[Criseyde]

Originally Posted by raskolnikov

This is perhaps sort of an arbitrary post to comment on, but one question for the author (and readers); do you ever think you might be overanalyzing things?

Yes. Analysis paralysis!

I see that a lot of people I know who just went with the flow and relationship-wise picked a non-perfect path being happy and content now while I'm still considering for and against getting serious with this or that girl. As opposed to just thinking 'OK, this is what we have, let's make the best of it'. This makes me think that perhaps nothing won't ever be perfect and that building on an imperfect base might be better that twisting your mind around lifestyle design to the point where none of the 'traditional' ways of interacting with people are enough?

I think you're right about building on an imperfect base. You have to do something sometime, otherwise you'll never do anything. (Wow. Profundity. I haz it.) You can't wait for all the stars to align, because they probably won't. Or even if they do, you'll be so much of a perfectionist that you'll be busy criticizing something other than the stars and you'll miss it.

The thing is... I've actually never met a traditional monogamous couple who stayed together for years and years that didn't care about personal growth. They might not have CALLED it that and they might have had other avenues to pursue it besides the ones on this website, but yeah -- the relationships that last "till death do us part," happily, are the ones where both work hard to be good partners to each other and to make it work. A laissez-faire approach doesn't seem to work in my observation.

In other words - concerning relationships, are 'stupid' people smarter than smart people? Is improving on the imperfect better than waiting for the perfect? Does all this abstraction and conscious choice pay off in the end?

I think there's another issue at work here. This probably isn't true in all cases, but I've noticed that a lot of people who are into PD have had some rough experiences in their lives, especially in childhood. Of course, a large percentage of the general population experienced childhoods that were less than ideal, so I am not really sure whether or not the percentage is any higher within the PD-verse, but to me it seems like it is. And that also makes sense to me, since people who don't really have big personal issues -- people whose lives are already working the way they want -- aren't going to be THAT interested in how to improve their lives/themselves, right?

Thing is, those who come from backgrounds with dysfunctional relationships are going to have to make an effort to learn how to have functional relationships. They didn't learn it through observation as children. And repeating the patterns that they *did* learn is pretty much guaranteed to fail, because those patterns are what made the backgrounds dysfunctional in the first place.

I don't think that this blog post is about waiting for the perfect, anyway. I think it's about letting go of the need for *a* "perfect" relationship, and just trying to improve your relationship with everything.