0133E: Note to the World: You Don't Fully Understand Our Relationship

I always find it amusing when people claim to be "experts" of sorts on love. You know the types - the ones who post authoritative status updates on social media sites stating this "fact" and that "truth" as if they had all the answers. And while I'm sure there will always people who will agree with their statements, there will also be those who won't agree.

Love is universal, yes. We all desire love. We all feel love. We all express love in our own way. But love is a multifaceted creature, one that presents a unique version of itself to each individual. I always say that "love simply is", but it doesn't mean that love is necessarily simple. In fact, love is one of the most complicated emotions that we can possible experience in our lifetimes. And I firmly believe that the love that you feel for another person - whether romantic or just platonic between friends - will never be exactly the same as the love that you feel for someone else.

And I say this especially given the context of my unique relationship with Tobie and Prince. We can't use the "traditional" term of being a couple since there are three of us. But this isn't some lopsided arrangement where the two share a "stronger" relationship than the third individual, whether you're talking about how Tobie and I were together longer or how Prince and Tobie connect on a deep level that I can't penetrate or how Prince and I share a unique bond of intellectual knack paired with familial love. They are all different types of relationships, yes, but that doesn't make one better or lesser than the others.

I cannot claim to perfectly understand why the three of us work as a family, which has become the best term to describe this relationship. And if I can't fully grasp it despite being actually in it, I find it amazing how people on the outside can claim that what we're doing is somehow wrong or "doomed" to fail. I don't claim to know everything about the relationships of others in order to make similar pronouncements, and thus I don't think that other people should get to do that to ours.  You don't know me. You know what the three of us have gone through. You know don't how we feel when we are all together.

Support from others is always welcome - we're only human after all, and thus we all need a boost here and there. And I can take a few critics from time to time, provided that their statements are somehow grounded in objective facts based on direct observation of actions that one or more of us in this family may have taken. But ot make generalizations and large pronouncements that "relationships should only involve two people" or "a third party is always a disaster for a relationship" or "you will never be equal with three people". Who are these people to be able to make such claims? Is there some secret school of relationships where they all go to in order to gain some form of certification or mark of their superior knowledge?

No one is perfect, not even a geek like me. I know I tend to sound like a know-it-all sometimes - Prince always reminds to be humble in fact. But I don't think I'm a total idiot either. And in this regard, I don't think other people are total experts either and they ought to be humble as well.



Social media has a nasty habit of putting us into close contact with other people's most intimate thoughts and random musings, so we're bound to bump into ideas and statement that we don't appreciate. But given all that I've discussed here, it becomes all the more important to focus on those people worth listening to and ignoring those who have nothing better to do but be bitter about their lives. And that bitterness, that negative sentiment has a tendency to become rather infectious and thus it just spreads the unhappiness around even further.



Be positive. Live a life that YOU can be proud of without caring about the opinions of random strangers. Be the kind of relationship partner that factors in what your partner/s think about and feel above all others. Life your life in a manner that is true to who you really are. That's all that we are asked to do in this world - to be the best versions of ourselves that we can be for ourselves and for those we love.

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