by Lilian Okado

Created on: October 19, 2008

I sat watching them cry their eyes out. For about the hundredth time, one of them had just had another tiff with the love of their life and was extremely miserable, another had caught their partner cheating a third time, whilst another, eyes glistening, could not understand why her fiance of 10 years still refused to propose.

I passed round tissue wipes, put my arms around them and empathetically continued to listen. Their stories were familiar ones and as was always the case, all three women felt like their men had gone further down injury lane and broken their hearts into tiny irreconcilable pieces.

I told them not to worry as I always did, knowing full well that neither had the strength to hear the truth; and turned onto my own personal tirade on men and their lack of respect for the good women they have been blessed with. Later that evening when I was alone mulling over my friends' clearly unfair state of affairs, I wondered why these young, intelligent, dead drop georgeous women did not just up and leave if they were so unhappy with their relationhsips. I revisited a previous conversation I had with my relationship mentor 3 months ago on character in relationships.

It is true that relationships are wonderful. It is true that when you are in love you are constantly walking on air and the companionship and intimacy shared by couples, more often than not, grows into a kind of childlike attachment to each other. But as my mentor put it, it is also true that many of us have perfected the art of losing ourselves in our relationships and it is vital to know where our boundaries lie and more notably when to draw the line.

Time and again many of us leave behind who we are, our ideals and what we belive in, once through the relationship door. We find ourselves eating apples only because our partner does, when we clearly prefer oranges. When they don't return the favor and refuse to acknowledge our apparent self sacrifice' we feel taken for granted, unnappreciated and disrespected. On the other hand people refuse to let go of a bad relationships because they do not want to be alone or are have no idea how or where to start. Even more fear being alone; this is usually all it takes to keep them glued to a philandering partner. Others still, move from one relationship to another in search of Mr Right'. But, what then does this say of our character?

Several broken relationships later, much too late, it will suddenly dawn on you that subconciously, you metamorphosed into carbon

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