Jason’s Life

I think there’s three things that are important to a successfully relationship — The body, the mind, and the spirit. If you can find each of these things in your relationship I think you’re well on your way to having a strong relationship. If any one of these particular elements is missing, that doesn’t mean you’re doomed to fail obviously, you just need the other two to make up for the missing element.

The Body

The body has to do with all the physical aspects of a relationship. At the beginning this would refer to the physical attraction you have with the person you’re interested in and as the relationship progresses, this will also refer to the other physical things that happen. How good the kissing is, how compatible you are sexually, and if all your physical wants and needs are being satisfied. In most relationships, this is the first thing that people use to gauge if a relationship is going to work out.

The Mind

The mind deals with all the mental and emotional aspects of your partnership. The mental aspect basically refers to how much you enjoy communicating with the other person on a day to day basis. This doesn’t strictly mean the intelligence level of your partner, although that would definitely be a factor, this is more about the way they approach problems and conversations. The emotional side refers to if the significant other falls within your own personal “boundaries” — Are they too needy? Too shy? Too uncaring? To fragile… Basically this all boils down to if you’re attracted to someone’s personality. I figure this is the second part that people look for in a long-term partner.

The Spirit

Of the three different ideals I’m trying to outline here, this is definitely the most difficult to explain. The best way that I can explain it is that most people need to be with someone that have the same sort of beliefs and life-outlook that you do (or lack of beliefs as the case might be). I don’t mean this strictly in the what-religion-are-you sense, but more as a combination of the religious, supernatural, spiritual, and fate beliefs of person you are seeing. For example, I don’t think it’s necessary for all the Catholics to find themselves another nice Catholic, but I think it is important that if you do believe in the existence of God, or reincarnation, or nothingness, that you find someone who feels along the same lines. And of course, of the three, this is the last thing that people generally look for.

The interesting thing is each of these does a very good job of complimenting the other. If you love someone’s personality you’ll find yourself more attracted to the person’s physical appearance, and if you can totally “get” a person and agree with their perspective on life you will realise that a lot of their possibly annoying habits just aren’t really that big of a deal. If you have your own thoughts on what it takes for a successful relationship, please share . A popular saying I’ve heard over and over again is “Never go to bed angry,” and I think that’s probably pretty important.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 29th, 2005 at 1:31 am and is filed under General, Ideas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.