While you’re taking an honest look at your relationship, take an honest look at this. How long are you planning for it to last? When most people let a partner into their life they assume it’s for life. One of the best things about love relationships can be their longevity. You’re sick of the whole dating scene and want to be done with it, forever.

There are other arrangements, however. There are summertime romances, the fling you had when you were away in Europe, the one-night stand, the hook-up at the conference. But it’s not just the kids with their promiscuous ways. There are plenty of middle-aged couples who have a tacit agreement to stay together until their children are grown. There are couples on a five-year plan. Some are together until someone better comes along. There are all kinds of relationships. It’s only the usual ones that come out of hiding and meet the parents.

I once heard from a very practical person, who thought everyone should marry three times in a lifetime. The first, at age twenty, to a forty-year-old, to get started and be maturely guided during a foolish time of life. The second at age forty to a twenty-year-old to add some excitement, feel young, and provide spouses for those twenty-year-olds. The third at age sixty to another sixty year old, for the companionship as they grow old together. You might be the very people to try this and start a new trend. Future generations may thank you if you did. But, what do I know? Something like this has never been tried.

You may not be that person. You may truly intend to mate for life. If so, why? Is it because of what you want, or is it what you think you are supposed to want? Please understand, I am not necessarily advocating the end of marriage as a lifetime commitment. After all, I believe serious relationships are eternal. I am advocating that people get honest about what they expect from one another and alter the terms and conditions of their relationship to fit their realities.

Even when a relationship is meant to be lifelong, what would it be like if the terms and conditions had to be renewed every year or two, as are many leases? I intend to remain in my present office, renting from my present landlord, until I retire; and I don’t plan to retire. Nonetheless, the lease is renewed every year. This gives the landlord and me an opportunity to take a look at the terms and conditions and make adjustments, if needed.

What if you did the same in your marriage and rewrote and renewed your vows every year on your anniversary? You may very well, for one reason or another, at some time, decide not to renew your commitment. But there might be less broken china, broken noses, and injured feelings. There may be more newly-re-wed bliss. You just might be more happy.

When a landlord and a tenant sign a lease, they both know what they’re getting out of it. The tenant gets an apartment and the landlord gets rent. Both are getting something they want, something they didn’t have before they signed the lease. There’s a reason for their relationship.

What is the reason for your relationship with your romantic partner?

Why are you in this marriage? What does it add to your life? What can you do, together with this particular person, that you cannot accomplish alone, or with anyone else?

If you don’t know, then you’re in trouble. If you don’t have a reason, then there is nothing at stake.

People keep committed relationships for all kinds of reasons: for the laughs, for the sex, for the kids, the parents, to get elected. People stay so they can collude with one another, so they don’t have to face an uncomfortable truth, or so they can challenge each other to face those truths. People in committed relationships live longer, have more money, and have better mental health. They don’t have to travel alone, sleep alone, eat alone, grow old alone, and they have a standing date every Friday night. Some of these are compelling reasons, some aren’t; not all are sustainable, but, if you have no reasons, or you don’t know what they are, then what are you doing and why are you doing it?

You can put up with all kinds of things if you have a reason to do so. If you are enraged when he doesn’t put the toilet seat down or when she talks on the phone for an hour with her friend, then perhaps it’s not your partner’s behavior that is the problem, perhaps it’s the lack of a reason to be with them.

Sometimes the relationship is secondary to other goals you may have. What you really want to do is to write novels, complete medical school, rise to the top in politics or business, defend your dissertation. What you want out of a relationship is for it to stay out of the way or support those other goals. Maybe your goal to have children and a spouse is secondary and instrumental to that desire. You may just want to have it all: a successful career, marriage, and children. Even if that’s the case, you will still have to chose. A some point those interests will collide and then you’ll see which is really the priority.

So, what are your goals? Do you and your partner have them in common? Are they complimentary or do they clash?

