Happy relationships
Maybe not what you expect to read about happy relationships. No sugar and honey, no compromises that only work until the next conflict. Instead, let's talk about three uncompromising fundamentals: mutual respect, morality, and jealousy. First and foremost, you must communicate clearly and without reserve.
Every relationship is unique, and some are successful despite different beliefs or morality. But that requires major compromises on those beliefs, or one's morality. For most people, that does not work out too well in the long term.
A quick refresher about the difference between ethics and morality, as that is often misunderstood as being the same thing:
- Ethics: Things or actions that affect others - external standards
- Morals: Beliefs and value about oneself - internal principles
Human ethics protects humans from each other's behavior. Mutual respect being the foundation. Morals are personal beliefs that only affect others who share the same morality (like a religion), but no one else!
The confusion comes from people seeking to impose their morality on others, typically implying that "good people agree".
The three fundamentals
First, mutual respect: one does not do or say things that negatively affect another. It's fundamental ethics. Sounds simple and easy … until a difference in morality gets in the picture. Take the most common example: cheating! Lying about something the other believes differently because either a compromise is not respected, or the difference was either never settled, or never even addressed. If you have more than one relationship, you can't claim to be monogamous. A disagreement on that point is a non-starter for a happy relationship.
Second, morality: a set of personal beliefs and values received from a young age, most often from an old book. There are as many moralities as there are variations of those old books. Morality is deeply rooted in one's character and behavior. Most moralities being absolute and uncompromising, it does not bode well happy relationships where the morialities are different. Example above!
Third, jealousy: A human emotion triggered by fear of losing ownership or control of someone or something. It is not specific to monogamous people; even openly sharing non-monogamous people may sometimes feel jealousy instead of the expected compersion. Traditional advice to deal with jealousy points to self-awareness, mindfulness, expressing feelings, etc., but fails to point to the root cause: ownership and control. And that takes us right back to ethics, where ownership of another person is clearly unethical. Are you in an ethical relationship?
Jealousy is keeping the bird in the cage, compersion is to let the bird be free and enjoy watching its freedom and happiness.
Do you have matching intimate drives?
In a new relationship, you have most likely never talked about that until after a few weeks under the sheets when one of you sheepishly said, “It is a bit much for me” or “I could use a little more”. You did think about that issue since the first day you met “mmm … I wonder how much he/she likes?”, but “How do you like to spend your birthday?”, seemed to be a more appropriate question to ask first.
The real question is not how much, but do you match? There is no such thing as not enough or too much, only partners that are not well matched in intimacy to be satisfied without annoying each other, or worse. Intimacy is more important to some people and less important to others; there is no right or wrong, just differences that absolutely need to be addressed as early as possible upon considering a new relationship, as that is far more likely to make or break that relationship than accomplishing the perfect birthday.