Three to Tango & Marriage is for Losers

Someone much wiser than me (whose name escapes me at the moment) once said something that I thought would be nice to share with you all.  He or she said (paraphrased), "there are three individuals in your relationship: there is you, the other person and your relationship, and you must love your relationship more than you love either of the other two."

Point: If you do not love and care for your relationship it will not matter how much you love the other person because the relationship will suffer and die.

When I read that I had to brain-chew on it for awhile and I can't help but think how profound that is.  Think about your siblings, your mother, your husband, your grandmother, your friend, your wife, your child. Do you love and care for your relationship with him/her more than your love and care for him/her or do you just love them?

Think about a relationship you have that is strained, but you know that you love that person.  Would it be strained if you loved and cared for the relationship? Probably not.

Though the sentiment "all you need is love" is inviting and hopeful it isn't 100% true.  You need to love more than just the person, you need to love what  and who they are to you and why they are meaningful.

Think of a divorced couple that you know who admit that they never really stopped loving their ex-spouse, but "love just wasn't enough."  Why wasn't it enough? Because if you aren't caring for the RELATIONSHIP then it's a moot point.

You have to be willing to give up the concepts of: me, I, mine, myself, his, him, you, your's, hers, her, and she and replace them with: ours, we, and us because you have to see the two of you as a unit that works together.

How functional a relationship (any relationship) is in your life directly reflects how you care for it.

I recently read an article called "Marriage is for Losers" and it really struck me when the author wrote about what marriage teaches us (I think any hard earned relationship should teach the same thing):

"we need to walk through this world—a world that wants to chew [us] up and spit [us] out—without the constant fear of getting the short end of the stick. Maybe we need to be formed in such a way that winning loses its glamour, that we can sacrifice the competition in favor of people."

What if everyone tried their best to care for their relationships, self-sacrificed and loved a little more? What would this world be like? How much stronger would we all be?