Why Do Relationships Seem So Complicated Today?
Have you wondered why it seems like everything about relationships is so complicated? Many couples are struggling to keep their families and lives from falling apart. Men don’t seem to understand women, and vice versa. Some in the dating scene feel that they should be playing games and learning techniques to win over women or men, and others feel they should just be completely honest. Dating coaches and relationship experts are everywhere trying to dish out some advice to make sense of it all. Add to that our addiction to be connected through social media sites like Twitter or Facebook, for example, and many feel that the quality of communication between couples has just deteriorated further. And, certainly, we can all agree that the hard economic times are not making relationships easier either.
If you are feeling like this, I assure you that you are not alone. We not only do we live in turbulent economic, environmental, and political times, but also our very foundations and beliefs in long-lasting relationships have gone under the microscope.
We live in times where we have more choices than ever before. Our world has become smaller and smaller. At the same time, there are more opportunities for finding love and satisfying relationships than ever before. The opportunities for dating and finding partners have never been more accessible, not only because of social media and the many dating sites, but also because of the diversified lives that many of us lead.
So, why are many of us feeling like relationships have become so much more complicated?
Let’s examine this question layer by layer. The first answer is that while it may seem that the opportunities for meeting new people, dating, and developing relationships have become easier, the truth is that, today, we are expecting much more from our partners or spouses.
I’ll spare you from having to hear the cave man theory yet again, and how simple our lives used to be,☺ but there was a time when a man’s job was to find food, protect his family from danger, and to procreate, while women gave birth, took care of children, and nurtured the family and community. Those were the times where most of our happiness was derived from a simple life. As a result, we did not have many choices, and relationships were actually much simpler.
Fast forward to today when we find that relationships that are based simply on surviving actually do not survive. Relationship dynamics have shifted dramatically over the millenia, over the centuries, and over the decades, and are still evolving.
While movement toward more gender, racial, and cultural equality is very positive, what many fail to see are the challenges that have come as a result of it all.
For example, as women have entered the business world, they face new situations and stresses. Men are also faced with a completely new set of stresses that they have never faced in the past. And what is that stress? Coming home to stressed out women. And not only has the blurring of the gender roles made relationships much harder today, but as the world has become smaller, another new stress factor has evolved – that is the cultural and racial differences in interracial and inter-cultural couples. And this is not to even mention the challenges that many same sex couples, polyamorous relationships, and other forms of partnerships are facing today.
While dealing with these differences and challenges that can actually make our lives richer, they undoubtedly also make our lives more complicated. And without fully understanding the new relationship skills and requirements to make things work smoothly, many are simply ill equipped to handle these new challenges. In addition to that, in the past 50 years, Hollywood has hypnotized us into believing that every day of our lives should be full of romance and excitement. This has served to complicate our lives even further.
The next important thing that can complicate our lives is the way we cope with stress in general. Once you understand and become aware that your personal view of the world is shaded by the glasses of your physiological state, it becomes much easier for you to deal with life. Let me give you a simple example of what I mean.
If you have not eaten a nutritious meal or had a drink of water for ten hours and are feeling thirsty and hungry, you are much less equipped to deal with stress. The way we function and see our daily world has a lot to do with our physiological state. An extreme example of this is looking at someone who has had a brain injury or is blind or deaf. That person will certainly see and experience the world very differently.
But, realize that drinking a cup of coffee, a glass of wine, or a sugary beverage, will also make you see and experience the world very differently. The important issue to recognize is that most of us are not experiencing nor maintaining optimal brain chemistry and hormonal balance. Many today are chronically dehydrated, malnourished, and fighting many lifestyle and other diseases and sicknesses. These conditions often give us a skewed vision of our world. The result of it is that most of us create even more problems where there really are none. This is not to even mention how media often plays a negative role in shaping how we perceive the world.
But the reason for this physiological imbalance is that most of us, particularly in the western world, live very toxic lives. We are constantly exposed to pollution, cleaning chemicals, and paint fumes. We eat toxic foods full of additives, chemicals, preservatives, artificial flavorings, and other unnatural and harmful ingredients like high-fructose corn syrup, trans fats, MSG, aspartame, and the list just goes on and on. This toxic lifestyle has created rampant illnesses worsened only by the short- sighted solutions of the pharmaceutical and medical industries.
And this is only the tip of the iceberg. Not only are we exposed to toxicity, chemicals, harmful electromagnetic fields, unnatural therapies, and unhealthy foods, even the solutions to or remedies for these issues are not as constructive as they used to. For example, even the best and most nutritious organic foods do not have the same natural balance that they used to have 100 years ago, because the fertilizers have depleted the soil from its vital minerals.
All this simply means that our lives have become more complicated. And, since most of us fail in many ways to deal with this increased stress, our problems and complications seem that much more exaggerated. This also makes our relationship stresses harder to deal with.
Finally, one of the most profound reasons for our complicated lives is our emotional and spiritual disconnect. Many have questions that are difficult to answer when they are witnessing corruption in the higher echelons of religious life. The religious authorities are supposed to be guiding us, and yet… An unfortunate consequence of denouncing religion is that we are left without any kind of spiritual foundation. And it is this lack of connection to a higher power or to God that leaves us a life without meaning. While joining a church or religion may be a positive step to many, it is important that your primary source of happiness comes from your personal relationship to some kind of higher power or to God. It is often the lack of a spiritual connection that makes us expect perfection from our partners, which in turn makes all of our relationships unnecessarily harder.
So, there you have it, my short take on why relationships are and seem so complicated today. But realize that while that might have been depressing to hear there are already solutions to all of these stresses and challenges. In my future blog posts, I will be writing about some of these solutions to making relationships much easier, so be sure to visit often. Meanwhile, share our community what you think. Do relationships seem complicated to you? And, if so, why?
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