Sometimes love just ain't enough

Cheesy song title?  Yes.  True statement?  Also yes.  Making a relationship work takes so much more than love.  I feel like we don't get any preparation for how hard relationships are.  And when you consider that most of our parents don't have a good marriage to begin with, how are we supposed to know how to make a good relationship happen?

Love is an absolutely necessary part of a healthy relationship, but love alone won't get the job done.  It takes a lot of work, and a lot of communication to have a successful relationship, and you have to both be willing to make the effort, or it will fail.

All relationships have problems.  So what do you do when you have a breakdown in communication, or when you're upset about something?  First, you need to both be willing to talk about it.  Second, you need to both be willing to make an effort to improve it.  If either one of you isn't willing to do both of these things, then the little problems will end up becoming big problems

Romantic movies give us the idea that as long as two people love each other, then everything else will work.  They never show us all of the work, the fights, the miscommunication, the sacrifice and compromise that a good relationship takes.  Don't underestimate the importance of love, but don't lose sight of how much effort it takes.

Happily Ever After

Has Happily Ever After ruined us for real relationships?  I was driving Mariah home from swim practice tonight and she filled me in on what she's been learning in Film Critique.  Specifically, the foreign films they watched didn't have happy endings, but the Hollywood films did.

I talked to her about how we are brainwashed by movies, starting with Disney and their Princesses up to every Romantic Comedy made today, end just as the couple gets together.  Cue the sunset, start the music, roll the credits, everything is perfectly wonderful forever and ever.  Except that by glossing over all of the actual work that goes into having a successful relationship, we set unrealistic for ourselves in our relationships.

I'm not proposing that Hollywood turn all dark and brooding and make depressing films of couples fighting, but this means that it opens up an area for me to help my kids.  I feel that one of my jobs as a dad is to help my girls be ready to have healthy relationships, and this means preparing them for the good and the bad.  Let's face it, having a good relationship, whether its dating or marriage, requires a lot; communication, compromise, and work from both people.  But for some reason it seems like no one tells us this, so when our relationships get serious and start getting difficult, they end up falling apart.

What's to be done?  Set realistic expectations.  Realize that relationships are hard work.  Be ready to put in the work, and make sure the partner you pick is willing to do the work too.  And feel free to enjoy the romantic comedies, because they're still awesome.