We are all scared

After reading through my previous journals I started to think about the idea of relationships and human behavior. Looking around school and in life in general there are always those that chase after relationships that they perceive as great. They lust after those they are attracted to and commence in chasing the person they feel the strongest affiliation with, someone that they can relate to, are physically attracted to, and someone that they feel comfortable around. What is it about human nature that causes us to work at not being alone? Why is it that the perception of a relationship is always a positive one? Single life is considered a solitary life, while relationships are surrounded by the idea of connection, love, and intense emotional feelings. However I would argue that the single life is not only easier but more enjoyable once you stop fearing being alone

The reason that people consider relationships to be so desirable is because people are scared of being alone. Being alone means that one spends most of their time surrounded by their own thoughts. It is only alone that we discover who we are. Left alone with our thoughts we discover what it means to be yourself, you uncover your weaknesses, strengths, and inner most thoughts. This is not necessarily a good thing. How do we know that the person we are is not a person that we do not like? The fear of being alone and uncovering something about ourselves forces us to strive for a connection with someone. This connection allows us to not examine the effect we have on ourselves, but how we make another person, a person we care about, feel. The relationship acts as a mirror of how we affect those around us. By establishing a strong emotional connection with a partner the effects of our personality are seen in the reactions of the partner. By seeing the reactions we can do something we are not able to do by ourselves, we can readjust who we are. This does not change us. It only causes us to act differently. Deep down we are all incapable of change. But by seeing our effect on another person we are able to change how we act in certain situations, push into doing so by the desire to please those we care about. We are all scared of who we are. We fear what lies beneath how we act is something that we do not want to see. This fear compels us to find someone that reflects our own positive aspects of our personality. If out partner laughs, we perceive ourselves as funny. If our partner relies on us and we help them through their problems, we perceive ourselves as caring. By making sure that someone we care about is happy, we do things that we would not have done if we had been alone. We invent parts of ourselves in order to feel better about who we are. The drive to enter into a relationship exists because we fear who we are, we fear what we don’t know about ourselves, and most importantly we fear that we won’t like what we find if we do discover who we are.