We sing of it in our songs. We see it in our movies. Most (if not ALL) of us in one way or another wish to find it in life. Some of the biggest selling books of the past few years are about people finding it in the most unlikely of circumstances (Twilight, 50 Shades of Grey). Let’s face it: our generation is obsessed with love. And who can blame us? The need for Love/Belonging ranks third on Marslow’s hierarchy of needs, right after physiological needs and safety needs. In other words, right after we fulfill our basic survival and self-preservation needs, the next thing we naturally do as humans is to seek love. And with the sexual revolution in our immediate past and with information about relationships all around us, I’d say we’re pretty well equipped in that quest.
That’s why I find it so surprising to learn that divorce rates seem to be rising around the world.Marriages also seem to be lasting a hell of a lot shorter than they did back in the day. More people claim to be unhappy in their relationships than ever before.
For a generation so fixated on love, we seem to really suck at it.
The more I thought about it, the more I began to realize a couple of things. It turns out that the decks are kinda stacked against us from the beginning, because most of us enter relationships that are doomed to fail.
Because you see…
1.Your idea of Love is Wrong.
Do me a favor and click this link real quick.
For those of you too lazy to click that, that is the Urban dictionary definition of “Effort shock”, which is a variation of the term “sticker shock”. Simply put, sticker shock refers to the phenomenon of picking up stuff in a store only to find out that the price of the goods is much higher than you thought. Effort shock, in the same vein, is the “shock and dismay one encounters when discovering how difficult it really is to accomplish a [long term] goal.” The term was first coined by the Senior Editor of that comedy website that I just can’t seem to stop quoting. So what does this have to do with love?
Quite a lot, according to clinical psychologist Dr. Lisa Blum, who believes that our culture, education and even our parents do not prepare us for the fact that even good relationships take a LOT of effort to maintain. According to her, “…[a good relationship is like a garden]; it’s a beautiful thing but you wouldn’t expect it to thrive without a whole lot of labor and TLC.”
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| “Or else the weeds of despair will grow and choke your souls.” |
Most of us simply do not know how difficult real love is to find and maintain. We’re told from birth about how life is hard and how, in order to make money or find a good job, we have to ‘hustle’. But at the same time we walk around thinking the exact opposite of love. A lot of people I know believe that one day, they too will “find love”, and so they sit around waiting for it. When they do meet someone, they expect the relationship to go smoothly. Sure, they expect the occasional argument or two, but overall they expect these little qualms to just sort themselves out. We are a society that will send out a ton of job applications to various companies and actively follow up on each of them, but we’ll passively sit at home and wait for Mr. /Mrs. Right to waltz merrily along. And I’m not even talking about the fact that we seem to be entering relationships at a lower age than ever before, I’m talking about the fact that most of us enter these relationships not knowing just how fucking hard they are. Our generation simply doesn’t know what ‘love’ really is.
And I don’t blame us, because…
2. Pop Culture Screwed Us Over.
It’s a known fact that ours is a generation that was raised by pop culture. Most of us learned what we knew about the world beyond our immediate surroundings from movies and video games and novels. Hell, when I was five I had never even crossed the border to Togo before, but I thought I had a pretty good idea of what America was like.
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| It was full of car chases and exploding terrorists. |
And it’s the same thing with relationships: I know for a fact that few African parents sit their children down and give them an honest and useful lesson in love and relationships. Most of us learned what we know from movies, books, peers who got THEIR knowledge from movies and books, etc.
For example, ask any random girl what her idea of an ideal man is, and nine times out of ten the answer you’ll get will be something like: “I want a man who’s tall, dark, handsome, well built…” Now, let me make this clear:.......CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL GIST
Source: Nyaneme's blog, The JR Show
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