If you leased out a portion of your life, what would the terms and conditions be?

You own an apartment building with an almost infinite number of apartments, but, once someone moves in, you can never evict them, and they can never leave. You can move them from one apartment to the other.

There’s only a single penthouse suite and a few luxury suites. Most are ordinary, efficiency studios. There are a huge, but unknown, number of basement apartments. You’d like to pretend those tenants weren’t even there. However, many of the occupants of the basement apartments are chronically disgruntled, so that they often play their music loud and let roaches, bedbugs, and other undesirables inside.

The penthouse is a splendid apartment. You live in it, as is your right as landlord, and have been sharing it with a roommate. Things have started to get tense between you and you thought of kicking him out, however, you don’t want him to feel ill used. He would just make your life miserable if you stuck him in a basement apartment. Besides, the two of you might just get along if you got a few things straight.

The name of this apartment building is, you might have guessed, Your Life. The tenants are all the people you’ve let into Your Life. Most of the people in Your Life are associates occupying the efficiency apartments. Close friends have the luxury suites. The tenants in the basement apartments are your exes, your might’ve-beens, and those bullies in middle school that still rent space in your head. Oh, I forgot, there are a few rent controlled apartments that have been occupied by your family members since before you bought the building, but that’s beside the point. The person you share the penthouse with is the love of your life and you’re trying to figure out how you can evict him.

As I said, you can never get anyone out of the apartment building altogether, but you can move your partner from the penthouse to the luxury suites, meaning you would still be friends, the efficiencies, or in the basement. If it’s got to be done, it’s in your interest to do so kindly and with fairness, if only because, to some extent, you still have to live with him or her.

So, what can you do to make your expectations clear, your promises credible, and your exit strategy explicit? You can do what landlords have always done. You can create and, together, sign a lease.

Far too many people drift into relationships without ever making the momentous decision to be together. You decide to leave a toothbrush, provide an underwear drawer, share rent without ever deciding the terms and conditions of the relationship. Since it’s hard to talk about relationships, you let it go without saying what you expect and can be expected in return. Is it any wonder that you get confused? Are you really surprised when you wake up one day and find yourself caught up in much more than you ever intended and are not sure of how you can get out?

In traditional relationships there are occasions when the couple might talk about their terms and conditions. That’s what wedding vows are for, after all. Many clergy insist that, as a condition of their officiating at the wedding, you go through pre-marital counseling in which you consider uncomfortable issues such as how to raise children and celebrate holidays. Many lawyers insist on pre-marital agreements that deal with prickly matters such as finances and the dissolution of the marriage.

Unfortunately, when it comes to wedding vows, poetry and sentiment often prevail over practicality. No one planning a wedding really wants to tackle the tough issues and declare in the front of a church, before parents, grandparents, and everyone, just how you want your partner to relate to his ex, what sexual positions you loathe, how big a check your partner can write without clearing it with you, and the myriad of other issues that can sink a marriage.

Far too often, people get deep into relationships without ever talking about these things. Sort of as if you moved into an apartment, or had someone move in, without ever signing a lease, or even talking about rent and security deposit.

The other problem with wedding vows is, when you are planning a wedding, you may not know what you really want in a marriage. You think what you want is what you think everyone else has. You expect what you saw on some TV show, what your parents had, or the relationship you wish your parents had. That’s a little like signing a lease without reading it first, or like a landlord downloading a template of a lease without considering what’s in it.

So, if you are running into problems in your relationship, this is the perfect time to consider how to fix the problems and discuss with your partner whether he or she would agree to a new, or amended, contract.

What would the terms and conditions be?

When you were a baby and became uncomfortable, you didn’t know what you wanted. You could scream, but you had no words to describe what was going on with you or what would change it. Your parents didn’t either. They would try one thing and then another; give you food, change your diaper, burp you, maybe just hold you and sing. When you stopped crying, they figured they had it. That must have been what you wanted.

