[SummerChild]

So James, will you share some of the behaviors that are aligned with having coping skills? I hear you but it's kind of abstract. Can you bring it home for me?
SC

Originally posted by James
I am not sure that many people have the social skills to keep a romantic relatationship going for a long time. And I think the expectations are so much higher.

In the beginning everyone is on their best behavior, we are charming, clever, affable, and the men act romantically.

For most people thats an aberation to their everyday life. Much like people that are extremely nice at Christmas and not so nice the rest of the year.

In order to keep romance in a relationship you have to posses both excellent social skills and coping skills.

You have to be able to sustain a charming affable veneer the vast majority of time. In fact that has to be essentially who you are.

And you need to be kind of person that constantly does the little things that differentiate a love affair from other types of friendship.

Most people just aren't that way, so they allow the relationship to fall into a comfortable mediocrity punctuated by occassional attempts to "restore the passion" which means they make an effort to do what they should have never stopped doing.

That comfortable mediocrity is what most people call love.

Your coping skills rank right up with your social skills in importance. By coping skills I am referring to your ability to deal with the everyday upsets and stress common to life.

IF your coping mechanisms make you unhappy a significant portion of the time, or make you angry easy or in other ways make your partner's life unhappy . . . then you have become a stressor to your partner which erodes the romantic part of your relationship.

Seriously, the vast majority of people I know have no effective means of coping with stress, pressure, tension, life or whatever you want to call it.

So they act out in ways they are usually not aware of that slowly erodes their relationships because their partner picks up on the unhappiness and it makes them unhappy.

Ok I am kind off on a tangent . . . but I keep thinking that unless we start training people to deal with their own lives better, and then expand their social skills until they can behave towards people in a positive way that elicits the reactions they want; we are just going to have a lot unsuccessful relationships.

Unsuccessful if they leave, and unsuccessful if they stay.

And given that expectations are so much higher today . . . no matter how much people sugar coat, they will know in the deep dark sadness of their soul that their relationship is a pale imitation of the brightness and romance that they both desire and could possess if their life skills were a little sharper and their courage was a little greater.