No, there’s not a card for that

Published 3:29 pm Monday, April 19, 2010

Now and then I stumble across things in the supermarket or things in a drugstore that make me dizzy.

Last week I was looking for some birthday cards in the four aisles of cards at my local drugstore. I am a bit surprised that we need this much inventory on Whidbey Island, but apparently card buying is still in fashion.

As I began my search for just the right birthday cards, I tried to make a mental map of the layout of the four aisles, humor, “mom” cards, animals dressed up like people, meaningful thoughts, and, what is this? There seems to be a new section.

After a whole column of “thanks for pet-sitting” cards, I find myself in front of rows of “troubled relationship” cards. Is this the Dr. Phil card section? Each of the cards is beneath a tag that reads “troubled relationship” in bold letters, and then in smaller letters there is a subcategory for the card.

The troubled-relationship section is categorized like the Dewey Decimal System.

There are cards for “Let’s get back on track,” “I know I’ll always love you,” “I wish I could go back to the unspoiled time,” “It’s not perfect, but it’s ours,” and “I still believe.”

All of the cards seem to have one message: Our relationship is not working, but let’s just move forward together.

I imagine the troubled-relationship section will have lots of repeat customers, perhaps these cards need to be sold by the box. If you are in a troubled relationship, just “moving forward” is truly not going to make anything better.

I’m thinking the troubled-relationship section needs “Let’s go to therapy,” “I’ll get over you,” “Enough is enough,” and “I can see clearly now.”

This card section seemed to be lacking boundaries in a relationship. There wasn’t a place where one could see a definitive “no.”

Healthy relationships are based on a couple of key ingredients. All of the healthy relationship principles seemed woefully missing in the troubled-relationship aisle.

Healthy relationships are not bottomless pits of bad behavior. The very first test of possibility for health in a relationship is what happens when you say no. All successful relationships can respect the word no and the limits and boundaries inherent in the word.

The other problem with the cards in the detention area of the card section is that they imply that loving someone can fix anything. Love is not enough to reset the bones of a broken relationship. Repairing a relationship is about behavior. I always ask people to try to look past the fog of love and examine the evidence.

All relationships go through times that test, times that challenge, times that require endurance. Healthy relationships can look upon those times and see that something was gained, and the relationship was deepened.

There is a bitter-sweetness from the challenges, not just a bitterness. It is a given that relationships will face times of trouble, but at the core the relationship itself is not troubling.

Sarri Gilman is a freelance writer living on Whidbey Island and director of Leadership Snohomish County. Her column on living with meaning and purpose runs every other Tuesday in The Herald. You can e-mail her at features@heraldnet.com.