As Good as it gets

A fairly recent arrival in the post got me thinking dot-dot-dot about relationships.

It is so easy to fall into comfort and routine, and subsequently lose the passion that ignited the relationship in the beginning, but I believe it is essential to keep lit the fire in your care.
So often relationships become visual fallacy; hollow and just for show. A sophistry to both the couple and the people around them.
The couple becomes as dead inside as Benjamin Barker. Chapter one becomes the end.

There is a certain lack of expectation that comes with long term relationships, if you let it. A pathos of sorts that allows couples to cease making an effort to impress their partners. The eagerness to be with each other all the time fades away and it somehow becomes a duty. A necessity instead of a necessity.
When do we lose the flutter, the tingle of first kisses? I think that is up to us. I never want to lose the soppy, sloppy, slushiness I feel in the presence of my love. I see it lost a lot and in a good way it inspires me.
And honestly; what is the point in being with someone who doesn’t induce breathlessness in us, who doesn’t make us feel alive?
When do stop devouring our partners, inhaling their words like cigarette smoke?

Relationships are difficult and they need constant nurturing, constant attention and communication. They are complicated but there are things you can make simple. For instance: the bickering and arguing over the mundane and unimportant. It can be helped with a little effort, the effort being patience and compassion and addressing the real reason you’re fighting, not simply because he arrived 5 minutes late or she keeps clogging the shower drain with her hair.
I have noticed lately that there are a lot of couples together because they are. And maybe what keeps them in this state is that they have the memory of the way love should feel. They remember when they first fell in love and they know they did so for a reason. There was something about the other person that resonated in them, something chemical, and something pure.
But somewhere along the line that is forgotten. They begin to tire of the very things they still found adorable a year into the relationship. Have they simply fallen “out of love” or is there just work to be done?
Honesty is so critical; otherwise you end up with a dress you can’t take back, a venue all paid for and 200 invitations sent out already: an expensive mistake.
Even worse: going through with the wedding anyway and wasting away your life for years. Warning: cliché ahead;
Life is too short.

All I know is I do not want that to happen to me and I get a little antsy when I see couples like this, who have accepted the state of just being, existing together for no other reason than that it is comfortable and safe.
They don’t grow together but apart and eventually they’re waking up to strangers.

I recall hearing this quote in a Woody Allen film long ago: “A relationship, I think, is like a shark. It has to constantly move forward or it dies.” And I’ve always remembered it and believed it.