Couple Photography-The Foundation of a Strong Relationship
For the last few months I have been focusing exclusively on topics relating to family photography. Recently, Esmeralda and I have decided that while we absolutely love working with families, and we will continue to do in the future, our primary point of interest and our focus moving forward will be on the parents and the relationship they have built. As a married couple, Esmeralda and I have been through a lot. While we are still very young, early thirties, we have been together for nearly 16 years. We started dating as children and have made every mistake there is to make in a relationship before figuring out what worked for us. Fortunately for us, one of the very few things we have in common is our un-willingness to quit. This was probably the single greatest factor in why we are still together today. That un-willingness to quit forced us to find alternate paths forward rather than throwing in the towel. It has been a rough ride, but we have taken our bumps and have learned our lessons and have come out the other end knowing how to work with each other in a way that is easily received by the other. If you have been following along on this weekly blog, you will know that I will not be talking about how amazing we are, mostly because we aren’t any more amazing than anyone else. I will however try to convey some lessons that we have learned over the course of our relationship that is both counter to a lot of the “wisdom” floating around out there and has proven to help Esmeralda and I through some rough times in our relationship. So this week I want to talk about the importance of the individual identity in a strong relationship.
Throughout my life I have been told that once a person is married they need to shift themselves to be fully part of that relationship. They need to live in service of the other and learn to truly let their needs go to ensure the success of the marriage. The term “compromise” is thrown around a lot in these conversations as well, though what they really mean is that you both agree on something mildly enjoyable but ultimately unfulfilling to either of you. Maybe this works for you but I’ll be honest, in my life and relationship with Esmeralda it has been proven to be complete bullshit. The problem in my marriage is that we believed it so deeply that it took us years to figure out that it was CAUSING strife in our lives. We would constantly fight over the kids and fight about what we thought was right. We would bicker about our expectations that the other was not fulfilling and scoff at the idea that we were to blame for any of the struggles. Sometimes the arguments would get nasty, we would say horrible things in the heat of the battle that we would not only regret later, but not even mean in the first place. After doing this for what seemed like a life time, we started to come to the realization that this was not the life that we wanted to live. This set us down the path to figure out what it was that we were missing that was causing these feelings.
When we boiled it down, and this took years of work to figure this out, we realized that we never learned to be INDIVIDUALS. When we got together we were 17 and 18 respectively. We were children. We never had the time as adults to learn who we were before partnering up with someone that complimented us. Additionally, being kids we were far from being mature. The people that we were are not recognizable to us now. We were needing to both grow up and grown together. Fast forward to today and we have nearly been together in life for as long as we were apart! Were not in our 50s, were in our 30s! What we ultimately found was that we had committed ourselves to each other but we completely neglected ourselves. No amount of affection or love from the other would ever be enough because we didn’t even know what we needed or wanted from the other person! After coming to that realization we began trying to build a life outside of our family. We would grab some drinks with friends or hang out with work colleagues. Personally I used that time to be very focused on career building and started several hobbies, a few of which I still do to this day. Over time this helped us build an identity out side of our marriage, and our children. It allowed us to grow and explore our own interests with out concern that the other wasn’t interested. (This point is important to me. Im fairly sure that Esmeralda waits until I voice an opinion or and interest so that she can take an opposite stance from me. She says she doesn’t but I’m onto her games lol) More importantly it created a deeper and more individual for the other to enjoy. What we found was that our differing interests were great discussion points. We began to spend hours chatting and connecting rather than mindlessly staring at the TV. This led to us going to the store or to run small errands together, something that we never would have done. We started WANTING to be around each other again. Nowadays it is very common for us to talk to each other on the evening commute home, sometimes for over an hour just so we can have a bit of uninterrupted us time before the kids get involved. (This is a huge deal for us! If you haven’t figured it out yet, I talk a lot. Like a lot, a lot. Yet we have healed and grown our relationship to such an extent that she will WILLINGLY sit and listen to me for hours at a time!) We will often get up early to go to Pike Place Market to do some street photography before the kids get up. We just love spending time together now, even if what we are doing is mundane.
And as odd as it seems, this all started with us taking a step back from each other to focus on who WE WANTED to be. Building yourself into the person that you want to be is no easy feat to be sure. But avoiding that task all together is not a recipe for success. It ultimately led us down a path to understanding what we each wanted out of life and out of each other. We were able to create our personal list of priorities that we could then work to blend together. Because the truth of the matter is that those things I had been told about relationships, while bullshit, were not completely wrong. They were just only half of the equation. In order to have a healthy relationship you most certainly need to put some of your priorities further down the list, but you in no way need to abandon them. You will need to compromise (by doing things your partner enjoys because they enjoy them and not demanding things to only be your way) and communicate. You will need to listen and not just hear. However, you must also not lose sight of the fact that you are your own person and your strengths can strengthen your relationship just as your weaknesses can weaken it. With that said, I would like to revise that advice that I received all those years ago to more closely align to what I have expired to be true. The key to a strong relationship is to serve the needs of your partner while realizing that you have needs of your own. You should work on strengthening your strengths that most compliment your partners weaknesses. By doing this you will not only further develop yourself but you will necessarily become more aware of the strengths of your partner and will come to appreciate the way in which it complements you and your relationship.
This is the start of a new line of thoughts, all surrounding navigating life as a couple. I hope that you found value in my thoughts on this and that you will stick around next week for more. In the mean time, what do you think about this idea? Do you think I’m off base here or do you think that knowing who you are is vital to being part of a relationship? I would love to hear your thoughts down in the comments!
-Dan
