People measure their lives in milestones, from the cradle to the grave. New parents keep charts of their childrens’ milestones – from rolling over and sitting up to first steps and first words. It’s a trend that permeates every aspect of our lives, but nowhere more than in relationships.

You go out with someone new and you have a good time, but not a great one. The conversation is decent, but not spectacular. Your date is good-looking, but there’s isn’t really any chemistry.
What’s the next step?

You’ve gone out on a few dates and things are going well. You’re not sure whether you’re in Love or not, but you know you like to be together. You’ve settled into a comfortable place where you’re not really interested in seeing other people.

What’s the next step?

We seem to have a need to categorize and classify everything in our lives in the hope of understanding it. We also have a natural instinct toward motion. When you combine those two things in a relationship, it produces a very interesting result.

As soon as two people begin to get comfortable with each other, they feel the need to re-label their relationship so that they can feel as if they are going somewhere. They have embarked upon a journey that has no destination.

Relationships exist independent of the labels we attach to them ­– boyfriend/girlfriend, husband/wife. What do they really mean? In one sense, they signify to the world that two people have reached a level of commitment to each other outsiders can understand.

In another sense, though, they only serve to reflect our internal perceptions of what already exists. It’s not a question of whether the chicken or the egg comes first, because the label by definition must arise from an existing emotion.

Okay, that seems a bit heady, even to me, and I wrote it! Let me break it down to a simpler statement. It’s kind of like saying, “I Love you.” You can’t say it unless you already feel it. Saying it doesn’t make it so.

What’s the next step?

It’s the struggle to put a label on what we already feel. Something inside of us tells us that the label we’ve attached to our relationship is kind of like an old sweater that doesn’t fit anymore, so we need something new.

The truth of the matter, though, is that this need to move forward and classify our relationships only serves to confuse things. The key to happiness in a relationship is to enjoy where you are rather than always looking at where you’re going.

My mother was an artist and she loved to go to the museum. She could literally spend hours looking at one panting, examining it from different angles, getting close to it to inspect brush strokes, backing up to appreciate the whole.

I could make it through the DIA in 10 minutes flat and still have a meaningful experience because I was happy to just be there and see that the paintings were on the wall. I was always ready to move onto the next one.

My mother was on to something, though. It’s easy to brush over the surface of something and say you’ve done it, but what do you really gain from that? The ability to say you’ve done something. But do you really have a deep appreciation of it?

While we can argue about the value of a lengthy museum visit (I’ve never been a fan), I truly believe relationships are best when we take the time to appreciate them. Instead of rushing through each stage as if they were rooms at a boring museum, we should linger for as long as we can and enjoy each moment.

What’s the next step?

Maybe it’s time to just stand still for a while.

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