I feel that a relationship is the yoking together of two people who had previously floated about independently.
Alternatively, it is the building of a bridge between the same two people. Neither individual has ownership of the bridge, and it is the task of both parties to prevent it from falling into disrepair, or from collapsing entirely.
Once it collapses, communication becomes impossible, and one of two outcomes occurs. The first is the realisation that we no longer have anything to talk about, resulting in immediate and extensive reparation to our bridge.
The second is the realisation that we need to talk - because we are aware that we are no longer feeling as we should - but when we try to enter dialogue, one person or the other is not listening. Dialogue is thus reduced to monologue. When I get better conversation from myself than I do from others, it's time to shed that other.
I bring to mind now the parents of an ex-girlfriend, one I was with some four or five years ago.
Their marriage had clocked up almost thirty years, and their relationship bridge had long since crumbled into its constituents. Conversation consisted of details of their respective working days, thereafter lulling into silence.
What, then, persists once silence dominates? Is it possible that a relationship can hang together on a series of non-verbal cues?
I imagine a situation where my partner finds me repellent, with the exception of one solitary gesture: say, the way I adjust my glasses when they fall down my nose. For my partner, that movement brings about a feeling of delight, passion, and love.
Can the weight of that delight, passion and love negate the loathing and pity apparent at all other times? I'll try to answer that question later....
