Back when I was a lifeguard, I was extremely good friends with a coworker. We would sit around and commiserate at the low quality of our relationships. It got to the point where we knew each others significant others so well, we could go to each other as a resource. It’s as if we had an extra brain to rely on when we couldn’t think clearly ourselves. I’d call LA, and she’d listen to me rant, and most of the time she’d say, “PMS.” LA would call me, I’d listen, and say, “He’s on a coke binge again. Hide your valuables.”
We eventually got to the point where we weren’t in our crap relationships at the same time. Since we didn’t have relationships of our own to critique, we started a sordid affair that lasted through the sultry… oh who am I kidding. She was like my sister, there was NO WAY that was going to happen.
What did happen is that we set up the equivalent of a 5 cent for relationship troubles.
Mostly, we did warnings for people who were about to enter relationships. And we primarily worked on our coworkers and our friends.
But damnit if together we couldn’t dissect a relationship and predict people’s future partnered with stunning precision.
Given enough information, I can still figure out how things will turn out between two people, provided I know one of them pretty well.
We even had a reputation large enough that it extended into the pool community. We had single mothers coming up to us and telling us about the dates they had previously in the week. Typically my first thought was, “Dude, I’m like, 16. What the hell are you asking me for?” But, we would give them an objective interpretation of their relationship based on the information they gave us.
I managed to boil down everything I learned to these few things:
1) If you went to someone like us, chances are a)you don’t want to be in the relationship, b)your partner doesn’t want to be in the relationship and you haven’t figured it our yet
2) People get into relationships for the most superficial and materialistic reasons (He has a nice car! She can do a split!) and wonder why it doesn’t work out when they have no other common interests.
3) Try to find people you like at places where you like to be, doing things you like to do, e.g. don’t go looking for girls at a baseball game if you hate sports, or boys at a mall if you hate shopping. (Yes, I switched that up on purpose.)
3) As crazy as John Gray is, the one thing he gets right is that people need to communicate. (Everything else he says is complete crap, and on top of it, he got his degrees from fake universities. So I’m as much a Doctor of love and relationships as he is.) Without communication, the relationship fails. Period. Be open, be honest, and be ready for the other person to be open and honest as well. If you don’t like what you’re hearing, or if they don’t like what you’re saying and you continue with the relationship anyway, you’ll just be in for a long slow road of pain.
4) Finally, when you break up with someone, try not to listen to music. You may risk throwing out/breaking/pulling from your car and setting on fire your favorite cd/cd player when every song on the radio is suddenly speaking directly to you.
Have I missed anything?
