I definitely got burned by this advice in the past and I often think about how bad it is!
I think partnership should be 5% having the hard conversation which makes it 95% easy. In the past I didn’t have relationships where the person was willing or able to have a hard conversation about feelings and needs and thus my life was incredibly difficult. I agree it’s life that’s hard and partners make it fun.
I loved this week's Sunday Sauce so much that I had to create a substack account just to leave this comment. Thank you always for your words, but thank you extra for these words today :)
loved reading this. I recently reflected on my own marriage and wrote the following:
we are teammates but we flow in our lanes. Marry someone you are in flow with. Or someone you are confident you can work to get into a flow with when things inevitably shift or become challenging. Such as before you have kids and then again after you have kids. I don’t want your marriage to be extraordinarily hard!! Follow your bliss, marry the person who does the things. Each time something changes you need a new flow.
all that to say, i have to agree with ya. that life is hard and your relationship should not be the thing that makes it harder!!
Could not agree more. It’s a hard thing to articulate without sounding smug but I’ve been with my partner for 18 years and none of it has been hard. We’ve been through hard things, and we have tiny little tiffs (very rarely) but we’re about to hit 20 years together and I don’t have that ‘we made it!’ kind of survivalist attitude that seems very common. Relationships are hard does seem like an odd relic that needs to be retired.
I've been thinking about this post for days. It's beautiful and I am so happy for you. It also throws into relief, for me, my own relationship (I've been with my wife for 20 years, married for 15 of them).
I can't decide whether I disagree with you that "relationships are hard" is bad advice and wrongheaded, because I think it's true that they are; or if I'm in a hard relationship, in which, despite loving my partner intensely, we are maybe not as well matched as we might have been.
I want to know where you will be in 10 or 20 years, and if you end up having children, how that might affect and change things for you both, and whether you will still see things this way then.
But I don't want to know those things because I think you're wrong. Clearly I want to know them so I'll have more context for my own situation and maybe some more insight on it based on the experience of others.
All of which reminds me that each person's experience is her or his or their own. No matter what happens to anyone else, what is happening to me is happening to me.
Thank you for writing this (and, if you got all the way through this loopy comment, reading this :) and I wish you all the happiness and goodness in what comes next.
Thank you so much for writing about this. I loved the TikTok trend, but found that it lost nuance and depth. Because why do we still give that advice? As you say, relationships have changed, so the advice should change too.
I definitely got burned by this advice in the past and I often think about how bad it is!
I think partnership should be 5% having the hard conversation which makes it 95% easy. In the past I didn’t have relationships where the person was willing or able to have a hard conversation about feelings and needs and thus my life was incredibly difficult. I agree it’s life that’s hard and partners make it fun.
I loved this week's Sunday Sauce so much that I had to create a substack account just to leave this comment. Thank you always for your words, but thank you extra for these words today :)
loved reading this. I recently reflected on my own marriage and wrote the following:
we are teammates but we flow in our lanes. Marry someone you are in flow with. Or someone you are confident you can work to get into a flow with when things inevitably shift or become challenging. Such as before you have kids and then again after you have kids. I don’t want your marriage to be extraordinarily hard!! Follow your bliss, marry the person who does the things. Each time something changes you need a new flow.
all that to say, i have to agree with ya. that life is hard and your relationship should not be the thing that makes it harder!!
Could not agree more. It’s a hard thing to articulate without sounding smug but I’ve been with my partner for 18 years and none of it has been hard. We’ve been through hard things, and we have tiny little tiffs (very rarely) but we’re about to hit 20 years together and I don’t have that ‘we made it!’ kind of survivalist attitude that seems very common. Relationships are hard does seem like an odd relic that needs to be retired.
I've been thinking about this post for days. It's beautiful and I am so happy for you. It also throws into relief, for me, my own relationship (I've been with my wife for 20 years, married for 15 of them).
I can't decide whether I disagree with you that "relationships are hard" is bad advice and wrongheaded, because I think it's true that they are; or if I'm in a hard relationship, in which, despite loving my partner intensely, we are maybe not as well matched as we might have been.
I want to know where you will be in 10 or 20 years, and if you end up having children, how that might affect and change things for you both, and whether you will still see things this way then.
But I don't want to know those things because I think you're wrong. Clearly I want to know them so I'll have more context for my own situation and maybe some more insight on it based on the experience of others.
All of which reminds me that each person's experience is her or his or their own. No matter what happens to anyone else, what is happening to me is happening to me.
Thank you for writing this (and, if you got all the way through this loopy comment, reading this :) and I wish you all the happiness and goodness in what comes next.
Yes, yes, yes!!! I have also wondered this and really enjoyed your thorough investigation of this concept we should discard.
Thank you so much for writing about this. I loved the TikTok trend, but found that it lost nuance and depth. Because why do we still give that advice? As you say, relationships have changed, so the advice should change too.
I loved this so so much!
One of my favorite writers once said that life is hard, but her relationship is easy. I think that’s how I experience it, too.