aphorism

"You get out of a relationship what you put into it"

Ah, words of wisdom. Aphorism. Succinct sayings we turn to in moments of bemusement or bemoanment. They reveal life's mysteries, truths, and follies.
Or maybe they're just pretentious prattle we cling to, to make life bearable. A feeble attempt to make sense out of senselessness.
Perhaps they're even both.
Whoops. I came dangerously close to coining an aphorism there myself. Since that's not my intent, let's move to the business at hand. Aphorism #1, come on down! Let's hold you up to the light, take a little nibble, cup your balls, and find out what you're made of.
"You get out of a relationship what you put into it."
Very pretty words. Very, very pretty...
And pretty stupid.
Perhaps those words might have merit in a healthy world, where people knew how to share and love. Where people didn't live in a crippled haze of fear and insecurity, never knowing whether their most basic needs (food, love, shelter, sex) will be met, never knowing if they suddenly won't be good enough, smart enough, strong enough, young enough, desirable enough, or fortunate enough.
But in this world, you can pretty much count on hardly ever getting out of a relationship what you put into it. The selfishness around us (and in us) runs too deep. We spend our lives chasing our needs, walking on thin ice above chasms of despair. Equality is the exception, not the rule. We embed inequality into the very structures of our social institutions...bosses and subordinates, pecking orders...elaborate justifications for the ultimate payoff, "I get to tell YOU what to do." Just a generation or two ago, our primary social institution (marriage) was the ultimate realization of that ethos.
We live in need of what others can give us, trying to maximize what we can get, so to keep away the demons of want. With everybody trying to maximize, nobody's trying to give. We learn the value of having people around who need us more than we need them. They always come through, pretty much whatever we do. But we also find ourselves chasing those who embody our own dreams of love, security, or vanity. These others, however, know where they stand.
Deep down, everyone knows where they stand.
What we learn as children on the playground is not how to act, but how to appear. Kindly and compromising.
But somewhere deep inside, every littlest child absorbs the truth of this world.
The law of the predator.
This aphorism has a close cousin, "You get out of life what you put into it". That's even more patently stupid than the first! Perhaps you're one of the lucky few, living a life sheltered from this world's more overt inhumanities and horrors. But brutality's reign on this planet is a long, long way from over. Starvation, war, rape, torture, homicide, genocide, patricide, infanticide, suicide, celibacy, monogamy, exploitation, racism, speciesism, sexism, classism. Are "good people" rewarded fairly in this world? That's a notion so preposterous i won't even insult your intelligence by listing the litany of ways they're not.
Perhaps a more realistic version of the aphorism is "You can't expect to get more out of a relationship than what you put in"?
No, that's actually EXACTLY what you can expect.
Or less. Far less. That's a fair expectation, too.
Perhaps the only realistic version is "You shouldn't expect to get more out of a relationship than you put in". But that's so watered-down, it amounts to little more than passive-aggressive finger wagging.
Next?