The most important part of a relationship

I once asked a friend what he thought the most important ability or skill one had to have in order to maintain a relationship. He thought it over for a minute and responded, "a willingness to make sacrifices."

I accepted this answer as a good one at the time, but subsequent experience has taught me that, while a willingness to sacrifice does rank among important relationship skills, there are at least a couple that are more important.

One is the ability to compromise and make deals, and to be happy with those compromises and deals. A huge part of maintaining a relationship is learning how to deal with conflicting needs and desires constructively in a way that allows both parties to feel that they got what was most important to them. This is related to the ability to make sacrifices, but it is important to note that a compromise involves mitigation of a sacrifice.

A second ability, which towers over all else as far as I can tell, is the ability to accept the other person as they are. By a long shot, this is truly the single most important part of having a healthy relationship. One must learn to deal with the other person's flaws, quirks, annoying habits - even to embrace these things.

Now, of course, there are some habits you truly do not want to accept - excessive drug use or abusive behavior, for instance. However, this does not change the importance of acceptance. If one is in a relationship with a drug abuser who does not want to change, one is nearly always better off leaving the relationship if they cannot accept the behavior than they are trying to change the person. Likewise, with an unrepentant abuser, it is better to end the relationship than to expect or try to bring about a change.

The key is to find another person whose traits you can accept, and to widen those ranks by learning to accept any relatively benign traits or habits, even slightly annoying ones. Beyond that, one should try to embrace the other's quirks and love them not in spite of them, but for them. Love the other person because of their odd laugh, their incessant snoring, their nasal voice, their absent-mindedness, or whatever other initially off-putting traits they might have.

One of the biggest mistakes people make in relationships is trying to force change or pressure the other person into changing. In most cases, this serves only to create a wall and push the two apart. The other person might continue undesired behaviors in secret or feel guilty and down on him- or herself when around the person forcing the change.

It is important to let the other person know that you accept them even when they fail or make mistakes as well. In a case where one is in a relationship with an alcoholic who is making an honest attempt to stay sober, one must be able to accept being with someone in such a struggle. There may be lapses and setbacks, but one must be willing to deal with those or the relationship is doomed.

An inability to deal with another's traits does not necessarily indicate a deficiency in one's capacity for acceptance. It may simply mean that the two are a poor match. In the example above, if one is unable to deal with occasional relapses, one is probably not a good fit for an alcoholic. There is no fault involved; it is simply a matter of how well the two match up.

Another big mistake people make is entering into a relationship with someone whose traits one does not accept with the idea that the other will change said traits over time.

Do not knowingly enter into a relationship with a drug abuser unless you can accept being in a relationship with a drug abuser. On a more benign note, do not enter into a relationship with someone who is messy or anxious or flighty unless you can accept those traits fully.

This seems obvious: don't form a relationship with Person A if you don't want to be in a relationship with such a person. Don't expect them to be Person B. However, being humans, we all feel a temptation toward such a mistake. We find someone we like in one way and figure that we can deal with their less desirable qualities. Or we experience a sort of halo effect, where a person's positive qualities in one area blind us to traits that we may be unable to live with.

There are two choices when such an effect wears off: learn to accept, or leave. People do change over time, at least to some degree, but ultimata and coercion are not good tools for bringing about change in another person. Love and acceptance are. If you love and accept someone, that person will be much more inclined to change out of a reciprocal love than they would be if you were to force the change.

This is the biggest lesson I've learned from my own failed marriage. I spent the last three years of it trying to be the man my wife wanted me to be and failing, and growing more distant from her in the process. The constant threat of her leaving only made it more difficult. I always felt inadequate and inept.

I can't bring myself to hold against her that she never did accept me; I clearly was not a good match for her. She could not accept that I was an analytical atheist, that I was withdrawn and disinclined to join her battles, that I wanted stability over adventure once we had kids. And that's okay.

There are things I never fully accepted about her. I never accepted her level of impulsiveness, for instance. While I learned to appreciate many other traits of hers that were potentially difficult for me early on, I could never get used to the roller coaster ride. She'd even warned me in advance, and I thought I could do it, but I couldn't. And that's okay.

We are able to carry on as friends, and we are probably better off that way, without the pressure of having to be people we are not. Hopefully, we will each find others who are better fits for us and can continue to care about one another in an altered way. After all, different kinds of relationships require different kinds of acceptance. A friendship requires a different set of compatible parts than a romantic relationship or a parent-child relationship or any of the many other sorts of relationships out there. People often find that when a relationship drifts or shifts from one kind to another (e.g. when a friend becomes a lover, or when a teacher becomes a peer), they are no longer able to maintain a relationship as they thought they would. Sometimes the reverse is true.

I hope this will be the case for me.