Redefining Relationships

Throughout the past week, I have been wrestling through issues about relationships, consolidating and crystallising my convictions about this complicated issue. The following are my attempts to put into words things that I have yet to fully understand (if I’d ever fully understand them). They represent certainties and convictions that I have reached at this point in time. They are thoughts and ideas that I treasure and discoveries that I would like to share with people who are on the same journey of discovering what it means to be in a life-giving and purposeful relationship.

There are no grand tricks or detailed schemes, and those in search of these things would very well be disappointed. However, to those who seek honest opinions and to those who are open to receive, I pray that these convictions that I have gathered thus far would prove to be of inspiration and encouragement to you.

First of all, I would like to say that being in a relationship is NOT a point where we need to reach, NOR is it a bridge that we need to cross. Rather, it is a continuous journey between two people learning to share their lives with one another, built upon the foundations of trust and respect. Nowadays, we are often fed erroneous ideas that to be in a relationship with someone first requires you to make him/her you boy/girlfriend, as though the person is an item that you can possess and manipulate according to your fancies.

Our relations with people are never meant to be discontinuous states of existence, where at one point in time, they are just “friends” and at the next point in time, they become “boy/girlfriends”. Today, we have a tendency to compartmentalise and to categorise our relationships with the people around us into “acquaintance”, “friend” and “boy/girlfriend”. We especially like to draw a line of distinction between “friend” and “boy/girlfriend”, where the former are the people that we kind of like, and the latter is/are the person (or sometimes people) that we really like. We think that these two categories are so different to one another, and that in order to truly care for someone we like, we need to get us to move from just being friends to being couples. In other words, we get the wrong impression that in order to start “loving” someone, we need to get him/her to be our boy/girlfriend. We think that we can only move to a new level of love, care and trust AFTER we have crossed the line.

Well, truth be told, the more we think about it, the more we know that it is not true. We do not learn to love and care for someone only AFTER he/she becomes our guy/girlfriend. The foundations of love and trust need to be built up even before that, because if we do not learn to love someone, we may feel “in love” with him/her because of certain things that we like about him/her but when the magic and the romance is gone, we discover that it is truly hard to care for that person because the necessary foundations have not been built up.

So far, I think I might have gotten ahead of myself and put forth a number of big ideas that need further explanation.

Let me restate my belief as clearly as I can. A relationship is a CONTINUOUS journey walked with another person, built upon the foundations of LOVE and TRUST, as both parties learn what it means to share life with one another, to believe in the things for each other’s lives and to want the best for one another.

Therefore, it is my belief that there is NO such category called “boy/girlfriend”. There is only the degree of trust and love that you have for another person that moves you to want to share your lives together.

The implication of this is that being “in a relationship” is not making the person “yours”, like taking possession of an object and using him/her for your pleasures. Rather, it is a continuous process of journeying and learning with that person what it means to love him/her for the person that he/she is, to believe in his/her dreams, passions and life, to uphold and desire the best for him/her.

Being in a relationship is NOT liking a girl for certain things, then doing your best to get her to be your girlfriend, and then love her and care for her and live happily ever after.

Being in a relationship IS to learn to love and care for that girl, to learn to trust her to a point where the both of you can start believing for things in each other’s lives and seeking the best for one another, and then potentially, making a promise of marriage to her.

We can view relationships as a sort of a continuous scale rather than two discrete states of being.

So then, now that that is made clear, this then changes the way we build our relationships.

A relationship with the boy/girlfriend mentality tends to be based on the things each party likes about the other party, e.g. the looks, the achievements, the personality. It is usually these things that make us feel a certain way towards the other person, and it is these things that drive us to want to make them "ours". Of course there is nothing wrong with enjoying these things because we are created to enjoy these good things about being with another person.

However, the trouble comes when a relationship is built solely upon the likes because there will be times when either the things that you like about a person gradually fade away, e.g. wealth, physical attraction, etc. or there are times when there are circumstances in life that become more imminent than the fantasy world that both parties have constructed together.

So, if a relationship is a journey of learning to love and trust, then obviously it should be founded upon love and trust!

Now, of course, we would need to clarify the word “love” because it is used in overly liberal ways today.

To love someone truly means to be willing to lay down the things that matter to you to see another person grow and succeed. To love someone is NOT a feeling, but it is a choice that is decisively made to care about another person’s life, and of course this can happen even when you are not “feeling like it”.

A loving and life-giving relationship happens when both parties are learning to walk together each day, being present and aware of each other’s life journeys, dreams and visions, struggles and triumphs, peaks and troughs, in essence each other! A life-giving relationship begins when both parties despite their differences, uncertainties, and frustrations learn to trust not their feelings, but that part of their hearts that know that they truly care about the other person and want to see him/her grow. A relationship is about savouring each moment as it comes and discovering something new about one another each day, discovering with each encounter more and more of another person’s life and hopes and passions.

Also, a loving relationship means wanting the best for each other. And potentially, this might mean that you are not the “best” person for him/her. If we operate with the mindset that a relationship is NOT about possessing the guy/girl, then this would mean that there is the chance that we would need to let the person go and release him/her with blessings so that he/she might achieve the best for his/her life, including the best partner in life. This of course does not sit well with us because we WANT him/her! Yet, if we understand love and trust, then we also need to understand that sometimes, to love someone means to let them go so that they can be all that they can be, that they can reach for the best in life.

So, let us summarise then. A relationship involves trusting and caring for another person’s life journey and love and grace to want to push and propel the person to be all that they can be, so that they can achieve the best in life.

Being in a relationship is NOT about making the person yours, but it is about learning to walk in faith, love and trust for another person and to see him/her grow and blossom to be the fullness of the image of what they were created to be.

It can be a painful pill to swallow, yet if we choose to engage in our relationships in this manner, we will discover, I believe, much joy and fruitfulness and grace in our lives and the life of that one person that we have learned to love and care about.

Of course, I say that there is no boy/girlfriend category because the way a lot of society perceives boy/girlfriend is that they “belong” to one another. To be clear, I am not against people calling themselves boy/girlfriends so long as we are clear that relationships is not about the possession or the endpoint, but it is about the journey.

Obviously, there is much more to be said about relationships. These few paragraphs of thoughts barely scratch the surface of the complexities and beauty of relationships. Yet, I shall save them for another day. I believe this is sufficient for now.