Next time you visit your grocery store, take note of your relationship to produce. What do you look for? What are your expectations? Consider this: We’re doing to fruits and vegetables what we do to relationships. We’ve gradually come to expect produce to look like the glossy, air-brushed pics in magazines, and we think we should have everything we want, year-round. I’ve even heard people complain that, after a few days, fruit isn’t as pretty as it was when they brought it home.

It’s useful to reflect on how we got here with our vegetables. Relentless marketing has set expectations that real fruit finds hard to meet. Technology and transport reinforce these expectations by moving growing seasons arbitrarily within reach of our whims. And we’ve been trained to taste vegetables mostly with our eyes. 

To put it bluntly, we’ve fallen into expecting reality to conform to fantasy. And we do the same thing to carrots.

Let’s start with the fantasy. How is an intimate relationship supposed to unfold? 

• Step 1: Fall in Love
• Step 2: Love Happily Ever After

If you stick in step 1.5, Overcoming Obstacles and Working Things Out, people congratulate you for being practical. 

I admit that I’m being just a bit facetious, but don’t get comfortable. The notion that intimate relationships should be “natural” and “just happen” is not just widespread; in my philosophical practice, I’ve often been told that a relationship “isn’t working” when it isn’t Happily Ever After. It’s often a surprise when I reveal that being in a relationship is like most other activities that are worth doing: Relationships take work.

A relationship is more than a trip to the produce section, where a chance encounter with a perfect peach makes your day. Think of a relationship as a garden. No one seriously expects to happen upon a thriving garden one day on the way to the trash bin. A garden requires planning and nurturing, time and patience, and an awareness that the rhythms of growth and maturation can’t be put on our timetable.

You may start a garden because you want fresh vegetables, but you soon learn that vegetables have needs that you need to tend to if you want them to thrive. More sun? Less sun? More water, or less? Mulch? It’s as if your garden is . . . a living thing. 

Of course, we recognize the irony there, but a relationship is a living thing, too, and as a living thing, a relationship requires nurturing and care — which, for most of us, involves giving up fantasies of an Instant Relationship. 

You might be thinking, But that’s not romantic! You’re right — if your definition of “romantic” comes from a romance novel. But it’s worth noting that romance novels are next door to beautiful food magazines.

What can we learn from the garden metaphor? Relationships thrive when the conditions are right, and there’s a lot you can do to improve those conditions. But that requires a change of mindset, and a willingness to learn and practice relationship skills. Like communication and negotiation. And honesty about expectations, and compromise. Did I mention communication?

Generally, we aren’t born with the skills we need to tend a garden, and the same goes for relationships. Learning those skills takes time and a degree of commitment, but the results are relationships that grow and deepen and make life richer. Do you need a little help with your skills? That’s where a love and relationship coach can help.

And if you’d like to take a philosophical approach, you know where you can find a philosopher. 😉