Can we ever have a perfect relationship? Ananda had one. If you remember who Ananda was, he was the assistant monk of the Buddha. He had a perfect relationship with someone who was completely wise, completely Compassionate, 100% gifted beyond anything we can imagine a perfect relationship to be. So, can we find a perfect relationship? Probably not. Often we have to balance a give and take. In any relationship we're going to be unhappy with some of the stuff, we're going to be content with other stuff. The question will come is: how much of the unhappy stuff do we have to put up with? Is it too much? Because if it's too much then we should get out of that relationship; we shouldn't really be in it.
There have been rare occasions when Rosemary and I have actually given advice to people in a relationship as to whether they should stay in or get out. That's very rare. It's very rare because we don't like making this decision for anybody. We don't know every bit of the facts going on. Sometimes when we get some more facts though, that's enough and we say, "Get out." And I don't know that we've ever had a situation where somebody is telling us all their pain of their relationship, and we've ever told them to stay in. I don't think we've ever said that. We've either not said anything, or have actually said quite a few times, "Get out", because the pain that we saw was far too much.
Now, a little example of a person who should have gotten out but didn't. We advised them twice, in two different retreats, to get out. They didn't. Their spouse died and, unknowing to them (who believed their spouse had wealth around a million dollars), their spouse had lost all the money and they were left in debt. OK? Now think about that, put yourself in that position: you think you're married to a millionaire, you've got all these wonderful assets and whatever. The marriage was not good, we advised them to get out of it. A few years later the spouse dies and they find out they're in debt. OK? So if it's really big unhappiness, you want to question it. You might want to get out. Or at least have a trial separation, or at least get some advice, marriage counseling, or whatever else.
It is also helpful to think about, "5, 10, 20". Tomorrow night, the talk Rosemary gives is the Satipattana Sutta. In it she says that there's one section where in Buddhist philosophy or theory of what we are, the Buddha describes us as being five aggregates. There's the mind and the body, divided in two, and the mind has four different parts, so we end up having five aggregates. Generally when a relationship develops, one person comes with their five aggregates, the other person comes with their five aggregates, and you think that five and five make ten. Wrong! What we get is the first person coming with their five, the second person coming with their five, then we also have the five that the first person wishes the second person was, and we have the five that the second person wishes the first person was. We also have five more, which is what the first person wishes they were. And we have five more of what the second person wishes they were. We're all of a sudden up to 30! Now one of our students who actually is married, figured out that they had 50 in their relationship! They gave us two more variations.
As long as you've got a lot of aggregates, as long as you've got more than ten, there's always going to be some problems, there's always going to be some give and take, there's always going to be some unhappiness on someone's side. The closer you get to ten, the closer you are to being happy with the exact five aggregates that person is. Not wanting them to be a different way, actually happy with what they are. The happier you are with yourself and your five aggregates, then you're going to have less problems in your relationship. But again if you're really unhappy, and the five plus five equals fifty or more, then maybe you have to think about changing the relationship.