Going the Distance

What does it take to have a long lasting committed relationship? Many people try to search for the perfect person–someone who matches their interests, values, body type, sense of humor, religious and political beliefs, level of libido, etc. This isn’t a bad idea on the surface. Why start out with someone who has characteristics you know you don’t like or admire. If you aren’t attracted to them now, chances are you won’t find them more and more attractive as time goes by. All of these wonderful characteristics, however, don’t ensure a successful long lasting relationship. They just ensure a good start and a lot of fun in the beginning.
Imagine that you and an acquaintance are both planning separate cross country road trips. You and this person have a choice of buying two seemingly identical cars with the same engines in them. The only difference is that one car, instead a having an alternator or generator, has this incredibly powerful larger battery to keep the spark plugs firing and the radio playing. This battery is amazing in that it lasts 5 times longer than ordinary batteries. With this battery, the car seems supercharged. It starts the engine quicker, is able to handle many accessories simultaneously and even the headlights seem brighter. Impressed by this new technology, you choose the car with the amazing battery. Your friend chooses the other car with the regular battery and the alternator. You both head out across the country enjoying the ride in your new cars.

The trip is going smoothly for you until you have gone about 1500 miles. The first thing you notice is that the lights aren’t quite as bright as they were when you started out and the radio isn’t as loud. The next time you pull in to get gas, the car hesitates a little when you turn the key to start it back up. Your car finally dies on the highway. As you wait for the tow truck, you start feeling very disillusioned about your new car with its incredible battery. You are no longer impressed. You think, “Maybe I should have chosen the other car.” This feeling is reinforced when you later learn that your friend made it across the country just fine even though he had a much smaller battery. Oh, that’s right. That model also had an alternator and yours didn’t.

Here’s the point, if you have an alternator or a generator, you don’t need an incredible battery. The beauty of the alternator is that it gives you the ability to recharge the battery as you drive allowing you to travel hundreds of thousands miles without ever running out of juice. That’s why the other person’s battery, though small, never ran down even after all those miles. It was being recharged along the way.

Sorry for the extended metaphor. A committed relationship can be thought of as a long road trip, one in which we would like to feel great all along the journey, not just at the beginning. While it is wonderful to start out feeling a lot of love for your incredible partner and being impressed by their wonderful qualities, what you really need is the ability to regenerate the love you originally felt so that you don’t run out of “juice” over time. This requires practice in transforming the little “glitches” along the way into wisdom about how to get along better with each other in the future.

Successful relationships don’t just happen because you picked the right person. The love you feel along the way and at end is something that has been recreated and regenerated many times over the course of the journey. People who are good at regenerating love keep their batteries charged up and never worry about relationships winding down or dying at the side of the road.