Coupling Complications

from the Just Because collection (2002-2006)

What are the elements that comprise a “couple”? Just because you are a couple, can you still have their own identity? When you have been with someone for a while there is a tendency to compromise, maybe merge. The daily pressures of life and the way each person reacts to stressors can put pressure on friend/partner/spouse as the individual. Some might suggest that submitting to the Us in a relationship is a way to smooth the waters. Does someone hold the veto button? Just who decides what the two should be doing as one? Define the word Couple.

I think of my parents and their partnership through the various decades of their relationship. For two years they separated over unresolved issues. Later my mom was a municipal counsellor in her new hometown and my father became a well-regarded sketch artist. They had each found a wonderful rhythm that held fulfillment and reward. At this phase of their lives, their conversations together were animated. Throughout a later decade of their lives, they were the sunshine-happy residents of a trailer park in Florida. I only visited their snowbird residence once but I came away with a most troubling image. My dad and mom had seemingly merged into Lewis Carroll’s Tweedledee & Tweedledum caricatures. They wore the same blue trailer-park jackets. Their neighbours went even further in the direction of “Total Personality Merger.” One couple had matching scooters, another had twin poodles who were walked at the same-time-every-day. The coupled residents went to all the organized trailer park events together. My folks were part of a daily entertainment loop that included morning coffee at the recreation hall, followed by sunning at the pool until twelve. In the afternoon, the drinking would begin, a nap would be had, and then the alcohol would flow through dinner barbecues. When the sun set, most of the park was asleep in a euphoric stupor. This was total community merging! Talk about Us!

Just because a relationship requires compromising your position from time to time doesn’t mean you have to give up your personal identity. After a long relationship, it is hard to remember your individual self. Ask anyone who has lost a partner through divorce, separation, or death. They will tell you that there is a transition period where their own sense of self has to be remembered and reconstructed. When you embark on a new relationship you are naturally sensitive to how your new self is going to blend with this new individual. Will it be oil and vinegar, like two different substances that create a whole new taste? Perhaps your combined colours will create an astonishing rainbow. Regardless of the way in which you mix your relationship palette there has to be an opportunity for your unique personal character to shine through. How else will you retain a notion of who you are?