I said, Loyalty. She said, Trust.

I asked this question during a casual hangouts with my closefriends. I posed this very simple question to them.

“What is the most important thing in a relationship?”

Each of them said something. But I didn’t remember what they said because I think they didn’t get my question right. But one of them, which is the best closefriend of mine, said this.

“It’s Trust.”

Then I said this, “You think it’s Trust? To me it’s Faithfulness.”

Then my friend tried to defend her opinion.

“Without trust, it’s not going to work out.”

Then I answered,”

“True, but without loyalty, there isn’t a relationship to practice the trust for. Before you can talk about other things such as trust, understanding, caring and so on, both of you must first be there in the relationship to make those other things relevant to practice. If let’s say you can Trust so much, but the partner is not “an active player” in the relationship, it doesn’t matter how much trust you are willing to give. Trust doesn’t correct “his infidelity” when infidelity is all you need to end “your loving years” with him. Let’s say, if you don’t have trust for each other, but you guys are loyal, trust me, you guys will work it out if both of you still WANT the relationship. That’s very important to me. If you speak of Trust, you are being unfair to other elements as important trust, like understanding, acceptance, coping - because you need all of that to make a relationship work. But before that, the most essential thing is to have a relevant relationship to work for, and then the other questions will come into the picture.”

Agree or not? But I come up with that answer after spending so much time trying to figure it out. I could have a relationship that is as shaky as can be when my partner doesn’t trust me. But then I can do what I can to tell him that he’s wrong about certain things. I can steal his heart back if he gets hurt by my action. If he gets too jealous, I can always do it my way to tell him that it’s him that I love so much. Bottomline is, he and I want the relationship so badly that we would do whatever to make sure that it lasts. So he and I might do something that hurt each other, but if we are still hanging on to the same thing that, “we both want this relationship to work” so anything else can be taken care of from there. But you can really cut the story short if one of you has no heart for the relationship anymore. Even the smallest thing can be the reason to part ways. So I describe this as “Loyalty” – if you can be loyal to each other, it’s that long that you can have the relationship alive. Trust? Jealousy? Misunderstanding? These are part of the emotional roller coaster that WILL HAPPEN once in a while. I think as much as you don’t want them, they will still occur to you occasionally. But it’s not how much the tests, but how you can manage to survive them right?

I can say this for sure because even how bad the problem that comes to me and my partner, we could still have our relationship despite whatever that is trying to separate us. But it’s when one of us choose to not be loyal (in this sense, not loyal means “stop working for a relationship” for whatever reason there is), we don’t even need an excuse to do it. We can just walk away without any apparent reason. So my conclusion is, of both of us a loyal to each other, we can handle it all.

At least, I believe so :)

Again, it’s more on the hands-on and not just neverending theory on paper right? If you can tackle it using “what’s best in hand”, you don’t need a damn hypothesis because actions speak louder than words :)