Pas de deux: transforming our love relationships
Despite the amount of information and choices available to us nowadays, the number of roles we have the ambition to fulfil and the amount of noise and confusion it creates in our lives, still, relationships are still something I hear people complain in about 85–90% of my conversations. Could be a specificity of my statistical sample or a painful reflection of reality. Regardless, least I can do is try shed some light on why and how relationships should be transformed in today’s reality. If I can help at least a handful of people out there, men and women alike, I will call it a victory for one of my key goals as a human being is to create qualitative and quantitative improvement in the human life of tomorrow vs today.
Love is a basic human need, yet many of us make wrong choices continuously. Numbers speak for themselves, in the last 50 years a global average divorce rate has doubled and in the western world are at a staggering 40% (US & Europe). To be honest, it remains a speculation that the numbers would be any different in the past, had it not been for moral and social pressures to stick with one partner for life. For most part, people as apparently intelligent as they are, suck at choosing their life partner. There is no such thing as Relationship 101 at school and our parents in most cases likely fall into the category of ‘choice made wrong’, so how could they ever teach us to make the right decision for ourselves? And I do not blame them, being human is hard and the hardships transform throughout the time yet remain as a fundament of human condition.
Far too often I come across people, who rationalize being with someone, find all kinds of excuses to stay, ignore the signs their intuition (or health, or job performance, or bank account) tells them, make fundamentally life-altering decisions, and then scratch their heads as to why they are so unhappy as the rest of their lives goes down the drain. The length we go to persuade ourselves that ‘this too shall pass’ or ‘he is not mature enough yet and should not be pushed for commitment’ or ‘she is just too ambitious’ is just heart breaking. The inability of people to find time to even find a partner, supressing this fundamental value at its core for fear of missing out on other important aspects of their lives like career or travel or ‘put an extravagant activity here’, is even more heart-breaking. Fear of being alone or FOMO is very understandable and is one of many human predicaments. And I understand, it is not easy to take a leap of faith, to be confident about who you are, what you want and in which order, to take a risk and to manage the complexity of today’s world, to decide to pause and to do relationships differently from what you already have chosen or have set your mind to. The external pressures, especially in some cultures, are just too much and could be existential to an individual. I am not here to judge at all, and I feel very empathetic towards people caught in these situations, for they do not always get to choose the situation they are in. However, one thing I know from experience and plenty of literature points to the fact that fear is not a good guidance for making decisions towards a happy life. And, perhaps, people would rather be fearful than happy, and it is a personal choice, but I would like to point to one fundamental contradiction. If you fear for your life it means, you think it is worth living. If it is worth living, don’t you owe it to yourself to live it to its full potential? You only get one try.
My personal story includes being born into a high achieving Russian family with a rigid and traditional view of the world order, which meant getting married ASAP at all cost. Let us care about happiness later. A slight side remark: most my family members are either divorced or have had troubled married and personal lives. Having had a privilege to study in UK since I was 14 and graduate from one of the UK top Universities, I had the luxury to choose what to do next. And I am aware of it. So, I emancipated myself by moving to the Netherlands, financially independent, for support of my family came at a price of my own freedom, too high of a price to pay for someone with a different world view. F*ck luxury and money, I want to be free. I want to exercise my fundamental right as human being to pursuit of happiness, for no one ever cared to ask me if I wanted to be born on this Mother Earth and at that moment in time.
I moved via work (at the time I worked at a Global Strategy & IT consultancy), but the key trigger was a relationship with a Dutch man. After a few years it became clear that we wanted different things, I wanted family & kids and to build something, my then boyfriend wanted to explore the world. I wish I knew how to see past all confusing attempts at making me think we wanted the same thing. It caused a huge amount of mid-night arguments and it was just too painful for both of us. We parted on amicable terms (still great friends by the way), admitted we were wrong and moved on. One lesson I did draw from this experience was as follows: ‘I would rather die alone, hungry, unloved, under the bridge of one of Amsterdam’s canals, than spend another day with a wrong person’. That is how important it was for me.
This sounded great, but I still did not know what ‘Mr Right’ looks like. See paragraph two. So, intuitively, I went on a serial dating. Equipped with intuition and ability to self-reflect, I dated tirelessly for three years. I knew heartbreaks were imminent and I was ready for it, to teach myself how to recognize what that desired partner looks like. By the way, in my mind, I was not limiting myself to him or her, I needed the right human connection and a compatible value system which my intuition would agree with. It just naturally resulted in dating men. Three years fell perfectly into the 37% rule of the ‘optimal stopping’ mathematical problem, I had that much time to search, before I would have collected sufficient information to make a choice (for overthinking can leave you single until your grave and it is not what I wanted). That too happened naturally.
I cannot say that the person I ultimately found will last forever, I would like it to be the case, but life tends to happen changing our values and making us reconsider everything we have been and are yet to be. Also, not every single day is this blissful life of butterflies and unicorns. However, I trust my intuition and I am certain a huge part of my life has become stable and I genuinely felt at peace. I am happy. And I am empowered to give back. I am motivated to build, and I feel like I am in the right place to accomplish everything else, because one of my core values has been addressed with the partner that is fit for purpose. It is the man I want to have kids with, and I know I can trust fully in building a life that I want, that we both want. Together yet apart as perfectly individual human beings, no FOMO feelings, no ego driven discussion of mine versus yours, it is just not necessary. I am who I am, and he knows that we both strive to maximum happiness for the both of us and act from this position when making any decision.
At the end of the day, I am not here to preach how one should make his or her life choices. If one is honest with themselves and knows whether the game is worth the reward. I have come across far too many situations, where it was clear that no choice or commitment was being made, at someone else’s expense, time was wasted for promise of nothing in return, diluting another person’s value just because they cannot choose better or do not know how to, choosing someone who would rather ‘have their cake and eat it too’. It is a personal choice and responsibility to recognize and respond to any current situation and make the right choice for the future life one deserves. I sincerely wish you can break the chain, get rid of any fear, and dare diving into the unknown for at least a chance at the life you want because we all know what not trying leaves us with.
