Let us take the example of a woman who believes that it is better to be alone, as it is much easier for her than being in a relationship and functioning normally within it. It is important to understand that children also adopt this same perception, as parents, through their behavior, relational dynamics, and the consequences of that behavior, along with their inability to regulate the relationship, are showing children what they should or shouldn’t do. Children always learn from the experiences of their parents.
To understand present-day relationship dynamics, it is useful to look into the past. In the past, social norms were unchanging. The church demanded that what God has joined together, man must not separate. This was a societal norm that remained stable across generations. Even if a daughter saw that her mother was unhappy in her marriage, she had almost no opportunity to remain unmarried. Society demanded that she be married, and beyond rare exceptions, a woman could not survive on her own. If she wanted to have children and survive, she had to enter into a relationship with a man. Learning from the mistakes of parents in such a past was impossible—children were forced to repeat them because the environment did not allow for a different path.
Today, however, the environment does allow children to choose a different path, but this is not necessarily a good thing—especially when a child chooses a single life because their parents never taught them how to create a functional romantic relationship. The ability to function effectively, especially after the age of 50, depends essentially on one thing—having a functional relationship with a person of the opposite sex. All other options are more or less suboptimal. One can, of course, convince themselves that it’s better to be entirely alone. It may be better or less bad to be alone than to be with an unsuitable partner—but it will never be as good as being in a healthy, well-structured and increasingly effective partnership. That is the ideal foundation for solving problems and gaining wisdom in life.
Time has a dual role in each of our lives. On the one hand, every day we get a little older. In our youth, our ability to build potential energy and move—both necessary for solving problems—increases. This ability peaks between the ages of 30 and 35, when we are strongest both physically and in problem-solving capacity. After that, things start to decline; our life force and capabilities begin to decrease. This is particularly accelerated after age 45, as the body, due to entropy and the effects of time, loses its efficiency in producing potential energy. One could imagine this like a car engine with decreasing horsepower.
A conditionally positive effect of time on a person comes if we become wiser with age—if we gain experience and become more effective at solving problems. In this case, even though the engine is losing horsepower, the car becomes lighter, like pulling a trailer with less and less weight. With more wisdom, we resolve more problems and create fewer new ones, so life becomes easier. This lighter car, despite having less horsepower, can still climb hills—symbolizing progress and upward movement.
However, if we don’t become wiser and more efficient at solving problems over time, the engine loses power faster, and the trailer we pull becomes heavier—filled with problems from our parents and grandparents, as we unconsciously carry forward unprocessed behavioral patterns, while our conscious awareness weakens. Soon we reach a point where the engine can no longer pull us uphill. First, we stagnate, driving on flat ground and feeling content that we are not getting worse. But around age 50 or 55, we start going downhill, comforting ourselves that someone else is declining even faster. We always find a way to see the bright side, but that doesn’t solve our problems.
Returning to parents who remain single because they cannot make their relationship work—the message they send to their children is that relationships are not worth pursuing. These children have been taught by example that romantic partnerships are unmanageable, because the very people who were supposed to model a healthy relationship lacked the knowledge, experience, and ability to create and maintain one. Children with the freedom to choose whether to enter into relationships are more likely to opt out. They may choose same-sex partnerships, which seem simpler and easier in the short term but become increasingly demanding in the long run. Or they may enter into a relationship with something less emotionally complex than another human being.
The most challenging type of relationship to create is one with a person of the opposite sex, as each gender operates differently. Men tend to act from the left hemisphere of the brain, and women from the right. One difference is that women are never fully satisfied, while men are satisfied too quickly. This is completely natural and reflects the functional and structural differences between male and female brains—differences that evolved to promote human survival. This specific difference contributes significantly to relationship breakdowns today, as external pressure from society has diminished, and relationships now dissolve more easily than in the past.
If both partners are emotionally mature enough, they understand that for a woman to function well, she must accept that her man seems too easily satisfied. And a man must understand that for him to function optimally, he must be with a woman who is never fully satisfied. Men want women who are easily content—but that is not good long-term. A woman who is never quite satisfied pushes a man to improve, and though mistakes are made, both partners grow. Women, on the other hand, often desire a man who is never satisfied, which leads to perfectionism—a state that requires emotional detachment and machine-like behavior, incompatible with human nature. This would also ruin the relationship, as such a man would always find someone “better” elsewhere.
The art of a relationship lies in finding compromises. A woman must accept that it’s natural for a man to be too easily satisfied, because that is what sustains the relationship. A man must accept that it’s natural for a woman to never be fully satisfied and view it as a feature that fosters continuous growth, if kept in balance.
Once we accept this, we can better understand it as a condition through which women can gain positive values and skills from a man, and a man can receive all the good that a woman has to offer—except that she is never completely satisfied. When we understand the natural functioning of both sexes, we can help each other moderate extremes and maintain balance. This enables the gradual development of a more functional relationship, where the pattern becomes one of solving fewer problems rather than creating more.
Aleš Ernst, author of the AEQ Method.
