I had a very insightful conversation with a good friend just recently about what we expect from life, love and commitment.
Things are very different than they were when our parents were born: women were still often financially and socially dependent on men and few had a university education. If you didn't get married before your 25 you were called an old made, which certainly wasn't a well seen social status.
Today things are different. Women do not need men like they did before. Instead, we need a man to share our dreams and thoughts, travel with us and do things together, and of course as lovers. Movies and series such as Eat, Pray and Love and The sex and the city are mirroring this phenomena. Or are they?
Personally I am still struggling with this. My education has been very conservative and also religious. I have had certain ideas and limits about ways of enjoying life and having fun: I am quite sure certain of my relatives still think being abroad is a sin not even talking about having more than one boyfriend.
Today we have a long list of criteria our future partner needs to fulfill: handsome, humorist, romantic, always committed and listening...this is already hard to find, and often we truly get to know the person only when the first 1-2 years being in love period is over. And then, is it enough when we are not in love anymore? Or do we want a person who can fulfill our need for love again? Can we our selves offer the same as we require? Are we ready to work on our relationships?
The future trend seem to be that divorces are just a normal thing, not even talking about not getting married at all and just concentrating on career instead of having a family. This might be even more evident here in Brussels: full of young ambitious career oriented people who are constantly looking for new challenges.
Hunting for short term pleasure sounds wonderful, but can it work in practise? I have seen too many cases where married men try to hit on my friends and people jump from one relation to another just to escape their own problems and to confront them again with a new person. Also, many women I know prefer to be alone instead of settling for less...but find it hard to enjoy only one night stands.
Still one things is for sure. We don't want to live our lives alone.
We are not in the Sex and the City yet, at least I am not. I need some safety and commitment in my life. But I am very aware of the fact, that it is going to require a lot of hard work. And resistance. Or not?
Is there the right one for everyone or is it more a question of lowering our expectations and being flexible? Or is there simply many right ones for everyone nowadays?
Comments are more than welcome.
Could it be that there is the right one for certain situation, context, period of life... life partner is the one who you want to share your everyday life with and have children (what really men are increasingly needed for, to support ad help with kids if women are more often responsible for breadwinning and career!)...
ReplyDeleteWhat I mean, that somebody might be the one but not quite yet or WAS the one for certain things. Youth is also longer nowadays, so there is more different things to experience before starting to be like women used to be. I don't see nothing wrong with changing lifestyle after certain age, for example 25 that was mentioned :) Times change, people change less...
And what comes to criteria, maybe many have too hard criteria for others as well as for themselves. Last weekend I thought difference between loving and liking, and my conclusion was that it is not possible ever to LIKE everything in other person (habits, characteristics etc.) but it still is possible to LOVE every single thing in other person. Something can be really irritating and not acceptable, but as weird as it is, in my opinion it is still possible to love it.
Emmi, thanks for your comment! The way you think is very nice: we can still love things that we don't like in another person. Maybe that's the only way.
ReplyDeleteLife partner certainly is someone we can share the every day life...but family often requires a commitment for 20 years and this period is forever nowadays. Maybe we just need to accept a certain level of insecurity and trust our judgement for the moment.