In Continuum.

First off, I don't think I have ever had two words starting with "Q" in a title of a blog entry here before, and I am very proud of that for some reason. Trivial things, always the little things in life that I should be thankful for. Anyway, a recent event in my life has caused quite a stir in my train of mental thoughts, though the details shall remain ambiguous and untold. I don't suppose I am ready to tell the world about it, though I shall not lie when questioned about it at all. It concerns the idea of quality and quantity in terms of relationship and how people view it, and how some people in my life seem to think that quantity equals to quality, something that is completely untrue. This is merely the tip of the iceberg though, and the rest shall be very well hidden under the breaking waves. Like I said, I don't think I am ready to tell, and that you guys are ready to know. Or rather, I'm sure all of you nosy people would want to find out, but I don't think I want to answer that kind of questions just yet. Let's just say that there is, or was, someone who questioned the quality of my relationship based solely upon the amount of time that I have been with my significant other. It was a passing remark regarding a bigger picture, but that was also a remark that I felt to be the most offensive, out of everything else.

How do you begin to qualify a relationship that isn't yours, though, how do you start to judge whether or not it is working. There are many ways to do that, and they are mostly based on your own merits and not anybody else's. We all make judgments and come to our own conclusions about someone else's relationships, simply because we are giving in to the in-built desire for us humans to speculate about something. It is the driving force behind the gambling culture around the world where we speculate on the winning team and the winning score. It doesn't matter what kind of speculations you are making, but the point is that we all love to guess what happens next. To predict the future and feel good about ourselves when something does happen. You get to say "I told you so", because that makes you feel better about your current state of, well, whatever. Especially in relationships, we try to judge if a couple is going to last or not, because we seem to relish in the idea that we secretly get to tell them that you've been predicting its demise for a long time. Though, not all of these speculations are unfounded, because there are signs that could point to a potential toxic relationship. We've seen and heard stories, so we more or less know. It's like watching a soccer game that has five minutes left on the clock, and the opposing team is six points ahead of yours. It's not that it is impossible for your side to win, but the chances are next to nothing.

There are little signs that you can tell at times, when you know someone else's relationship isn't necessarily headed for the right direction. More often than not, that speculation is going to come true a few months or years down the road, but sometimes it is just false alarm. Every time you hear about an argument, you think about the possibilities of that event escalating into something bigger than it is supposed to be. After all, people have broken up and got divorced for a lot less, so why not a petty argument? Anyway, maybe it is the way that they sit next to each other at parties, or the way that one of them replies to the other via text message. You can tell by the littlest things, and from there you place your bets and you see what is going to happen next. Quality of a relationship seems to be something we love to speculate about, because we are all in some forms of it. Maintaining a relationship can be so difficult at times, and there are times when you just want someone else around to act as some kinda contrast to yourself. You know, to make you feel better about your relationship. You don't have to deny that, because it is the truth. Even in everything else in life, having a contrast that is of a duller shade of color makes yours stand out so much more.

We qualify relationships, we give them a mental rating, maybe something from one to ten, with one being on the verge of breaking up and ten being, well, your happy grandparents who are still living together after fifty years. Anyway, how do you begin to qualify a relationship based on how long two people have been together though. I mean, as accurate as some of the signs may be, there are times when they just don't add up no matter how you see it. I think it is totally unfair to judge a relationship based on how long two people have been together. I wonder which part of your logic chain tells you that if two people have been staying together for a long time, it makes them the "perfect pair". It doesn't even work that way, and it doesn't make them stronger than a relationship that has been going on for, say, five years. The duration of the relationship has nothing to do with the health of a relationship at all, I feel, and it doesn't mean that your relationship is better just because you've been in it longer than mine. There is always that honeymoon period at the beginning when everybody is courteous and polite. Then the nasty habits come in, and then the arguments about the trivialities. But it doesn't have to spell the end of things, you know, it doesn't have to be what it all comes down to.

I just hate it when somebody decides to say that your relationship isn't strong enough, that it isn't mature enough, based solely upon the fact that it hasn't been going on for very long. I understand the concept of a honeymoon period, I understand because I've been through a period of time when it was all rainbows and bunnies. I know what it is like for that period of time to end and the rest of those nasty things to begin. I know all of those, and I know that it is too early to judge a great many things. However, it is offensive to say that "your relationship is not mature" just because of quantity. It shouldn't happen that way at all, because I know of longer relationships being completely dysfunctional as well. Haven't you seen odd couples in living rooms of a HDB flat, just sitting there and watching television without saying anything to one another. When you pass by their home for the second time, they are doing the exact same thing as what they were doing when you passed it by the very first time? There are couples like that everywhere, the kind that stays together for "might as well" reasons. They tell you that since they have been together for an X amount of time, they might as well continue with it. When has "might as well" being the reason to be with somebody in the first place?

All I am saying is that quantity does not equal to qualify. Just because you are in a longer relationship, it doesn't mean that you are better than mine. Things solidify, things become more concrete, and relationships become stronger if done right - sure. You might have done it well enough, but weren't you also at the one year mark so long ago? We have to pick our way through this, try to find the best way to maintain it. Solidifying does not necessarily have to mean inflexibility at all in this case, because a heart was never meant to harden. I don't know, I just feel like I need to get it out of my system somehow, let it be known that it isn't about how far we have come or how much more we have to go. It is about right now, and every inch of a relationship should be about the "now", you know. The present is what I am working at, the present tense, what is happening at this very moment. I'm not exactly the type of person to say that I "live for the moment", because that statement seems somewhat passe and pretentious. In relationships though, I focus on the "now", and right now I am very comfortable with who I am, and what I have. I seriously do not need any value judgments by somebody who hasn't really even asked about the situation in the very first place, you know.

Like, it's not like you've been there to ask about it, you hardly even know about what goes on. It'd be more accurate for people who know to make that kind of judgments, because they've seen where it was at and where it is now. You, on the other hand, you were never really around to ask me about it, and you hardly even know her name. It isn't in your position to make assumptions about my relationships when you haven't been there before. Get off your high horse, and realize for once that having been in a long relationship does not necessarily mean that you are happily ever after either. You cannot say that mine isn't as awesome as yours, because that is not how it works, that's not what we know yet. We don't know, she and I, and neither do you. It is completely unfair, and it makes me angry that someone would try to say something like that to me. It is a lousy judgment, and I suppose it will just give me that much more pleasure when I come back, in return, to tell you that "I told you so" by beating the odds. It's not like my relationship right now is any more different from the one that you were in back then, because we all have to go through our first years. How many happily married couples do you know that are happy with each other on a daily basis anyway. I don't know of many, and neither do you. So just because your formula has worked out so far, it doesn't mean that it does for everybody else. We interact in different ways, and our relationships are radically different. So please, don't try to qualify my relationship by basing your judgments on the time it has elapsed. All I know, at this point, is that I am happy, and I am very thankful to have this person in this part of my life. No guarantees about forever, but at least right now, I have a great companion to walk with.