Those were some interesting statements from the interviewed couples. Thanks for supporting us with them.
It's indeed a topic many people think about and of course, always there is the question of the secret when couples stay together for a long time.
As I see, people were really interested in this topic from the comments!
I hope, I am not too late with mine:) which is a long one. For some reason I cannot make short ones! LOL!
Have a good time out, dear Abby!
Today we have a relationship of two and expect a lot from this single person. This poor single person must fulfil many roles, be a generalist. You feel like being interlocutor, advisor, the sports friend, the chef, accountant, the craftsman, the sexual partner and so on.
Many traits must be found in a person in this day and age. You have to be particularly good at talking. Since couples usually do not work together but pursue their professions separately, one has to find time for conversations at some point. Updating each other, because eight hours and more means that you have to give the other person a picture of what you have been doing all day and which topics are important professionally at the moment.
Basically, you are an individualist who simultaneously enters into a bond. Since only man and woman live together and other adults live somewhere else, they fall out of the roles mentioned above and are not available for the many concerns in everyday life. That's quite a load for two adults.
If you look at the factual conditions of a couple and then at the system in which they move, you wonder whether "family" as a definition still fits at all. Two people operate in external systems - work - and then return to their internal system at the end of a working day, their home. While they work during the day and are involved in professional tasks, they are supposed to be private people again afterwards. However, this division into work and private life does not function this way. People are social beings who unconsciously expect orientation from other people and train their social behaviour in a group. These groups are work colleagues (or fellow students, trainees). A lot of privacy therefore takes place in the office or elsewhere.
Basically, we modern couples need much longer to get to know the other really well, because a great aspect of our personality and competence comes to bear in the working environment. Which we do not necessarily live out in private. As long as there are no children who contribute to the adults getting to know each other very well through their parenthood, couples have to retell their absence and give the other a halfway real picture of themselves, so that the other can understand what kind of person you are outside your own four walls. Some would be surprised how different their partners act in their professions compared to their intimate relationship.
Moving confidently and authentically in the respective systems is certainly a challenge. Who you are is defined not only by your self-image but also by the image of others, here the effects alternate with each other. Therefore, work is also a kind of "family", but this is not what it is called and is not wanted in many areas, while it is particularly promoted elsewhere.
We really do have multi-relationships, but they are much more difficult to grasp than our two-way relationship and often suffer from the lack of relationship commitments. Work colleagues can leave each other at any time without being blamed for abandoning each other. However, this is seen differently for family members and couples. Much therefore shifts into the couple relationship and it has to carry a lot.
Hello Dear Erika :)
It is never late to hear from you and your always valuable insights.
Today I was particularly interested in this part:
I happen to think that even though modern couples perhaps take a long time to get to know each other well, they do it to a greater extent than did couples 50, 100 years ago. When women wouldn't dare to share the burdens of household chores, child rearing, or even their own intimate feelings with their almighty husbands.
I suppose this is because of the different sorts of bonds that hold them together :)
You take care :*