I’m back in Fremont and was talking to Bohr who’s been fighting with his girlfriend again. I told him that we’re both very passionate, intense people. We need passion in our lives. But there can be passion without conflict. Some people need conflict in order to continually renew passion, and this is unhealthy.
I told him, when you look at a relationship, you weigh the positive and the negative. But you don’t add them together, and if there’s more positive than negative, it’s a good relationship. The positive may add up to a million, and the negative may add up to 10, but if those 10 are things that impinge on your NEEDS to be happy and to feel like yourself, then you have to consider those.
He told me he understood. That he needs to feel secure in a relationship, and when his girlfriend is constantly talking about her exes, it drives him crazy. He’s asked her to stop, that it makes him uncomfortable, but she does it at choice moments. He hates it. And he wonders if she does it to constantly make him feel jealous, because jealousy is what she accepts as proof that he cares about her. And it’s making him feel crazy because as much as he tries to explain to her that these issues they have, they can be resolved, they keep having the same arguments that escalate, and she’ll sit there and listen to him while he tries to reason it out, and then at the end, will walk away and say, let’s not talk about it anymore.
I can hear it in his voice, he’s getting backed in a corner.
I told him that end of the day, each relationship is a we. It’s communication, it’s two separate and individual people building something between them that should make them feel secure, appreciated and the best versions of themselves they can be. He needs to be very clear about who he is at the core, and what his needs are. And if the relationship starts taking him further and further away from who he is at the core and what he needs, he needs to get out before something happens that will really hurt his idea of self and his self-esteem.
He told me that this conversation, everything we were saying, he knows. He’s had this same conversation with his friends, and everything he says, everything they tell him, he knows. But it’s not from lack of caring about each other, lack of love. He thinks it’s nothing wrong with them and their feelings for each other, but the fact they constantly fight about little things and it turns into these big ordeals.
But the fact they are fighting is inherently a problem with them, and their communication or chemistry between each other.
I told him that psychologists studied couples and found that it’s usually not what couples fight about, but how they fight that reveals if the relationship is healthy and will last. It takes two people onboard working towards the same goal to reach a resolution. We take it for granted that two people who love each other and are in a relationship both want the same things. But that’s not always the case. It’s possible that one or both people don’t want a resolution, and are clinging to the conflict. And if that’s the case, it can be detrimental to both people, the longer they stay in the cycle.
We have to be very clear about what we need. In life. In a relationship. We can’t compromise our needs. If we try to change our needs, we’ll only fight demons. But the right people for us will fit our needs, will want to fill those needs, and you will understand and fill theirs.
You never give up what you NEED to be yourself in a relationship. If you do, you’re giving up too much.