Patience in Love Relationships
They say patience is a virtue. Yet it’s a virtue that doesn’t come to most of us with ease. Well, my friends, patience and love go hand in hand. What better way to develop patience than through the bond of a loving relationship?
We all recognize that relationships challenge us to understand, tolerate, and accept another person. But the truth is that relationships serve an even more important purpose. Relationships allow us to know and improve ourselves, to build on the foundation that we have as an individual. To have patience in love is not optional, unless of course the love isn’t meant to last. In that case, one may question if it was every really love in the first place.
A healthy relationship is one in which we spend less time trying to reconstruct our partners and more time looking inward to bring our own personal best to the relationship. If we lack patience, for example, there is no better way to develop that virtue within us than through a commitment to another human being. Remember, love IS patient.
You may hate the way he leaves the toilet seat up, but he seems incapable of remembering to put it down. You want to scream each time she leaves makeup all over the counter, yet you face it every single morning.
You know that patience is a virtue, but it’s clearly not one you’ve wrapped your mind around. So, instead of committing to developing patience within yourself, you commit to trying to change the one you love. Why should you work on yourself, when he or she can just change? This is where relationships begin to unravel. However, this is also the point at which you can work on becoming a better you.
The Patience and Love Connection
Even in the most loving, committed and healthy relationships; each day brings us face to face with things that we’d rather live without. Over time, the simplest of these annoyances from your spouse or significant other becomes irritating beyond your wildest dreams. Anger, frustration, resentment—so many negative feelings begin to set in. Yet, you have a choice. You either allow impatience to get the best of you, making you miserable and ruining any chance of a lasting, healthy relationship OR you get over it.
These days, many people walk away without accepting the challenge of developing patience in love relationships. When faced with this great opportunity for personal growth, too many of us turn the focus outward. The result? Relationships deficient in patience and love end in breakups, heartache, separation and divorce.
If you’re thinking you have enough love to outweigh the need for patience, think again. Love is patience. Patience is love. Patience and love go together, creating a healthy relationship like hydrogen and oxygen create water (H2O). To separate patience and love is to separate lovers from their oneness, leaving behind individuals unable to truly love at all.
Change is hard, developing patience is hard, and becoming a better person is hard. Nonetheless, people expect these things from each other. And when they are not satisfied with their mate’s progress, many choose to give up instead of developing and improving themselves.
The choice to give up or to get over it will always be there. However, it’s important to know the price of these decisions. In giving up on a relationship, many times you inadvertently give up on yourself. In getting over it, you can save your relationship; but even more importantly, you can develop into a more patient and loving human being.
