
As with coding and management and matters of finance and
marketing, relationships have a learning curve. You learn the basics of “relationshiptiva”.
How to deal with sexual etiquette, mundane everyday things, scheduling, and
appropriate meetings with close friends, and some equitable plan for who’s
supposed to pay for dinner or wash the dishes this time. These
are basics. And if you’re learning them in your thirties, it’s going to be much
harder.
Because in a few years, however young you think yourself
(how old is thirty, really?), you will be approaching midlife and you won’t be
as adaptable as you once were. There are reasons for this, many of which are
biological. Your body won’t respond the same way. You’ll have knee problems
that didn’t exist when you were running sophomore track. You can’t stay out
till 4:00 a.m. anymore, because now the same alcohol intake has somehow
resulted in a hangover that’s a multiple of what it once was — and you will
never ever have appreciated a nice soft pillow more. And if you think you can
fend these things off with diet and exercise, you should probably buy a good
solid book on the aging process or find a professional athlete over the age of
thirty to talk to. They will speak of massage therapists and bone density and
necessary nutritional supplements. You can mitigate these things, but you can’t
entirely avoid them.
Relationships are too important to learn how to face those
issues at the last minute. You have to go through a few of them to know how to
properly conduct one. You have to fail. You have to date a few terrible people.
You have to be the asshole yourself sometimes. You have to learn how not to be
the asshole. You have to spend tons of time together — so much time that
sometimes you feel indistinguishable from each other and you find that both
reassuring and disturbing. You have to have a vicious fight and know it’s not
ending you and that you’re going to have to work to repair it and that the
effort is worthwhile. These things take time.
Work at a relationship the way you work at your work.
Spend the time. Make the effort.