It Takes Effort

Someone once gave me a wonderful analogy about relationships, which I’d like to take the liberty of sharing here. It goes something like this. Let’s say you work for some imaginary company. You’ve got a pretty good job, and you don’t mind getting up every morning to do it. One day, the CEO calls everyone together for a meeting, and announces from that point on, official company hours will be 9 am-10 am ONLY.  That’s it. From now on, you’ll actively work on the business only one hour per day.

Pretty crazy, isn’t it? How can you possibly expect to build a successful business, working just one hour a day? Well of course you can’t. Nobody tries to build a business with so little effort. But here’s the key point: lots of people try to build a relationship that way. Is it any wonder so many fail?

You know, it’s funny. Just about everyone I’ve ever met in my entire life has wanted, or is still wanting, to be loved. After the fundamentals of food and shelter are taken care of, love is the thing we desire most. And yet! So many don’t want to work for it. Don’t want to put any effort into retaining it. Or worse, don’t even understand that it DOES take effort. And it certainly takes more than an hour a day.

But an hour a day is all many couples share with each other – if that. After you take out hours for sleep, work, commuting, taking care of the kids, homework, watering the plants, doing the laundry, what’s left? I know it’s hard to find time to do anything, let alone focus on your mate. But you must.

Relationships take some effort. They don’t just take care of themselves. After all, a relationship is made up of you and another person. If neither of you is at the steering wheel, who is?  You need to be together, and talk together. Not just about “stuff,” but about each other, so you know how you’re doing as a couple. Can you imagine going to the doctor for a check-up and your entire exam consisting of a discussion of last Monday’s football game? You need to tell the doctor exactly what you’re feeling, and he (or she) needs to listen. Don’t you remember how much fun it was to “play doctor” when you were a kid? 

But seriously folks, you can’t possibly expect to keep your relationship vibrant, fulfilling and alive unless you spend some time on it. It shouldn’t be hard work, but it does take effort. At the risk of dangerously exceeding my weekly quota of analogies, I’ll add another.  Your relationship is like a houseplant. It needs tending. Regular watering, a little food, sufficient light and careful pruning now and then.  Like a plant, you can’t just ignore your relationship and hope it will flourish. Unless it’s a cactus. And if you think that sounds appealing, try hugging one.