Fence Peeping

Relationships, and how other people navigate them, fascinate me and I’m sure I’m not alone.

Of course, on one level, it satisfies our voyeuristic impulse to hear about the ins and outs (minds out of the gutter please) of somebody else’s relationship.

We mentally to compare their relationship to our own, either to depress the hell out of ourselves or revel in smug satisfaction. But I think there is a great deal more to it than that.

I don’t really want to make the sweeping statement that none of us really know what we’re doing when it comes to relationships… but I fear it may be true.

Where do we get our ideas about how relationships are supposed to work? Popular culture, I suppose. Books and TV and films show us images of happy, unhappy or somewhere in between. The problem is that, to badly paraphrase Jean Rhys, books, movies and TV have “shape” - they have a narrative structure that ensures a beginning, middle and an end. Things happen for a reason. In real life things happen, of course, but they don’t necessarily happen for a good reason, follow a story or take us closer towards a climax (what did I say about the gutter? You disgust me…) or a happy ending.

In real life we just muddle about, wondering why our relationships bear no resemblance to what we read or see. In desperation we talk to our friends, trying to catch a little glimpse of what is going on in their backyard so that we can better understand the mess that is our own.

Despite clocking up a few solid years in the relationship game I don’t think it ever gets easier to figure out what you want and how you can achieve it. Despite my best efforts my life does not resemble those I read about or see on the big screen and I still have no idea how other people make these things look so easy.

I don't really have a solution here (I'm like the Bible: all questions and no answers). I’m not sure if we all need to be more honest about how fucking hard some of this stuff is to figure out or if we need just need books, movies and TVs that are a bit more true to life but one or other would be nice. In the meantime I’ll just continue to peep over the fence.

UPDATE: If you’re into fence peeping you should check out this single life blog. Despite the title it’s really about relationships and it fascinates me.

UPDATE TWO: The spacing is all messed up here. I don't know why blogspot hates me but apparently I killed its Mum or something.