Relationships

Love is one of the greatest illusions that people have. Whether it is happily ever after marriages, friendships which last forever, or parent/child bonds, we would all like to believe that our most intimate relationships are strong enough to survive whatever may come. However, at some point in our lives most of us need to face the fact that relationships require effort to keep them strong and positive, and that even a wonderful strong relationships can have many difficult stages.

When my sister and her husband walk into a room, they are the type of couple that everyone looks at and says “those two are in love”. A relationship is an association between at least two people (Seiler 2008). Romantic relationships are the type that people most often think of when they think about relationships. They can be very stressful as one person tries to please the other but they can be very fulfilling as people are filled with love for each other. One form of a romantic relationship is an escalating one. The best way to understand an escalating relationship is to interview an actual relationship, learn the concepts that make the relationship great and healthy and the reasons for it to be escalating. I chose to interview my sister, Carol Azar, who has been currently married for six years. She is currently in an intimate relationship where she couldn’t ask to be any happier. I decided to interview my sister because we have a very close relationship where we are extremely comfortable in sharing everything, especially when it comes to her advice on love and relationships.

Going into this interview, I knew I was ready to discover a lot of new facts on maintaining a strong relationship. I was ready to learn new lessons that will teach me what and how a relationship is all about. “How do you continue to maintain such a strong relationship with your husband?” “Easy. We are able to share everything, our thoughts, feelings, and emotions. It is very healthy to. We are so honest and trustworthy with one another. It is very important to also accept each other. We share and express lots of love, which I think are huge in making our relationship strong.”

“Would you consider good communication as a key to a strong marriage?” “Absolutely. Communication creates everything. Without it, my relationship with my husband would not exist nor would it have even begun. Without communication, I would have never been able to know who he was as a person. Also, without good communication, there is no good marriage. Like I stated before, in order to maintain a strong relationship, you need to be able to share everything with one another and it is important to talk, talk, and talk.” “Did you have to make any sacrifices to keep this relationship?” “Once you get married, you have to sacrifice some things in order to make things compromising and fair. It wasn’t a big issue with us because when you’re in love, you are willing to sacrifice anything for that person.”

“Did having children change the status of your relationship” “This took our relationship into a new stage. We had new responsibilities and our lives were changing due to having a family now. At times it made us stronger because we were both there for each other more often but at times it made us argue more because we were so stressed because we were dealing with something new, two kids. We were frustrated because we were not having much privacy anymore, and our social lives were changing. It was a whole new level, a new stage of life.” “When you did argue, how did you manage conflicts with one another” “It depends on the argument. If it’s a serious one, we will give each other attitude until we both realize that will not solve anything and we will then compromise. Other times there are silly fights where we will disagree on many things but in the end, we always find a solution. No relationship is going to be perfect. It’s natural to have arguments here and there.