Do you think we are all fumbling our way through relationships?

It couldn’t be any other way. There is no “Human: The How To Handbook” so we are all funbling our way through life. When we encounter another, we both join in our fun together.

I’d love to be able to say that there is a certain set way to ensure a successful relationship, but as i am learning, there isn’t. I think relationships help us learn, grow, and love at the same time. They teach us lessons.

Each of us spends much of out time fumbling our way through relationships and our percentage of successful satisfactory relations is rather low.

Any thing you can learn that enables you to skip many of the common mistakes people make because of ignorance of the subject matter, improves your changes of success.

Read books by appropriately educated authors and ask appropriate questions and you may have better outcomes.

totally agree. everyone just has to try as hard as they can to make relationships do good things for themselves.

@YARNLADY on the contrary, many who have recognized this fact have gone on to write books about relationships. Some are fiction, some are intended as a study of what works and what doesn’t. Many have written specifically for the people who don’t know what they’re doing or who come from broken families or from this perspective or from another.

The bible is one of the oldest books we have that holds stories of relationships and ideas of how to go about them. I consider this book fairly outdated, of course. So, today, I find we can consult any number of tv shows, books, movies, and song lyrics that contain all kinds of great ideas about how to go about relationships.

We’re all very similar creatures and the advice and experience of others goes a long way in helping us define a version of relationship happiness. It’s a good idea to pay close attention to the words and ideas of others, even from pop culture.

It ain’t all that much fun.

No plan. Just treat each other well, try to have some fun along the way and hopefully you won’t die alone.

Yes – I agree!

Relationships do well if there is mutual affection and respect. Someone has to be respectable, and likeable in order to be regarded as such. If that happens simultaneously, a good relationship is possible. Often enough, just being yourself will attract people similar to you who render the above judgement-the birds of a feather principle. Sometimes, you admire and respect someone, but in their eyes you fall short. If their judgement of you truly matters to you, it might require some personal adjustment. If it does not matter you won’t bother.

If you want to be able to work your way perfectly through your relationship, just come to me. I’ll give you perfect advice. Just don’t expect me to be able to apply that advice to my own relationship. ;-0

—I love the mispelling! “funbling”

I don’t know – I’ve never really felt that way, about any of my romantic relationships but I was always very clear with my partners as to my standards and principles and philosophy – especially in my current relationship, communication is so important, we check in with each other pretty often, ask each other what else we can do to make our life better – life may be crazy out there and our future uncertain in terms of finances or where we’ll live and work but our relationship is the one steady, solid thing we have.

I really wish that there was a tech manual for human relationships, as I do very poorly trying to “wing it”. My only success was with a lovely lady who understood my inability to understand nonverbal cues. We had excellent communication, but left nothing unsaid. To others it must have seemed that we were very blunt, but our openness was what made the relationship so successful.

With any luck, the government will regulate relationships, and everything will finally be OK

@josie ha, ha, I love that answer.

The thing that most struck me in your narrative is “my moves.” That sounds like everything you do is calculated. I don’t know how you can have a real relationship like that.

Yup.

@ninjacolin Ha, ha, the Bible as a “how to book”; how absurd. There’s always You, The Owner’s Manual by Dr Oz.

I don’t feel like I’m fumbling my way through my relationship. I go with the flow of where our relationship takes us. My husband and I both agree that we work very well together and things just happen naturally between us.

@YARNLADY :) yea, i reckon the bible is one of the first top selling self help books. A lot of the material is quite good too. My head happens to be filled with a lot of it from youth. I’ll be stuck with those memories for the rest of my life I suppose. really, there’s quite a bit of good stuff in there, i can’t exactly advise anyone to avoid it all together. I prefer other books though.

@josie, I like that comment. you reminded me of a lesson a friend taught me: Relationships are an anarchy.

I dont know… I kind of had this issue in the past with a different relationship, but ever since ive been with trance24 (little over 4 years now) this has never really been an issue. Everything has been very natural between us, there is no real thinking about things like this. We’ve always just clicked and gotten along very well. I found as long as you’re loving to your SO and treat them with respect things generally go quite well :P I would say we have a very happy/healthy relationship.

i honestly couldn’t tell ya the last time we got in any sort of argument and not once in the all 4 years has there ever been any sort of fight that left us mad at each other for more than 30 min. We always inevitably end up feeling absolutely horrible about not talking to each other, kiss and make up, settle our differences and move on.

Actually, there is new evidence of what works in relationships—and it is being taught in seminars. Here is some data.

I really just prefer to fumble! :-/ Relationships IMO are for the more masochistic types, too much pain for me…… I’ll stick to fumbling.

I don’t feel like I am fumbling, not anymore. When I was younger I might have described it that way. I also don’t like when people call relationships “work.”

@perspicacious judgmental much? Of course I try to make conscious decisions about my behavior, if that is calculating – guilty as charged. Could you be superimposing your own behavior in relationships?

@SuperMouse They were your words.

@perspicacious yes indeed, my words – to which you ascribed you own judgmental and negative connotations, which is why I am wondering still if you might be superimposing your own behavior within relationships.

No. I’m not calculating or manipulative. If I had to plan “moves” within a relationship it would not be real, and neither would I. If it doesn’t work with both people being themselves, then it can’t last for long. The real you will eventually surface.

@perspicacious either you have misunderstood the point I made, or you are ascribing your own judgmental and negative connotations to my words. Read the question again and you will see I said nothing about “planning moves.” www.dictionary.com defines move as “to take action; proceed” that was what I was speaking of. I find it incredibly intriguing that you are insisting on defining moves as manipulation and assuming that it means neither party to a relationship is being him or herself. Out of curiosity are you currently in a long term relationship?