“If there is no love in this world, what will it mean in our hearts? It’s like a walking lamp without a light.”
— Goethe
Relationship could be one of the hottest and hardest topics among millennials nowadays. I have friends who enjoying, struggling or anticipating their relationships and I have witnessed joy, agony and naivete from different people. Here, I would like to talk, subjectively, about some issues in various relationship stages that people often encounter with my own experience and understanding.
First and foremost, the most common question is “I don’t know whether I should accept him or not”. I use “him” instead of “her” in the question because guys are always more proactive at the beginning. My answer is quite simple: “If you like him and you think he is suitable to you, take him. Otherwise, refuse him euphemistically.” In analogy: you will only buy a product when you like it and feel it is suitable and necessary to you. Though this example is so easy to understand, it is hard for us to associate it when receiving some “fantastic offers”.
In addition, a similar question is: “would you choose people you love or people who love you”. Surprisingly, when asking this question to my friends, the majority of the answers are the people who love them. However, many of us might ignore a fact that there should be someone you really love loves you. In analogy, when you find a $10 and a $100 cash on the ground, what would you do? Will you take only one of them or both of them?
When we are in the formal relationship, a normal mentality will be: “am I doing well? Should I take more care of him/her”. In fact, there is nothing wrong to consider each other, but things will change its direction when they go extreme. Alternatively, do not put significantly unequal effort in the relationship. During my last relationship, no matter how busy I was, I would spend 3 hours in trip to see my ex-girlfriend in every weekend. However, she only came and visited me once in total. In addition, occasionally I would spend few days to design creative hand-crafts to surprise her but it just turned out to mess everything up. Problem will occur when both sides put massively unbalanced effort in relationship as nothing can be taken as granted and it does not work when only one side tries to maintain it.
Last but not least, when ending the relationship, we all might be somehow depressed for a certain amount of time and fall into a consistent belief that there is no person we could love anymore. In Chinese, there is a saying: “there are plenty of fish in the sea”, meaning there is always someone suitable waiting for you in the world. I have a friend, charming, glamorous, mature and responsible, who was unbelievably dumped by several girls before. However, he is confident and always looking for other girls and I am glad to know that he has recently made a new girlfriend!
There is a famous saying: “love starts from smile, elevates in kiss and disappears in tears”. However, I believe love is not a measurable thing. It is an experience, responsibility and philosophy of accompanying.
Originally published at https://www.nianliblog.com.
