can i get a minute to breathe? when people are in a relationship, they often discount the perspectives of outsiders. outsiders being anyone not part of the dynamic duo currently engaged in a relationship. i am here to point out the obvious. outsiders always see more than you know. sure we trust the opinions of others, we want to hear their "objective" viewpoints and open our minds to what they are telling us. but, often we discount what they have to say. it's easy to dismiss the negative opinions of others because we feel that "they don't understand, they don't see, they don't get it." or the ever popular "he/she is different when it's just us." this is of course true, nobody should know better about your relationship than you.



however, in trying to affix a percentage to how much you see compared to how much they see, i would say it's about 60-30. you see sixty percent, the outsiders see thirty percent and the missing ten percent, nobody sees. i think what is at the root of this "mindset" or "problem" is pride. we are all great at tearing apart the relationships of others. but once engaged in our own relationships, we tend to think that our viewpoint is the best. only we understand. i mean honestly, aren't you in a relationship because you want to believe that "we understand each other the best, above and beyond everyone else's ability." in my short time on earth however, i've found that the peanut gallery is often very dead-on in their assessments. but we tend to think that they only know ten percent as opposed to the more generally relevant thirty percent.



i am just as guilty of this as anyone else. i tend to not give two hoots about what other people say they see. believing -- trusting -- that my insight and knowledge are vastly superior to anyone else's. clearly, this is not the case. when you are in a relationship, you are blinded. the god of love, eros, is depicted blindfolded for a reason. two people in a relationship like to pretend that they are high above a mountain, able to look at everything with an eagle eye and from a superior viewpoint. but i think it is more likely that when we are in a relationship, we are really in a valley. we cannot see the mountains for the foothills or something like that. that made no sense. if i'm going to paraphrase popular sayings i guess i should try to paraphrase the right thing. but i can't remember it.



anyway. my point here is that once you engage into a relationship, you often engage into an unspoken pact with yourself to overlook certain things. it's about using the optimistic third eye, as opposed to the realistic two eyes. this tends to result in later epiphanies and "oh i never saw that but it was so obvious." we/i never saw that because we don't want to believe that. we only want to look for the good, we want to ignore or obscure the bad. but the outsiders, they see it all, and they are much more removed and critical about analyzing it. count on the people around you to state the obvious, because sometimes you can't. not for lack of vision or ability, but for lack of trying.