Relationship Quality Assurance

I love malls that are quiet and relatively deserted. These are usually failing ones or those that are undergoing a change of ownership. If you can find a good cafe to read and write, you could park yourself there for the whole day.  

I'm in one of those malls today and shall not name which one. But I'm happy to be sitting here at Coffee Bean, typing these words. For a change, I actually have an idea of what I want to write because I've been musing about it for the past day or two: romantic relationships.

Being humans, there's a biological need in all of us to find a life partner and procreate. That is the basic dynamic that drives the human race. This need to preserve our genes supersedes everything else. Life equals self-preservation. Procreation is the strategy to preserve genetic information.  This is what goes on at the molecular and biological level.

But what makes a human being is not just biological hardware but also software: feelings, thoughts, emotions - the psyche. That makes things complicated. Even if biological needs are fulfilled, psychological needs are a different matter altogether. Maslow's famous hierarchy of needs articulates them every well. The challenging part to navigate in a relationship between couples are the higher level psychological and self-fulfilment needs.

How do couples help fulfil each other's psychological needs? That's where the great drama we call 'love' gets played out.  We are all, each and every one of us, a bundle of strengths and weaknesses. In areas that we are strong, we gloat and despise others for not living up to our standards. When it comes to our weaknesses, we try to conceal it, and when they do get exposed, we react negatively.

If couples are willing to accept each other as they are--complex humans with strengths and weaknesses, and make a pact of to help each other out, then we might have a good foundation for a successful relationship.  But that doesn't happen very often because of various reasons. For one, we may not be aware of our own weaknesses. When our partners expose them, we feel insecure, threatened or even angry.

In the software development process, we have QA engineers to do tests that will expose bugs. That is not fault-finding but part and parcel of the effort to deliver a good product. In a relationship, both parties test each other constantly, exposing 'bugs' in each other's personality. If we see that as a process of fault-finding, then that leads to arguments and deterioration of the relationship. But if we can look at it as an effort to better each other, then that's good quality control.  

That to me is the whole purpose of pursuing the path of marriage. Together, you are a better system because you have a built-in system to self-correct. However that is still a tough thing to achieve because we are all selfish and think our individual needs and expectations are primary. 

A relationship is also complex because both parties are playing the role of producer and consumer. The consumer is the end-user who has expectations of the product that he or she bought. The producer might not always fulfil all the requirements of the end-user, but it should at least attempt to understand what the customer wants. At the same time, a customer has to have a reasonable understanding of the limitations of any product. Appreciate the features that work and report the bugs.

A software developer never consciously create bugs. If we treat weaknesses as bugs, then we know that they can be fixed if identified as such. Like software products, we all need upgrades and patches. A good relationship is one that's symbiotic--we act as each other's QA. The real user is the world out there.  And you are better off having the QA process in place.