One of the analogies that I have used with describing relationships is that if you want a nice grassy yard, you have to pull out the weeds. Often a relationship has grass and weeds. Hopefully lots of grass with your partner, but then there are a few little weeds here and there. If you don't like the weeds, if you really don't like the weeds, if you absolutely don't want the weeds, but you do want the grass, what are you going to do? You can't not want weeds and also have grass. Now, if you absolutely don't want the weeds and you couldn't care less about the grass, then just put down concrete over the whole thing. Relationship is finished. But if you do like the grass, yes, you have to put up with the weeds.
How do we pull out some of those weeds? This is a bit tricky. First you have to decide whether the weeds are really big stuff or little stuff. If it is big stuff, then you may try to help the other person get rid of the weeds. For example, you are in a relationship with somebody who smokes and you don't smoke. That's a big weed for the person who does not smoke. They often want their partner to stop smoking with the pressure, "Please, stop smoking". But it is often not good enough just to say "stop smoking". Often there are other things we have to do to help the person learn how to not smoke.
So that could be an example of a big weed. How do we go about trying to remove the weed is up to the individual at the time. It's not black and white. Maybe we provide information on lung cancer, maybe we provide other information, such as about the money that is wasted. Maybe we take them to the cemetery where our uncle is dead who died of lung cancer, and we talked to her or him about the problem of our uncle. Maybe there are other ways in which we can help the person with the big weeds.
Now, smaller weeds, we don't have to worry about them. Let them stay there, they are too small! Nothing to worry about. For example: my aunt told us a story. She has been married to my uncle for over fifty years, and it's a very loving relationship. Back in the days when they got married, they didn't live together before the wedding, so the wedding night was very important. She told us that she thought she had married an idiot. She walked into the bathroom when he was about to brush his teeth. He took his toothbrush and his toothpaste, and instead of putting the toothpaste on his toothbrush, he squirts the toothpaste onto his teeth! Is this anything to worry about? Is this weed little or not? If he wants to brush his teeth that way, it is weird, but it's only small stuff. It's not big enough. So you really have to be careful when judging the other person's weeds. Is it really is something that should interfere with a loving relationship? If it is not, then don't worry about it.
You know, as far as weeds in the yard, Rosemary and I have a nice grassy yard, and the assistants often take care of it. When the assistants pull out the weeds, there are some weeds that they put in a plastic bag and dump in the dump. Other weeds that they pull out, they just leave out there for composting. So even in a yard we make decisions as to which of the weeds are more harmful and we want to separate them from the others that are quite okay, and just go to the compost in the same area.
It's similar with relationships. You have to decide which parts of your partner are the aspects that you actually don't like, that you can't deal with. And you have to discuss with them about it. But then, other aspects are just too little, it doesn't matter, you can ignore them, you just may have an eccentric partner. For those of you who don't know the word eccentric, it just means odd, but in an interesting way.