Over Drinks In A Cuban Cafe
* The names have been changed to protect the guilty!
Over drinks in a Cuban café, after exhausting talk of Zuma, Zimbabwe, and Xenophobia, the discussion turned to relationships.
The table was mostly people I didn’t know so I got to have a fairly private conversation with a younger friend of mine named Sarah who recently ended a confusing and complicated affair. The relationship had gone on for a few months until she realised that he didn’t think they “were really together”, as he put it. This had come as a terrible shock to Sarah and, understandably, as a massive blow to her ego
“I think there must be something wrong with me,” she lamented, “all my friends are getting engaged or married and I can’t seem to manage even a medium-term liaison!”
The friends she was referring to weren’t older than twenty-three and the ones I’d met certainly didn’t seem ready for marriage.
“What are they basing their marriages on?” I asked.
“They say their partners know them so well and that they were made for each other and I suppose they’re basing it all on love.”
I laughed, “You can’t base something as long-term as marriage on something as abstract as love. Can one of them even define love?”
“Well,” Sarah scrunched up her nose in that cute way, “Robyn says that Simon loves her no matter what, but I don’t believe it. I mean, unconditional love would mean that if your boyfriend shagged your sister or best friend you’d still love them.”
“Some people are like that,” I said, “they just keep going back for more and keep getting hurt over and over again by the same person, all in the name of love.”
“Yes, but is that love or attachment? And to love someone who hurts you really badly would mean that you must hate yourself! Unconditional love is really just a nice myth. No one, not even your parents, loves you without expectation or exception.”
We’d had a few cocktails and our rather reasoned discussion was moving into self-righteous indignation.
“The problem,” I announced, my finger in the air and almost getting to my feet, “is that people don’t know the difference between love and passion. When they get over it and the relationship is based solely on their love, which is really just passion, it crumbles into dust!”
“Yes,” elaborated Sarah, “and people don’t fall in love with you but an imagined idea of who they think you are! If I fancy someone I’ll try to be who I think they’ll like, and they’re often doing the same thing! So for the first couple of months our relationship is based primarily on lies!”
The mojitos were flowing and as our conversation got louder it started attracting the attention of others around the table.
“Relationships take work!” stated someone rather tritely (I think his name was Steve) and then added, “For a man a successful marriage means learning when to keep your mouth shut!” It seemed to be sound advice for him, anyway. He spouted a few more chauvinistic clichés but thankfully his attention soon wandered and Sarah and I got back to our conversation.
Sarah rolled her eyes, “I suppose everyone has an opinion.”
“He’s right, you know,” I said nodding my head at the drunken Steve, “relationships do take work. ‘It’s not always rainbows and butterflies, it’s compromise that moves us along’!”
“Hmm,” she said, “that’s corny, but cute.”
“It’s Maroon 5, actually.”
Our conversation was now loaded with exclamation marks! Sarah ordered two more mojitos and a round of Jagermeister. The last time I’d been this drunk I came up with the idea of laminated books so you could read in the shower! I wondered just how much crap I was talking this time.
“After me and so-and-so broke up,” she said, “I became obsessed with something I imagined I’d done wrong! It was tearing me up and then a friend of mine gave me one of those books.”
“What books?” I asked.
“Those books,” she said, “that tell you to just get over it and get on with your life. I read it and I suppose some of the stuff applied to me but how can there be a stock standard formula for every relationship in the world?”
“There isn’t,” I said banging my fist on the table, “because everyone has their own history! It’s our past relationships that dictate how we deal with our present ones! It’s called baggage! It’s real!”
“That’s true,” said Sarah, also thumping the table, “and you can’t start a new relationship if your mind is still stuck in an old one. You need to get over the last one first! You can’t have a ghost hanging around haunting the place!”
“And if you’re in a relationship now,” I added, “you’ve got to realise that your partner has a past and that it’s going to have a say in their actions and words.”
“Indeed!” Sarah added.
We both smiled smugly. It seemed as though together we’d solved the world’s problems in only a few drinks time. Imagine if we put our magnificent minds to the challenge of international politics!
Sarah summed it up, “The closest we can get to unconditional love is that nine times out of ten you put your partner’s needs above your own and, if you’re lucky, vice versa.”
“True,” I added, “and we can only reach that stage when we stop and look at our partner and accept them and all their baggage and just try to work through the problems we’ll inevitably come across.”
I got up to go to the bathroom and by the time I was back Sarah was involved in a heated debate with Steve about something or other. I was in a kind of fun, argumentative mood, so I ordered another drink and jumped right in.
The next day, my head hurting, I nevertheless couldn’t get our conversation out of my mind. It made me think of my relationship and of all of my friends’ relationships. Passion is certainly a good thing in a romantic coupling, but so many people focus only on the ardour and never on the fellowship.
