In Sickness, and in Health.

As I sit in my chilly Auckland apartment, under two hoodies, full of the bot with only a blanket & cushion to cuddle, I’d like to reflect on the challenges and politics of love in the “teens”. Many who know me assume I am a total cynic when it comes to matters of the heart, and some would even say I am destined to be a cranky old spinster likely to father illegitimate children spawned of blurry, unmemorable drunken escapades. Personally I'm sure that I am a hopeless romantic - with raw experiences of emotional destruction and heartbreak fuelling a genuine desire to find that illusive ‘one’ that the overwhelming majority of us can only imagine. No doubt the truth is nestled neatly 'twixt the two.

But I digress.

My standard status as 'the single guy' for the huge majority of my adult life often affords me the opportunity to discuss matters of the heart. Probably more than I would previously have been comfortable with as a younger man, it must be said. I have had many conversations on the subject, ranging from insipid to colourful and insightful. A couple of years back I came to the conclusion that the nature of modern relationship politics is vastly different to what people are really willing to admit. 

We now live in an era of short attention spans, high consumption, and with very little thought to genuine privacy – at least the way the older generations would think. I really believe a change in mindset needs to be adopted by 'our' generation, and we need to stop putting the same pressures on ourselves that, perhaps, our parents (and certainly our grandparents) would have. That the standards of relationship success are so vastly different to what they used to be, but no one seems to address or admit it. Consider the amount of relationships people enter into these days (not just marriages), and then consider the subsequent failure rate of those relationships. Logic tells us the overall failure rate of what people deem to be relationships would be comfortably over 90%. Yet we enter into new relationships with doe eyes and renewed hope that this next person will love and understand us better than the last, and maybe somehow we will meet that fairytale ‘soul mate’. Statistically, of course, that hope is little more than naive idiocy. Granted, there are exceptions, and I suppose it is these exceptions that give people genuine hope.

To me, the reasons why so many more relationships fail than previous generations are obvious. As individuals our lives are so much different for a start, but our own expectations of ourselves and others have also changed. As individuals... our sphere of influence is much, much larger than it used to be. Even before the Internet became engrained in our collective psyche and the can opener that is Facebook took to our previously private can of life worms, we lead lives of bigger workplaces, increased communication, urbanisation and travel. We just know so many more people than we used to. Large work places, cheap travel, free communication, huge universities and now of course social networks mean that we are now interacting with more people (and thus potential partners) than ever before. It is, of course, natural to compare all of these potentials against one another and want the best for yourself – but like modern music, when you are spoilt for choice, too much of it becomes disposable... Disposability and short attention spans often mean ‘relationships’ don’t even make it to the first hurdle, let alone over it.

This same factor, unfortunately, influences longer term relationships too. If you’re loving and committed enough to make it to 5 years these days, you will have likely overcome some pretty big challenges and temptation. The idea that there is only ‘one’ person out there for us amongst (nearly) 7 billion people is pretty outrageous considering you could feasibly meet, or at least interact with 30,000 people over the course of your (approaching) 100 years of life seems, well, quaint?

We’ve all seen the divorce statistics – your marriage is more likely to fail than it is to succeed. Of that, there can be no doubt. And those are the people that even take that leap of faith to GET married – the ones SO in love that they’re (momentarily) willing to commit their whole lives and very being to another person. Many are just too apathetic to even bother, and who can blame them? In Canada this week Statistics Canada took their last ever record of marriage and divorce rates. Marriage is becoming less relevant because relationships are increasingly disposable, and people are all too aware that there could, for whatever reason, be a drastic change of heart and marriage/divorce is a mistake that they would rather avoid.

Many people will read this and assume that the view is a bleak one. That we’ve lost traditional values of love, and have lost the depth of emotion and commitment really required to be successful lovers, and thus valuable human beings. Personally, I actually see this as a good thing. We are more open and socially liberated than ever before – sure, our values have shifted, but I think it is for the better. Too often would we see in the past, people picking at the dead carcass of their love, hoping to salvage some scrap of meat from the unrecognisable skeletal remains of what was once a blubbery, fat relationship. Now I believe our new outlook and expectations allow us to have a much broader range of experiences of love. We may endure more heart ache, but we may indeed experience more love than what we previously could have.

To see a (relatively) young couple reach ten years of a relationship is basically unheard of. I think this should change what we perceive as a successful relationship. We shouldn’t be placing so much pressure on ourselves to find someone who’ll be stupid enough to love us, no matter what we do, for the rest of our lives. We change careers, we make new friends, we emigrate to different parts of the world, we have a myriad of life changing experiences – we should be mature enough to realise that old values of religious marriage should not be the end goal. We should be looking for rich experiences with amazing people who teach us new things about ourselves and make us happy. If that happens to be for 15 minutes, 15 weeks or 15 years, each are equally valid.

We have an entire generation of children brought up in broken homes (myself included), and I do not believe it has an inherently negative effect on kids. As long as people can be mature and do the right thing by their children, they will raise well balanced kids with which they have fulfilling relationships. It’s only the bitter and twisted parents that use their children as leverage in the bitter attrition of post marital war. You are more likely to feel richly rewarded and content as a parent than you are as a spouse. As Larry David put it “The best situation is being a single parent. The best part about is that you get time off, too, because the kids are with their mom, so it's the best of both worlds. There's a lot to be said for it. You get married, you have kids – you should plan this from the beginning. We're going to have these kids, then we'll get divorced when they're four. All right, six."

Don’t get me wrong – we should still look for love. Even I share that naive belief that maybe one day someone will walk into my life and be willing to put up with all of my bullshit (and I theirs) for the rest of their life. But I think our focus should be on happiness – if a relationship comes to a natural conclusion we should be ok with the fact that it has ended – I don’t care if you’re 16 or 60, we live in a world where you can always find happiness if you want to find it.

Fear not, lonely hearts club, your next one night stand, fling, 3-monther or meaningful relationship is just around the corner. Embrace it tightly, pash it on the mouth, but make sure you understand it’s ok to let it go when the time is right.