What is a relationship? This question might be as difficult as, what is love? I did ask my family and friends, ‘what is love?’, and the answers that they gave me were contradictory. Some said it is hell; some said it is heaven; some said it is blissful; some said it is a torture. Instead of asking ‘what is love’, now I ask ‘what is relationship?’, because the word ‘Love’ is simply way too abstract.

Relationship consists of two persons, more than two persons, that would be called a community. The root word for relationship is relate, so in order to have a relationship you have to relate, and to relate, based on Cambridge dictionary, you have to be connected with something. Furthermore, the definition of connect is bring together or into contact so that a real or notional link is established. Now we slowly grasp the meaning of this simple word. Some audiences might start rolling their eyes, berating why on earth I had to write two paragraphs to explain this and spending the first one minutes to explain something that they already knew. I thought it was a simple word too, but in reality it is not.

A friend of mine – Young, he committed to a relationship roughly one year ago and from time to time we would chat about how things are going in our life. Thanks to all the conversations I have had with him, I am able to witness the process of a relationship. Young is quite a philosophical minded person, he has his own idealistic way of living and fully immersed in his own world. He uses the word separatism to explain his belief, he believes that everyone is a separate form, and he should not interfere with others, vice versa others should not interfere with him too. The trigger that enacted his belief was from his childhood. He had lots of trauma when he was a child due to his mother’s emotional blackmail. As a result of that, as a young adult now, he is firm that he would not venture into anything that could cause any emotional blackmail. Separatism works.

I agree with him, because I was traumatised by my family too. Logically, to prevent that, I know I have to stop myself running into a relationship, so I would have less commitments and obligations that may lead to emotional blackmail. However, Young theoretically has said that too, but in reality he has a girlfriend – Sandra. At the beginning of his relationship with Sandra, Young was extremely optimistic about it, he enumerated all the similarities they had, and assured me that they would be a perfect couple. Personally, I do not believe any relationship would be perfect, the only perfect relationship comes from negotiations, compromise and bravery. But his optimism was overwhelming, so I believed in his judgement. I know that Sandra comes from a conservative Asian family which the concept of it is exactly opposite of Young’s ideology. A few weeks after their relationship started, Sandra took Young home and introduced to their parents. Via message, Young told me that her family was nice and friendly. Not very long after that, I was invited by Sandra to visit her hometown and had a chance to meet her parents too.

When I saw her family, immediately I knew that her family would be one of the problems Young would have to face, and I did tell him about my view, but still, fervid love blinds everything.

Time flies, one year has passed, Young started having argument with Sandra. The Argument always started like this.

“If I have a choice, I would not want to go back to your house” Young said quietly “You are my family, but they are not my family” he added.

Sandra was staring at him, because she did not know how to react. And based on this two sentences, we would gradually grasp how Young implemented his philosophy in reality.

The bitter conversation always ended with a sigh and a sense of helplessness. They would then move to their room quietly, next day they would wake up as if nothing happened last night. The same routine would happen at least twice a month particularly after every time Sandra went back to her house for a visit.

Relationship belongs to two persons, it would be really gruelling if it involves more than two persons, but in reality this is often not the case. Relationship is like spider web, A connects to B, B connects to C, and sometimes C connects to A. The scenario I have given above, I would analyse it in this way. A connected to B and did not realise that B actually had a lots of webs sticking to itself. And because of B those C to G are also sticking to A indirectly. In order to avoid C to G sticking to A, B could have stopped the connection, because B was the instigator and the sole connector to C to G; or A could have insisted that from the beginning, A would not want any webs to be sticked on it. Obviously, neither A or B did the above. Now A wants to escape from this tenacious network. My solution may be, B is strong enough to cut all the webs sticking to A; or A needs to reconcile all the relationships sticking to him one by one.

Young might have tried to establish a relationship, but there comes another problem. The second problem comes from the second facts. Real and notional links are needed in a relationship.

He did have an intention to build a relationship, but he did not decipher that there were needs to establish notional links between each other. The consequence of that was, Sandra’s parents did not agree with him, and he did not agree with them too, the only thing that was suppressing the disagreements is politeness. Fundamentally, they hold a completely different view, and Young did not have any negotiations with them. As a consequence of that, Sandra was always the middle man for both parties.

Our relationship needs to be simplified, and the simplification needs to be bilateral, not unilateral. If you really spend time thinking it thoroughly, you may find that relationship is never an easy task, because it always comes with people who do not understand the simple two facts that we have just discussed. By default, strong and healthy relationship does not come naturally, you have to put in a lot of effort to build it. To simplify my article, I would say if you want a simple life, do not commit yourself to a relationship.