Relationships: Proposed Agreement with a Friend

I found this file on my computer today. I'd written it nearly two years ago when corresponding with a friend on the subject of relationships. I ended up cutting and pasting the text into an IM with the friend, but the file remained on my computer to be rediscovered. Here it is, unedited.

Why do most of us expect a relationship to simultaneously provide companionship, love, and sex? Isn’t that asking way too much of any single individual? At best can’t we expect to find someone who clicks with us in one of the three areas and is willing to do the damned hard work to get better -- but never perfect -- at the other two? Isn’t it most important to look for someone of good will rather than someone who magically fits the bill in all respects from the very beginning? Shouldn’t this good will -- manifested as flexibility, improvisation, humor, adaptability, and modesty -- combined with a compatibility in either companionship, love, or sex, be a good enough place to start?

It’s not that you’d be trying to change someone, which is a stupid thing to imagine you could do. But you like how well you get along in one way, sense that your friend is willing to work with you in the others, and you go from there. (You have to be able to talk honestly, though, and not assume each should know how the other feels). How would that work? And if they resist the effort or you resist it, then do you know it’s time to move on?

It seems to me someone’s likely to be willing and able to get better at sex and companionship, but not at love. They probably need to be able to love from the get go. That is, based on an initial chemistry or “clickiness,” you can see that they care about you, are proud of you, and feel a certain responsibility to you (but not responsibility for you; that is, they want to live up to your good opinion of them, and are happy that you help make them better).

So look for flexibility in someone you click with in one of the important areas. I will too. And dump the ones you don’t click with or who are inflexible, humorless, immodest, and rigid. And I will too.