The fire of passion fades, while the warmth of friendship only grows stronger.
Over drinks in a Cuban café, after exhausting talk of Zuma, Zimbabwe, and Xenophobia, the discussion turned to relationships.
The table was mostly people I didn’t know so I got to have a fairly private conversation with a younger friend of mine named Sarah who recently ended a confusing and complicated affair. The relationship had gone on for a few months until she realised that he didn’t think they “were really together”, as he put it. This had come as a terrible shock to Sarah and, understandably, as a massive blow to her ego
“I think there must be something wrong with me,” she lamented, “all my friends are getting engaged or married and I can’t seem to manage even a medium-term liaison!”
The friends she was referring to weren’t older than twenty-three and the ones I’d met certainly didn’t seem ready for marriage.
“What are they basing their marriages on?” I asked.
“They say their partners know them so well and that they were made for each other and I suppose they’re basing it all on love.”
I laughed, “You can’t base something as long-term as marriage on something as abstract as love. Can one of them even define love?”
“Well,” Sarah scrunched up her nose in that cute way, “Robyn says that Simon loves her no matter what, but I don’t believe it. I mean, unconditional love would mean that if your boyfriend shagged your sister or best friend you’d still love them.”
“Some people are like that,” I said, “they just keep going back for more and keep getting hurt over and over again by the same person, all in the name of love.”
“Yes, but is that love or attachment? And to love someone who hurts you really badly would mean that you must hate yourself! Unconditional love is really just a nice myth. No one, not even your parents, loves you without expectation or exception.”
We’d had a few cocktails and our rather reasoned discussion was moving into self-righteous indignation.
“The problem,” I announced, my finger in the air and almost getting to my feet, “is that people don’t know the difference between love and passion. When they get over it and the relationship is based solely on their love, which is really just passion, it crumbles into dust!”
“Yes,” elaborated Sarah, “and people don’t fall in love with you but an imagined idea of who they think you are! If I fancy someone I’ll try to be who I think they’ll like, and they’re often doing the same thing! So for the first couple of months our relationship is based primarily on lies!”
The mojitos were flowing and as our conversation got louder it started attracting the attention of others around the table.
“Relationships take work!” stated someone rather tritely (I think his name was Steve) and then added, “For a man a successful marriage means learning when to keep your mouth shut!” It seemed to be sound advice for him, anyway. He spouted a few more chauvinistic clichés but thankfully his attention soon wandered and Sarah and I got back to our conversation.
Sarah rolled her eyes, “I suppose everyone has an opinion.”
“He’s right, you know,” I said nodding my head at the drunken Steve, “relationships do take work. ‘It’s not always rainbows and butterflies, it’s compromise that moves us along’!”
“Hmm,” she said, “that’s corny, but cute.”
“It’s Maroon 5, actually.”
Our conversation was now loaded with exclamation marks! Sarah ordered two more mojitos and a round of Jagermeister. The last time I’d been this drunk I came up with the idea of laminated books so you could read in the shower! I wondered just how much crap I was talking this time.
“After me and so-and-so broke up,” she said, “I became obsessed with something I imagined I’d done wrong! It was tearing me up and then a friend of mine gave me one of those books.”
“What books?” I asked.
“Those books,” she said, “that tell you to just get over it and get on with your life. I read it and I suppose some of the stuff applied to me but how can there be a stock standard formula for every relationship in the world?”
“There isn’t,” I said banging my fist on the table, “because everyone has their own history! It’s our past relationships that dictate how we deal with our present ones! It’s called baggage! It’s real!”
“That’s true,” said Sarah, also thumping the table, “and you can’t start a new relationship if your mind is still stuck in an old one. You need to get over the last one first! You can’t have a ghost hanging around haunting the place!”
“And if you’re in a relationship now,” I added, “you’ve got to realise that your partner has a past and that it’s going to have a say in their actions and words.”
“Indeed!” Sarah added.
We both smiled smugly. It seemed as though together we’d solved the world’s problems in only a few drinks time. Imagine if we put our magnificent minds to the challenge of international politics!
Sarah summed it up, “The closest we can get to unconditional love is that nine times out of ten you put your partner’s needs above your own and, if you’re lucky, vice versa.”
“True,” I added, “and we can only reach that stage when we stop and look at our partner and accept them and all their baggage and just try to work through the problems we’ll inevitably come across.”
I got up to go to the bathroom and by the time I was back Sarah was involved in a heated debate with Steve about something or other. I was in a kind of fun, argumentative mood, so I ordered another drink and jumped right in.
The next day, my head hurting, I nevertheless couldn’t get our conversation out of my mind. It made me think of my relationship and of all of my friends’ relationships. Passion is certainly a good thing in a romantic coupling, but so many people focus only on the ardour and never on the fellowship.
The fire of passion fades, while the warmth of friendship only grows stronger.
