This week I want to address the issue of relationships, and especially the ones people consider most profound; our loving relationships. I watched a video lately about how millennials are the generation that do not want relationships. It made some astute points, however, I felt in many ways it missed a significant fact about the generation labeled as millennials. They, or I suppose I could say we, have grown up in a digital age. The world now is the smallest It has ever been. I wrote this sat on the Welsh border, but you could be reading this anywhere in the world so long as you are connected to the internet. A result of this is that they have never experienced a world where connections to others are not facilitated through mobile devices and social media. Our shared objective reality is increasingly concrete when it comes to relationships. People increasingly record their lives through photos and videos taken on their phones. Many shares these experiences through social media such as Facebook and Twitter. Conversations held in the form of text are not subject to debate about their content. These things are only subject to debate about their meaning. However, we are increasingly subject to finding ourselves trapped in echo chambers because of this. This concrete information is harder to dismiss, or rationalize into something palatable, and thus politics and other heated discussions become more divisive. As such, we increasingly retreat from problematic topics, and resolving them, instead choosing to ignore them. This is not aided by algorithms and other mechanisms which emphasize showing us what we are interested in, and likely to have a positive reaction to, then what might in fact be useful to us.
However, where do relationships come into this? Simply put, millennials are not the generation that do not want relationships, they just have different expectations of relationships. Expectations torn between the emerging social norms of our 21st century digital singularity, and traditional expectations of relationships inherited from our parents and grandparents who come from an increasingly alien world.
We have a generation to whom marriage is not necessarily considered commitment, but rather a socially acceptable form of indenturing. Where a memetic legacy can often seem more important than a genetic legacy. Where the meaning of what we do is as important as the rewards of what we do. However, regarding relationships, one thing remains true; love is only a feeling, and one that can be fleeting.
Yet, how do relationships survive, if the above is true. Love is also a series of choices, and love survives because we continue to make the choice to keep the feelings alive each time the question is asked. Love ends when we stop making that choice, because we have different priorities, or because the object of our affection has made that choice impossible to keep making. This is true of our romantic relationships, our friendships, and even our familiar relationships. The married couple that divorce, the friends that drift apart, and the child that ceases to love their parents. All these outcomes are due to one party or both finally making the decision that “love” is not worth it. Now, this can be for any number of reasons, but the key thing is to remember that people do not simply stop loving one another. They must be forced away, or they must make the choice to stop. This does not change from generation to generation and has not changed due to changes in society or the world. However, the nature, and expectations of relationships continue to evolve and change.
The next question is the more complex one; how do we continue to make the choice of love? A few of things are important to remember. All people have flaws, quirks, habits, and rituals. It is important to learn to accept the small things our partner may do that do not align with our own way of doing things. Yet, it is important not to let the small, every day things slide; it is the small things that set the big things up to fail. If our partner forgets to complete one of their chores, we can choose to talk about it with them, or we also can accept that this just might have forgotten or been under pressure to do something else. In those times it can be best to forgive and forget. Trying to change our partner into us is one of the mistakes we can make, and consistently expecting them to be robotically efficient in meeting our demands day in day out is also unrealistic. However, letting bad habits form is another. If you sort the small things out, then the big things will be easily dealt with.
This brings us onto the next issue many of us suffer from. When we are unhappy with a situation, and especially in our relationships, we can tend to focus solely on the problem presented rather than the causes, and we can focus on what the relationship costs us rather than what it gives us. Sometimes, we must recognise that “problems” are the symptoms of the actual problem. Fighting and arguments might in fact be reflective of the fact you do not take care of the house, and that this is disrespectful and takes away from time you can be investing in the relationship. We can also tend to undervalue small acts of intimacy in favour of huge gestures when we are struggling in our relationships. It is all very well going on a romantic get away, but did you consider that perhaps helping to carry to shopping or maybe just getting some essential jobs done together could be what your relationship needs? Supporting one another is more than just words; it is the small things, and big gestures, together that give authentic support.
We can also lose sight of the reason we first fall in love with people, and we can also fail to accept that people change. All relationships have their trying times, and in such times, it is important to remember why we originally came to love someone. However, sometimes these trying times are brought on by one half of the party wishing to make changes in their lives, or people just naturally changing over time. Learning to accept change as part of a relationship is as important as remembering the good times.
Also, we must not let how the digital world is shaping itself to be how we shape our own world. Relationships do not allow us to run away from problems, nor escape to echo chambers. We cannot always surround ourselves with people who agree with us 100% of the time, nor can we communicate fully with others in short, sound bites, as we can be tempted to do in the digital world. Relationships demand you have the robustness to deal with disagreements, and communicate effectively. The digital world can teach us very bad habits about dealing with others, and it is important to be mindful of these bad habits in this changing world reliant on these digital interactions.
Ultimately, love is all about choices. The above advice is about keeping love alive, but on the inverse, it can set out reasons to fall out of love. Trying to change one another, not getting the small things sorted out, failing to be supporting, and failing to accept change are all, frankly, good reasons to make the choice to move on. To not love someone anymore. As important as love is, it is important not to be a martyr to love. The nature of relationships change, and how we interact with one another changes, and the expectations we have of each other change. However, what does not change is that Love is a choice, and that it is kept alive through effort and not luck or magic.
We might live in a digital age, and our lives might be changing more rapidly now then they have in the past. We might also live in a trepidations age where the future feels uncertain, but life does go on. However, we cannot bury our heads in the sand, and in terror at these changes proclaim our selves entering a dark age. To argue that human beings are no longer social animals which desire intimate relationships because the nature of how humans interact has changed, is short-sighted and fatalistic. Change is terrifying, but it happens, and it is happening all the time. However, the more things change the more they stay the same. This includes love and relationships.