Relationships: Are we really half of an orange?
- by Valentina Carbajal
- 12/06/2019

In a relationship
Being single
The telephone rings. It’s my dad to wish me happy birthday. He asks me how old I am and he tells me that in the 19th century, at my age and without a boyfriend, I would have stayed to dress saints. I answer that how lucky we are not in that century anymore.
The feminist in me wanted to shout all sorts of things at him, but she restrained herself because she learned to choose her battles long ago. What I have not learned yet is that those stupid things don’t get to me. It affected me, it hurt me. I do not know if because he thought that I was not able to find someone who loved me or because he thought that without a couple something was missing, that it was not complete. I guess both.
For a long time, and more in his generation, they taught us that it was like that. That we were not complete. With the verse of the other half, of the half orange. Is there anything more useless than half an orange? What can be done with half an orange? Half dessert? Half a sip of juice? And so we go through life, unfinished, missing, debtors. Looking for someone to complete our orange when we really want a chocolate cake, or dulce de leche, or a whole bag of oranges.
Not only do you have to find your other orange but it is supposedly just one.
The idea of the half orange is extremely dangerous. If the other person is really “my other half” then he must understand me perfectly, assuming what I want / need / feel without having to communicate it to him. This clearly is not like that. Because we are different and independent and it is said singularity that we use to interpret situations. That is why we must be clear, the other is not in our mind, it is in his own.
Another complicated aspect that it brings is the fact that “finding” that person would seem to be the end of the story. The classic “and they lived happily ever after”. Nothing farther. Being in a relationship implies a continuous work of both parties.
Beware of expectations, especially those that are plain and simple: unreal. When you put the other on a pedestal and dream unattainable issues, you are condemning the relationship irremediably to failure. Give both of you a chance, keeping your feet on the ground.
The theme is to get rid of all the limiting beliefs that we have been carrying and that we have embedded in the depths of the collective unconscious and that lie in wait for us. They haunt us when we meet someone and we are not sincere because “it’s too early”. They lurk us when we accept things that hurt us because “men are like that”. They lurk us when we are in a relationship without love because “I’m going to end up alone.” And they haunt us when we have been doing an intense job of deconstruction and someone you want comes and tells you “you’re an old maid”.
It is difficult to shorten the gap between what we tried to unlearn and what we learned. Between theory and practice. Between what you feel and what you know. It helps not to be too hard on ourselves, to know that it is a process. It also helps to surround yourself with people who share your vision of how things should be.
The five truths to keep in mind before starting a relationship
1. You are complete
You are not half of anything or anyone. You are a complete and wonderful being.
2. You don´t need anyone
You are the only one who can give you everything you need. You do not need anyone else. You can choose to share your life with someone. But it is just that, a choice.
3. Love has no age
Get rid of all those beliefs about when and how things have to happen. People fall in love every day, at all times and at any age. You do not have an expiration date. You’re not a damn orange!
4.The only person who can make you happy is yourself
It doesn’t matter who you have next to you if you are not at peace with yourself. Happiness is something that resides within you. No one can come and “give it to you”. You have to give it to yourself, and then later you can share (with someone who is also at peace and happy with himself preferably).
5. Only the present matters
Do not get too involved in what will happen or what you would have done differently. We only have the present moment and this is where we find happiness. With or without a partner
I think that is the great learning. Understand how to be one, complete. A person with work, family, friends, hobbies, passions, responsibilities, desires and also with a partner. Get that balance. And I do not know if it happens to them (men) or if it was only us who were raised to be the company of someone else. Now it’s up to us to learn to be our own company and then see if we add someone else to the equation.
