
Originally Posted by
redbaron
*nods* At some point, it's not worth the work, especially when more effort makes things worse. It's a big mistake (and an easy one to make when you're young) to think that any two people can have a successful relationship if they work hard enough.
(just read through the entire thread and I will add): UNLESS they truly want to spend 95% of their life's energy on forcing a relationship to work, to the neglect of everything else in their life. I just spoke with a woman last night who was married for 33 years. They were in counseling for about half of those years and she said she always believed they could make things work, with just a different counselor, with just more talking, more trying, more work. And guess what. Things only got worse. I'm just saying that sometimes with the best of intentions and thinking that you would never stop working on a relationship, you get worn down to the point of no longer wanting to waste your life on something that's been dead for years already. What would keep two people WANTING to keep trying, at that point (and these two were both highly religious people as well)? There's no more balance, you're unhealthy neurotic wrecks. And for what? To say that you "stayed married"? Greeeat. You can visit them at the local psycho ward on their 50th anniversary.
I appreciate this notion of "you can do it if you only try". But things are never that simple.