Recently I talked with some friends about the issue of “emotions”.

I was also going through some important choices, so I decided to write down my thoughts in order to find some clarity.

1. Being a good person is only a necessary condition, but we always regard it as a sufficient condition

If you feel so sad, why are you still together?

He is really nice.

I’ve met many friends who were struggling and drained of energy in a relationship.

But every time I ask: Then why are we still together?

The other party will often say: He is really a nice person; his family members are all very nice; he is really nice to me…

I don’t think these are unimportant, in fact, they are very important.

But I found that many people ignored one issue:

“A good person” is a necessary condition, but it is not a sufficient condition for you to choose to be with a person.

If the other person is not good, would you choose to get along with him?

Reasonably, I wouldn’t do it at all!

Only when we think the other person is a “good person” will we give the possibility of further contact. This is actually just a bottom line. If “people are bad”, they should be eliminated in the first step.

What’s interesting is that many people seem to think, “It’s very rare to find a good person.”

Maybe they have seen too many bad people.

2. Why do we choose to be with someone instead of alone?

In my opinion, choosing to be with someone is because I can feel my life blooming; I can feel that two people together will enhance each other’s energy.

So what does “not being able to enhance each other’s energy” mean?

That kind of feeling is that you are a very “good” person, and she is also a very “good” person. You are both trying to do things that you think are beautiful; but she has no feeling at all about the “beautiful” things you think. The “beautiful” things are tasteless to you; you obviously did nothing wrong, but you just feel that the door to your heart cannot be opened, and you just feel that your energy is slowly shrinking; therefore, 1+1<2.

What is love? Love is the blooming of life, love is growing together.

Do you think this is too “idealistic”?

I don’t know if we don’t have any ideals in the matter of “love”, how can we dare to talk about ideals in this life.

Idealism is the most realistic form of realism because we need idealism.

3. Personalities can be complementary, but values must be consistent.

We often hear one point of view, saying that two people should “complement each other” together; but we often hear another point of view, saying that only “similar” people can be together.

Should they be complementary or similar?

The conclusion of my own thinking is: that personalities can complement each other, but values must converge.

First, personalities “can” complement each other.

In fact, I think it’s best to be able to complement each other: for example, if you have a quick temper, then if the other person is more patient, he or she can help you reduce your impulses and mistakes when dealing with many problems. The two hotheads started fighting at every turn.

But I personally think it’s just “okay” here. If the personalities are relatively similar, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they can’t get along very well—as long as both parties are mentally mature enough and have enough rationality to fully communicate.

Second, values “must” converge.

Why “must”? Because I think “values” are more ingrained than “character” and are difficult to change.

With different personalities, both parties can communicate and reason. What if the values are different? You will find that both people are mature enough to sit down and communicate well; but when you sit down, you will find that you are speaking ancient Chinese and the other person is speaking ancient Greek.

What is a value mismatch?

Value mismatch means that every time you do something that you think is extremely meaningful, you have to explain to the other party why it is meaningful.

If you stay in this state for the rest of your life, it would be a kind of torture.

4. How long do you want to live in this life?

I am already 25 years old/26 years old/30 years old/31 years old… and I don’t have much time left.

If a boy said this to me, I would have no interest in continuing the conversation with him.

But I met many girls who said this. I know that girls really have more pressure.

However, for all those who think that they are “old” in their 20s, think about it carefully, are you really making the right choice?

Would you rather spend a few years finding someone who is truly a good fit, or would you rather spend the next few decades getting used to someone who is not a good fit?

5. You are rebuilding, not destroying

When we choose to end a relationship, we will feel a kind of rejection, which often comes from a subconscious understanding: we are performing some kind of “destruction”. We break the original relationship, we destroy the original stability.

Many people succumb to this deep-seated pressure, which they may not even realize they are aware of, and are therefore unable to make a choice.

But what we often don’t realize is that if we’re ending a relationship that should have ended, that’s inherently a good thing—it’s a reconstruction of life, not a destruction; it’s a new beginning. , so that both parties no longer have to be in long-term bondage, so that both parties can find a life that they think is truly beautiful.

6. What exactly do you want?

Why fall in love? Because I want to get married.

Why get married? Because I want to have a baby.

Why have children? Because we want to continue the family lineage.

Why continue the family line?

…

If you keep asking, you will find that most people will give all kinds of weird answers. But few people dare to truly face their desires, and few can answer a really important question:

What do we really want in this once-in-a-lifetime life?

Many people say, “Marriage is just for living.”

I never believe this bullshit. Living a life is part of marriage, but getting married is not just about living a life.

We always keep hearing various “reasons” from others, and in the end we forget what we want, and then think that what we have now is what we want.

In my favorite book “Personal Development for Smart People”, there is a section that talks about “desire”:

Most people never get in touch with their true desires. They let others decide what they should want, or stop where they think they can go; they listen to the nonsense in social dogma, telling themselves that the meaning of life is to work in a meaningless job for decades, which is to sink themselves into debt. , is to let yourself be occupied by empty entertainment activities, to get married, to have children, to be bankrupt when you retire, and then die quietly.

Ultimately, they live in the shadow of despair, forever fragile and powerless, never truly happy.

Please do not give in to the illusion of false desires. Only real desire can summon real power.

7. If you are respectful enough, please be rational enough.

If you do get to this point, you must decide whether to end the relationship. Then please remain rational enough to face this problem truly bravely and analyze this problem calmly and rationally.

1) Please make a list

Take a look, what do you really value, and what core things can’t be accepted if they don’t match? Which mismatches do you think can be tolerated? What is good about your current relationship and what is bad about it? Can the good makeup for the bad? Is the bad enough to wipe out the happiness brought by the good?

Most importantly, is there hope that everything will change?

We often lie to ourselves and tell ourselves: There is always hope for change.

When will that change? When is the deadline?

There is no deadline, which is why many people end up failing to make changes throughout their lives.

Our brains are wired to make relatively easy choices and so are always tricking us, consciously or unconsciously. But if it hasn’t changed in years, it’s time to really think about it.

2) Thorough communication

Before making a final decision, you might as well have a thorough communication and then take a final period of time to see if there is hope for things to get better. Whether or not you should do this varies from person to person.

3) Don’t pursue perfection

I will never fool others into pursuing “perfect love”.

We allow flaws, allow tolerance, and even allow some concessions; we do not pursue “perfection”, we just want to find someone we really want to spend our lives with, and then spend our lives with them.

4) Focus on the future, not the past

But we have already spent so much time.

Many people like to say this when faced with choices in relationships.

Therefore, we often overlook one point: when making emotional choices, we should focus on the future, not the past.

Why?

Because our choices at this moment affect not the days that have passed, but our future lives; our biggest cost is not the sunk cost we have paid, but all our future time.

5) Consider advice from parents/family/friends…but make your own decisions

You can see what others say, no problem. But if you do decide to take their word for it, well, then you have to at least make sure that their own marriage is happy—or, at least, that they’ve seen what a happy marriage looks like in their lifetime.

8. Should you end a relationship?

I feel very pain, but I really don’t know what to choose. I can’t think clearly about many issues.

I’ve seen a lot of people say that.

When I was faced with the choice of relationship, I read the book—“Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay”. There are 36 questions listed in the book, which brought me a great sense of clarity. If you are also facing a decision, I think this book may be useful.

If you have “many questions that you can’t figure out clearly”, you might as well ask yourself a question first:

If you had to spend the next few decades or the rest of your life with this person, how would you feel inside?

You know the answer yourself.