In time, you began to associate all the various things they did for you when you cried with this experience of wanting. The food, the diaper, the burping, the singing: they called them your desires and you learned to call them that, too; but they weren’t your desires, they were only the symbols of your desires. For instance, just because you stopped crying when they gave you food, does not mean that it was food you needed. Maybe you just needed someone to pay attention to you. Maybe you needed love.

Babies who are not loved will sicken, weaken, and may die. Grown adults who are not loved will not do so well, either. But there’s a problem with love, you can’t ask for it. You can only ask for its symbols.

You can ask your husband to bring you flowers, but, if he does, you will know you had to ask for them and they won’t count for as much. You can ask your wife to be more sexy and wanton, but, deep down, you know that’s not who she is. You can’t compel affection, command spontaneity, arrange for grace. True love cannot be bought and sold, ordered and filled. The government cannot provide it after filling out a four part form; you can’t even get it from Amazon.

The symbols of desire can be insistent and dictatorial. You may believe that if you do not obey them: buy those shoes, have sex with this person, drink that beer, go on this vacation, marry that person, get a divorce; you will be destitute and unfulfilled. But, all those things are just the symbols of the nameless, inchoate desire. They are a paper tiger, a powerless tyrant, a blustering, threatening Saddam Hussein with no weapons of mass destruction.

Your ultimate experience of love and the true object of your desires was encountered before you ever had a language. Things that you experienced during this period are beyond the reach of language and reason. They are like the foundation of your house: buried deep and inaccessible. They, nonetheless, support everything and determine the shape of the structure.

So, that’s the problem with talking about love. We know what we are talking about, but can’t find adequate words to describe it.

In my next post, I will talk about love in a totally inadequate manner. I will treat it as a business contract. We shall see if that reveals the foundation.

What do you mean when you say I love you? The word love can be used to cover a multitude of sentiments. There is tremendous variety among those who march under the banner of love, from the most selfless angels to the most hate-filled devils.

When you say love do you mean?

· I want what’s best for you, even if it doesn’t involve me. If you mean this, then you are talking about Agape, the highest form of love. If you mean this then you are prepared to sacrifice, you want your beloved to become strong and independent, the best that he or she can be, even if it means that you must withdraw from his or her life. This is the kind of love that is demanded of parents who must give up nearly everything for their children and then let them go to live their own lives. It’s also demanded of life partners even though it may not be necessary.

· You turn me on, sexually. This is what the ancient Greeks call Eros, erotic love. It’s often where people start when they meet someone and are attracted to them.

· I have a lot of fun with you. This is Ludus, a form of love that is mostly playful. Ludic love loves variety and adventure, trying new things, new positions, new activities, and unexpected combinations. It sees seriousness as deadly and commitment as a trap. It just wants to have a good time.

I am yours and you are mine. This is Philos, from which we get to word affiliation. The connection you have with the other is meaningful. You are friends.

· Together we can build something important. Here we have Pragma. You guessed it, a pragmatic, practical coalition that’s all about achieving a common goal.

· You’re my best friend. You are just like me and, even when you are not, you understand and support me better than anyone ever has before. This kind of love is called Storge. Seriously, it’s called Storge.

· I need you. This is Manic love, love that views the object as a possession that the lover needs to feel complete. Below the surface, the Manic lover is really saying, I don’t think anyone can love me. Prove me wrong. You seem to be offering love, but on a deeper level you’re really searching for it. You might extend yourself to your beloved with affection, gifts, services, and many other things, but will be disappointed by the responses you receive. Until you learn to properly love yourself, none of the responses you get, however loving, will make you feel loved.

Having one kind of love does not preclude having another in equal or greater amounts. One kind can grow out of another. If you have them all, then I guess you hit the jackpot.

However, some of these types of love are more sustainable than others, some are more satisfying, some are a good or a bad match to you.

What kind of love do you and your partner have, if any at all?