livable level.

For me, I finally came to the realization that working that hard to be that unhappy and unsatisfied, simply was not worth my energy. At 40, life was too short to stay, so I left. I was committed to being alone forever rather than be part of a relationship that was such a compromise.

Being free was so exciting and heady. I was so happy. I dated and dated and went home to my bed and my kids and had fun.

I ended up being really lucky. I went on a date with a man who ended up being my best friend. Truly, my best friend. I had never experienced that before, man as best friend. And the sex was great too.

We’ve been together for almost 8 years, and it’s never ‘hard’ work. It’s not that we don’t argue, cause we do, occasionally. We’ve even had real fights and gone to bed mad, and disagreed about the kids and money and vitamins. I’ll admit, I’ve even slept on the couch a night or two.

But it’s not work to keep our relationship happy. Because things between us just flow easily and have since that first date when I broke my eyeglasses in two and decided to laugh instead of rant. But I do know, if I hadn’t been lucky enough to meet my Ranch Boy, I would be happy not partnered. Not that I wouldn’t have dated, and had sex. But life is too short to settle.

If this post hit the spot, take a look at these:

• Small and Big, Sex Toy Parties rock!
• Vulnerability and Orgasms
• Introducing Sex Toys to your Relationship