Relationships are tough and complicated—you’ve probably heard this many times, and you likely believe it too.
But are relationships truly complex? A recent conversation with a close friend got me thinking: are relationships genuinely difficult, or do we just hide behind the idea of complexity and never try to break it down? Isn’t it easier to blame things not working out on them being “too complex”?
Curious, I started reading online to understand why so many relationships fail—even the ones that seem strongest from the outside. Some people said, “It’s not the relationship that’s complex, it’s the people who are complicated.” I found that take bizarre. How can people be complicated? We’re bodies with advanced brains and the ability to think logically—shouldn’t that make things simpler? The whole argument that “humans are complicated” felt absurd, so I turned to my friends to understand why their relationships had failed.
None could give me a definitive answer.
Instead, I got a few cliché responses: “We weren’t on the same wavelength,” “We just weren’t compatible,” “She wanted more than I could offer,” “We argued all the time and stopped having sex.” That last one made the most sense to me—it wasn’t vague. It clearly outlined unmet expectations in the relationship.
After wading through an overwhelming amount of nonsense online and frying my brain with information overload, I sat down with my favorite raag Yaman playing in the background and asked myself: What do I really feel about relationships?
When I was in school, many of my classmates would complain about how difficult and complex mathematics was. Some would cry before exams, terrified of failing. I never understood that fear—math was the easiest subject for me. I loved it, and I still do. There’s something exhilarating about solving algebraic equations and getting the right answer.
I still remember summer breaks when we didn’t have TV, phones, or a PlayStation for entertainment. I would spend most of that time working through the math textbook for the next grade. By the time the new school year began, the book was nearly complete. That’s how much I enjoyed math. I wasn’t a nerd; I just understood the concepts. I made the effort to learn the logic behind the equations and applied reasoning to solve them. It wasn’t complex for me because I knew how to find the answers.
And that’s when it hit me—maybe relationships are like math. People find them complex because they don’t understand the other person. They don’t know how to “solve” an argument. Most importantly, they don’t know the formula for reaching the end goal—sometimes they don’t even know what that goal is.
Earlier, I mentioned that a recent conversation with a friend sparked this line of thought. Let me explain what happened. We were discussing an author and his bestselling books when we disagreed about a key word that was supposedly central to the book’s theme. My friend got upset by my disagreement and abruptly ended the call. I wasn’t mad, but I was irritated, so I texted him saying we should probably stop talking altogether if he wasn’t open to hearing my opinions and believed in the “my way or the highway” approach.
He responded that he was okay with that, saying our conversation had drained his energy because I was constantly negating him. In hindsight, it feels like a silly argument—and we’ve since made up—but what if we hadn’t? What if we had walked away carrying regret or misunderstanding?
Just like in math, where you must learn when and how to apply specific methods, relationships require an understanding of when and why a person reacts in a certain way. Maybe I touched a nerve. Maybe he didn’t like the direction of the conversation. Maybe my argument wasn’t compelling enough for a healthy debate. Who knows? We both could have been wrong—or right—in our own ways. The real question is: did we even try to understand each other’s perspective?
No one can fully know another person—it would take a lifetime—but what we can do is try to understand how someone tends to react in certain situations. What are their quirks? What triggers them? What brings them joy? What words upset them in arguments? What topics are they sensitive about or strongly opinionated on?
Maybe if we start noticing these things, we can take one step closer to unraveling this complex web we call a relationship.
It’s nice to know that someone’s favorite color is violet. But knowing which color brings a smile to their face when youwear it—because it suits you better than violet—that’s probably the closest you can get to truly understanding someone.
