Easy like Sunday morning

A question that has troubled me of late is why we make friends or become lovers with different people. Of course, there are relationships that develop because of sheer sympathy and liking for the other person. They are rare though. Most relationships are based on a role typology: I expect him / her to fulfil a certain role in my life. Be it that of saviour, secret lover or mature coach (the ranges vary from person to person) – we all need someone. What we do not expect is that everyone who enters our life has an own deck of cards. They all have luggage, left behind by the culture they come from, by the family life they led, by the amount of loneliness they had to share alone. Of course, this luggage needs to be got rid of – and there are more than one ways to do that. One that is very familiar to most of us is shedding that luggage onto the other and making him / her be a part. There are people in everyone's life who live by this “shedding” - more or less obvious, more or less intense.

The trick is in how much blame you choose to accept for somebody else's life... To understand what the boundaries there are to your responsibility – and to the other's, and act accordingly. All the love and goodwill you have cannot always rescue somebody who has already been hurt so much that all you could do is just sit next to him – and inflict a new wound even by that, by being a signpost for the loss.

And the thing that gets to me
Is you’ll never really see
And the thing that freaks me out
Is I’ll always be in doubt
(Cranberries, Animal Instinct)