Relationships and Experience

I have spoken about experience before, albeit mostly in the context of work or life experience.  I have also spoke about relationships before and something crossed my mind.  If you follow me on twitter you might have seen my thoughts on this.

The lack of ever having a relationship is something that for many people they see in themselves as a weakness or a negative.  They think it makes them less desirable when looking for a potential partner.  The thing I have come to realise is that this is not necessarily true.  By virtue of the fact you are single and looking for someone else who is also single then you need to assert one thing - they are not in a relationship either.

However once you actually stop to think about that fact you begin to question the motivation for wanting someone else who has had a relationship as opposed to none at all and whether that really is an advantage.  If you are single then there are 3 main possible scenarios - the first two are that either you have never had a relationship at all, or that you have had one or more relationships which all failed - the third possible scenario being one where you lost your other half.

While there are many reasons a relationship may come to its end, and the matter of whose fault it was if any, the fact that it was a relationship that failed can be asserted as it did not last.  If it came to an end, it failed, no matter what the circumstances were.  The only exception to that is the loss of a partner which ultimately can't be prevented.  In all other circumstances either you, your partner, or both of you together would have found a way to make it work.  That is incredibly simplistic I admit but before you argue based on whether or not a relationship with some people can never work I would argue the relationships where it could never work anyway should not happen in the first place.  I say this because I do not deem "short term relationships" to be real relationships.  You're fuck buddies with an emotional attachment that's all I see you as.  If you enter into a relationship with the understanding that you will break up after a fixed period I don't consider that a real relationship.  Likewise if you knowingly entered into a relationship with someone who was completely wrong for you and neither of you could ever have made it work then that is still a failed relationship.

To want to be with someone who has previously been in a relationship but is not anymore is therefore inherently a desire for someone who has had failed relationships.  Someone who has never been in a relationship before does not automatically constitute someone who would have a better chance, but they do not constitute someone who would have a worse chance either.  Lack of experience in this regard is not the weakness it is made out to be.  Going further than this you can even assert that experience in and of itself is not beneficial without considering what was learnt.