Sunday, September 19, 2010

Relationship Status - It's Complicated

To begin this insightful read, you must first accept this is a redundant and superfluous exposition of your romantic achievement/failure. All relationships are complicated- all of them. Even the one you have with your mailman, and the way he judges you based on the weight/content of the packages he delivers to you.

We assume (or deduct rather) than all relationships in the twenty-first century are evidently wired with a complex array of social impositions, unspoken obligations, inconsistent conceits, implicit nuances, quirky mannerisms, and exuberant expectations.
Yeah….a walk in the park is no walk in the park.

It’s a complete and utter bureaucracy.

But some people love to wrongfully believe that throwing the complexity wrench into the bicycle spokes as you ride equals a superiority of depth. “No Sally, you don’t understand. What Pete and I have cannot be described in words. There is no term to define what we have! It’s complicated.

Listen girl, what you have…is your head up your ass, as a lot of people do. This is what I would call, Complexity for Complexity’s Sake. If things make sense, and you can follow some sort of linear and logical path in the trudges of your relationship, then you must be doing something wrong! IT CANNOT BE REAL! That’s child’s play! Or some sort of puppy love from the seventh grade.

Real relationships are tangled in chaos and confusion. A Real relationship is like coaching football and trying to figure out what the other coach is saying behind his hand covering his mouth, reading the opposing play into his headset. Real relationships are turbulent spurts of fickle passion and unresponded e-mails! They are plagued with exciting, unrestrained displays of insanity manifested through text messages you have to decipher, (after decrypting centuries of semantics)
But who’s dating Dan Brown and his Da Vinci code?

The best way I can further illustrate this Complexity for Complexity’s Sake is by explaining ''L'art pour l'art'', (where I lifted this concept from) and how a lot of us see relationships and love. Art for art’s sake expresses a philosophy that regards the essential and only true value of art as being set apart from utilitarian function. Art isn’t supposed to be didactic...it’s just supposed to be- It doesn’t need to be justified. That is how a lot of people view complexity. It doesn’t need to be justified or logical. It just has to be there as a part of our relationship to validate it as a tangible thing.

It’s like comparing Rococo art against Bauhaus. Lavish and exotic embellishments don’t make your relationship more important or greater. It doesn’t make you smarter or emotionally deeper. It doesn’t qualify your status as multifaceted and of a profound composition. It doesn’t – sorry to burst your Faberge egg.

Embrace simplicity. Sit on a Marcel Breuer chair. It’s nice. It’s real. It’s void of pompous frill and self-regarded exhibitions of masturbatory complacency. It wasn't made for Louis XIV.

Relationship statuses listed as “It’s complicated” … are social suicide. Who wants to know- Or why would you want to confess how poorly you handle yourself in a desperate attempt to string together a connection that isn’t fully there yet? Either because you are not allowed to cross the line, or you don’t let people to cross it. Saying It’s Complicated is saying, “I don’t know what the fuck is going on, or what the fuck I am doing.” Spare yourself the embarrassment.

Occam’s razor dictates that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. “When competing hypotheses are equal in other respects, the principle recommends selection of the hypothesis that introduces the fewest assumptions and postulates the fewest entities while still sufficiently answering the question.” So, you should either be single….or in a relationship.
They’re both complicated things to be as well - each with their own set of intricate mechanics and lacking a set of instructions.

I know I usually oppose dichotomies and I really think everything has a gray area. But the “It’s complicated” gray area is more like being in limbo. A limbo in which you really shouldn’t stay too long, much less willingly, for the sake of your well-being.

If it’s complicated and you are leaning towards wanting to be single, then it scares away potential prospects that might be interested in you because you have just declared yourself “Taken enough to make it public.”
If you are mostly leaning to wanting to be in a relationship with this person that makes things complicated, then it comes off as over-ambitious, or as “You could still mess around with me, because nothing here is defined.”

The point is this: “It’s complicated” is not a halfway point. It is nothing like being a liberal republican or conservative democrat. It’s more like wearing a shirt and tie with a blazer on, but no pants, underwear or shoes on...and standing in the middle of traffic.

So if you if you don’t want to come off as an emotionally crippled, unstable, and a completely un-datable human being- Keep it simple, stupid.

Status yourself wisely.

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