Relationship Stats

I am often inspired by snippets of conversation or a phrase, which once uttered, drive my brain in circles until I chase the thought to its completion.  This time, Daddy and I were talking about successful relationships.

Superbowl being a thing, I laughed that if we were talking sports, my stats would be pretty terrible.  Of the more serious relationships in my lifetime of more than a few months, I’m looking at a success rate of one in eleven.

If I worked professionally, I’d have been fired for those numbers.  One sale out of eleven?  One completed pass?  Those are terrible stats.

Yet for some reason, that one successful, healthy relationship qualifies me to share my experiences.  I struggled to understand why.

Somehow failure, which is seen as a negative in so many different areas, has been a force for good when it comes to relating to others.  Our missed opportunities and relationship bloopers have become the foundation for future success.

When we, as social creatures, first begin dating, often we don’t know what we want in relationships.  They are simply motivated by mutual attraction.  It us only when something doesn’t work well that we can take that lesson forward.  A rejection.  A failed relationship.  These become our teachers.

Perhaps the failure can be attributed to jealousy.  The next time you resolve to seek a partner with the knowlege that you need someone with healthier understandings of interpersonal relationships and better self-esteem.

As we continue to fail, our relationship requirements become more finely tuned.  Perhaps broad categories are no longer specific enough.  Wanting a good communicator becomes wanting someone who can be a good communicater under pressure.  We hone the skills we desire to see in others in ourselves.

Learning more about what we want in our partners isn’t the only benefit to failed relationships.  When we fail, if we are honest, we spend some time attempting to examine our own part in that failure.  Did I prioritize this partner highly enough?  Did I schedule time with them in ways that helped them feel important or loved, or was I caught up in my life and my needs?  Was I an effective communicator, or did I hold things in I probably should have discussed with them?  Being able to honestly answer those questions helps us become better partners the next time we try.

I used to believe that a failed relationship required two (or more) people making mistakes in order to be unsuccessful.  As I have grown and progressed, I have come to understand that sometimes one partner can communicate and do the right things, and not have that reciprocated in the relationship.

It can be particularly difficult to feel as though you are communicating only to have it interpreted in ways you did not intend.  It is the classic:  no, you don’t look fat in those pants statement only to have the recipient receive that to mean they look fat in the shirt instead.  Sometimes we have to learn to speak the languages of our partners, which may mean adapting our own style.  These adaptations require being open to listening to the needs of those around us, and working towards better understanding.  Unfortunately, they can also mean that should that relationship end, we have learned a foreign language we may never use again in that dialect.  At least those lessons can remain part of how we learn to better interact with future partners.

My partner reminds me that my stats start to look more impressive when we remember that some haven’t found their success yet.  Perhaps they’ve had small successes or ones which seem successful, only to find later that those things were, in fact, more lessons to be learned along the way.  However we choose to view it, the important thing is that we continue to grow in our relationships and find opportunity to learn in all of these moments in life.

About the Author

Christmas bunny has been exploring kink since she was legal to do so.  Her serious writing started in college, where she accidently got some of her papers published in educational journals.  She has recently expanded her writing to include her kink journey.  She began writing in the physical realm, but shed some of her inhibitions and began sharing those entries with others.  She now keeps an active blog of her personal growth and her relationship with her Master / Daddy Dominant and writes helpful educational posts on a variety of subjects.