Recently I’ve been really getting into Paulo Coelho’s works.  I finished reading The Alchemist which is surprisingly like my life (which is probably a good thing).  Also I finished Eleven Minutes, which is a story about a prostitute in Geneva who learns the true meaning of relationships.  There’s a couple of quotes that really stand out to me:

…the amount of time spent actually having sex is about eleven minutes.

Eleven minutes.  The world revolved around something that only took eleven minutes.

And because of those eleven minutes in any one twenty-four hour day (assuming that they all made love to their wives every day, which is patently absurd and a complete lie) they got married, supported a family, put up with screaming kids, thought up ridiculous excuses to justify getting home late, ogled dozens, if not hundreds of other women with whom they would like to go for a walk around Lake Geneva, bought expensive clothes for themselves and even more expensive clothes for their wives, paid prostitutes to try to give them what they were missing, and thus sustained a vast industry of cosmetics, diet foods, exercise, pornography, and power…

~Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes, p. 88

I look around me and I see so many people willing to make this sacrifice for these eleven minutes.  It seems so fruitless and pointless if all this work is just for eleven minutes.  This is why looks mean so little to me.  This is why personality above all else is what attracts me to someone.  I would only spend a small percentage of my life doing what most people consider “making love,” and the other 99% of my life living with the person I am with.  Clearly, it doesn’t make me happy just to be with someone who looks beautiful, I need them to be beautiful from the inside.

So why is it that I see so many of my friends chasing after these eleven minutes?  They base their entire lives on eleven minutes.  Maybe the thing is that when you don’t get those eleven minutes, it’s so easy to obsess about them.  It’s so easy to make it seem like that is central in your life.  But to be really objective one has to look at how much time will be spent out of your life once the goal is achieved.  That is the key.  Paulo Coelho really seems to know a lot about life.

The second quote that really stands out to me (it really applies to my situation personally) from the book was:

But their relationship was based on freedom, and no other sort of relationship would work - perhaps that was the only reason they loved each other, because they knew they did not need each other.

~Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes, p. 236

So I’ve always held this belief, and the more I look at the people around me, the more I believe it.  There are two types of couples (and shades of grey in between).  On one end are the couples that truly need each other.  They depend on each other for everything, they can’t live without each other.  This is the type of couple that is popularized by romance novels.  This is the type of relationship that most people call “true love.”  Then there are the other type of couple.  These couples don’t need each other.  Each person is independent and can live without the other person… in fact they can even be happy when they are apart.  But, to some degree, the two people choose to be with each other.  They both understand that the other partner in the relationship can make it on their own.  They both understand, that they can make it on their own, yet there is an understanding that they are better together than apart.  This is the type of relationship I strive for.

The big reason for this is that I am an independent person.  Choice is a big part of my life.  I need to feel like I had the choice in being with someone.  If I am in a relationship where the other person truly needs me, then I will feel smothered.  I will feel like I have no room to move, no freedom.  For someone who is used to freedom, someone who truly enjoys single life, taking away freedom is the toughest part of a relationship.  I think it’s really important that I choose the other person, and they choose me.  The choice makes the relationship so much more special.  The choice is what makes the bond truly strong.

Furthermore, in a relationship where both people are independent, there is a lot less pressure for one person to fulfill the holes that the other person needs filled.  Without these high expectations of someone, a relationship doesn’t have to live up to anything besides feeling compatable with each other.  In the end, that is all that matters.