Where Do We Go from Here?
Whether it’s been just a few dates or you’ve been going together for a while, there comes a time when your relationship starts to get serious. It’s going somewhere. But where? Well, that’s up to you and your partner to decide. Local relationship counsellor Christine Forte of Balanced Heart Counselling discusses how you can work to build a stronger relationship.
The days of passion are fading. You might be living together now, or at the very least, spending lots of time with your special someone. Your relationship has begun to leave the realms of romance and set off into the real world and all of its challenges. You begin to ask yourself, “Who is this person? Really?” And while you might like what you find, there will inevitably be sources of conflict. Does this mean that he or she isn’t ‘the one’?
Perhaps it’s time to take a step back. "I’m not a big believer in the idea of 'the one'," says Christine Forte, a local relationship counsellor at Balanced Heart Counselling. “I think there are a lot of people out there that we can all be compatible with. Not that anyone could be a good fit for us, but there are many people in the world who we can be a happy partner with.”
But how do we know who’s really good for us? While there is no cut and dry answer to this question, there are some dimensions of compatibility that are important to keep in mind. “In a relationship, above all it’s important for a couple to be good friends, to really have a sense of fondness and admiration for each other. Of course we also want to have physical and sexual attraction. But it’s also important to have a partner who’s going to be reliable, who does what they say they will, that goes where they say they’ll go. That’s respectful of you and you’re respectful of them. That you manage conflict in a way that helps you move forward, rather than in a way that’s destructive.”
Okay, it sounds straightforward enough. There are reasons we’ve stuck together with our friends all these years. The same must go for our partners to some degree, right? Still, Shanghai life is a beast all of its own. Many of us are far away from home, often times getting closer with partners from different cultural backgrounds. “Trust is a big issue here. [Our potential partners] don’t have the same net of credibility behind them as someone from back home who knows all of our friends or has gone to the same university as us. It’s hard, at first, for couples here to know if the person they’re seeing is being honest.”
In addition, Shanghai’s reputation as a sin city tends to pop up. Trust issues often spring for worries that when our partner is away, they’re with somebody else. “Further along in relationships [in Shanghai] a problem that often comes up is infidelity.” But Forte is firm in the belief that sexual infidelity doesn’t have to be a deal breaker. “I think it really depends on the couple: how much is left of the other healthy structure in their relationship. Is this really a couple that just despises each other? Or just got off track for a while and genuinely want to get back on track?”
Then, of course, cultural differences can also prove to be major hurdles where family is concerned. “One of the biggest challenges with culture [here] can be the in-laws. The couple themselves – if they love each other and want to be together and are working on communicating – can do okay. But when people’s families come into play, that’s when there can be very different expectations.”
Not sure how to relate to your beloved’s mother or father, or even a distant aunt or uncle? Don’t worry. All’s not lost. Forte advises, “For bi-cultural couples it’s more important to discuss prior to making commitments how we’re going to navigate our families’ different expectations of us.” And of course, a bit of perspective is in order. Families have differences of opinion about their role in a couple’s life all over the world. You don’t have to cross oceans to see it. “You can see couples where both partners are from the US and families have very different expectations of how involved they will be in their lives. It’s not just about country of origin.”
The final obstacle that Shanghai throws up to those of us looking to take our relationships to the next level is the concern with career and ambition that attends life in Shanghai. “A lot of young people here might not be as marriage focused as in other places,” says Forte. And it’s true. All those long days and longer nights of hammering out a new proposal or getting yourself on track for where you want to be in five years don’t leave much for someone else, do they?
Still, it’s no reason to give up hope. It might seem like a Herculean effort at times, but relationships can work out, even in Shanghai. It just takes a bit of work to get there.
