Judge This: Part III

First thing first, thank you all for your advise on this. Truly appreciate it. I've drawn up a simple diagram for ease of illustration after taking into account all your comments and this is how I see it:

Similar to any organizations anywhere... one will always be subjected to influences be it internal or external. Thus, if I am to see it from a relationship point of view, similar theory applies.

Lets talk about the external influences first where one usually have no control over:

• Political and legal

For instance, if there is suddenly a new regulation that requires one to have at least 6 kids to boost the country's vision of 2050 (example la), relationships could be affected... imagine this: husband wants 6 kids to be in line with 2050 vision... wife wants 1 kid... husband will be jumping the wife as often as a hamster in heat and wife would be busy slapping the hell out of him...

• Economic

Interest rates, exchange rates, job security. More often than not, money is usually the cause of arguments and in severe cases, divorce amongst married couples. So imagine if the stock market crashed and you lost all your money / or if there is a recession and you lost your job, your relationship will definitely be affected in one way or other

• Social

Changing attitudes and lifestyles for e.g. in 2010, if all couples are expected to enter a program to swap spouses with strangers before marriage with the objective of instilling a sense of appreciation when you get your original partner back (hey, there's a reality show on this you know), wouldn't you be affected? (well, I guess this won't affect the males much unless of course if the partner assigned is as fat as a whale)

• Technological

Growing use of Internet and eventually more and more SOHO could also affect relationships. How? Imagine husband working in underwear day in day out at home... wife could potentially complain bout lack of personal space... or husband could complain that the wife's presence in his 'home office' is restricting his creativity...



Then if we look at internal influences that could also potentially affect one's relationship, there are 2 distinctive categories:

• Extended internal influences: posing opportunities and threats where one have no control over
• Internal influences: the only factor that one can control by playing with strengths and weaknesses

Extended internal influences

• This comprises of families, extended families, relatives, friends etc where there will always be a possibility of interference (whether you like it or not). But since they are internal influences that we cannot ignore, we need to also play our role -> this is the part where many of you said: respect the parents
• Bitch-from-hell (BFH) falls under this category and I obviously have no control over how she choose to act / live her life / affect our lives but I know for a fact that she pose a great threat to our relationship

So what do I do? I should in fact take a closer look at the internal influences:

Internal influences

• The core foundation which comprises of husband & wife but in my case, me & my bf
• Recognizing the fact that there's a threat to our relationship, we should work together to focus on strengthening the foundation of our relationship and not let the threat rule

When I look back at the course of 1 year, I realised that I've sub-consciously allowed BFH to win by choosing not to forget. By constantly nagging about the sister and forever bringing up the case when we argued etc etc, the peace and stability of our relationship was somewhat marred.

Thus moving forward, the action on my part was summarized by all who commented esp. Wilson & Colin:

• Respect the parents -> extended influences that will always be present in our relationship
• Ignore the bitch -> extended influences that I have no control over, so no point fretting about it
• Love my bf -> internal influences that is the core to everything else - if we strengthen this, no form of threat could weaken us

So to all who commented, kamsiah li.