Reza and I are not married yet but we have lived our lives as if we are. We have been together for almost 16 years now. It's actually insane to have been with someone for half of my life. What's more, we have known each other since I was 8 years old; we grew up together in the refugee camp AZC Oude Pekela in The Netherlands. Our childhood love followed shortly; I was 14 and he was 16 years old. Our commitment to our relationship grew as the years went by.
Everything went perfectly for us. For 6 long years, we didn't have a single disagreement or fight! And with pride, I would tell my friends, "We are such a good couple; we never fight."
This soon changed in 2015 when I moved to London to join Reza, and we started living together. Along the way, we learned more about each other's likes and dislikes, good habits and destructive ones, ups and downs, and the usual discoveries that each couple makes when they start sharing their sacred space and holy minutes in a day.
Before London, my understanding of a good relationship was the absence of disagreements and heated debates. I couldn't have been more wrong!
The trickiest and most challenging part of a relationship is handling disagreements and making your wishes known and acted upon. Yet, it's also the most rewarding part if you manage to do it well.
Whenever couples decide to get together and commit to their relationship, they are essentially signing an agreement. Hence the vows and official contract that we call marriage. Ninety-nine percent of the time, these vows are vague and unspecific.
Let's have a look at the most commonly used vow: "I will take you to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part. I will love and honour you all the days of my life." This ceremonial phrase pretty much says: "I will be with you until one of us dies."
On its own, it's a beautiful promise to make to your life partner. It condenses the gist of the partnership very well. But it leaves out all the small details over which the most brutal divorces happen. Of course, you're not supposed to bring your 80-page notebook filled with all the do's and don'ts to your wedding. This would be ridiculous. But you HAVE to go over your "relationship contract" and discuss the fine print as your relationship progresses. This also applies to couples who are not married yet or don't want to get married.
Not many people see their relationship as a contract. It takes away the romance and makes it sound corporate. But at the end of the day, it is a mutual contract that gets revised and developed over the years with input from both parties.
I wonder how many couples have signed this contract in which they have written what they want in their relationship, how they will act, and what they expect from their partner in return. An actual "relationship contract".
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