I’m not against getting out of an abusive situation or knowing when to walk away because of fundamental compatibility issues, but there’s a trend that I often see that’s too black and white for me and that I can’t always say I’m OK with. For lack of a better term, I’m going to call it Toxic Relationship Perfectionism.
How often do we see snippets and IG’s, Tik Toks and FB posts about If your man ain’t X, Y, Z leave him. And so on. While at first blush I’m ok with this, it turns the issue into a black and white thing of ‘if your significant other isn’t perfect leave’. Relationships aren’t a binary thing, it isn’t a check box in one corner and a zero in the other. We aren’t static creatures and are constantly changing. Nobody is perfect but we always push the idea that if someone has a failing then it’s time to go. If you look at something from both sides, I’m sure each partner has something that doesn’t always work for the other. We’ve all fallen victim to the powers of our own egos and have toxic periods in life. The real question is how do you go about addressing those issues. We constantly like to throw out inspirational quips but we forget that there’s always real work involved in maintaining, repairing and sustaining a relationship. We choose not to mention the need for constructive communication and facing the difficult parts of life/relationships together and doing so in a productive way. The perfectionist message that I see is almost as bad as the overused prince charming and fairy tail ideology of the past, just dressed up to look a bit more ‘woke’.
I’ll be honest, I don’t know that I’ll ever re-marry, not because I don’t believe in marriage or anything like that. It’s mostly because I realize there’s a lot I feel I still need to work on in order to be a reasonable spouse. I will always carry some of the baggage of my past marriage with me, but the question is, is it baggage that informs my life in the future or drags me down and prevents me from going forward. If we take the typical social-media view though I’m an imperfect spouse, and should therefore be avoided at all costs. But then who is a perfect spouse? Does this marital unicorn really exist?
It would be my hope that people don’t let social media and the usual ‘click-bait’ culture we’ve developed overly shape their beliefs. Don’t assume that things are absolute. Go out there, be honest about what works and doesn’t work, be willing to communicate, even when it’s uncomfortable.
