People are prone to say things like "all women are alike" and "all men are alike", and similar expressions extending to just about any feature or the human race, creating thus given roles and given expectations that then, when brought into the personal relationship of two or more individuals generates all kinds of gratuitouos conflicts that could have been avoided if these prejudices - for that's what they are - would have been avoided. As it happens, you can only say that this or that group of people are "all like this" when you constantly and consistently behave in a way that brings forth that reaction, or when they are consistently and constantly faced with a type of behavior that provokes that given reaction. Take for instance female drivers. It is a very propagated missconception that women drive poorly. There's no scientific base to it, and actually insurance companies define lower insurance quotes to women than to men, because statistically women are less prone to have meaningful accidents. Anyway, I driver - say a man - is behind a woman driver on the road. Having noticed that the driver ahead of him is a woman, he immediatelly gets grumpy thinking how clumsy and incompetent she is even if she hasn't made a thing different than what any other driver would. At a corner, where they stop and the woman carefully looks around before turning, the man interprets that as she being a coward who doesn't know how to drive, and so starts honking at her. This gets the driving woman upset or nervous, and due to it will try to get away from the other driver either by making a reckless turn - which the male driver will classify as yet another proof of how poorly women drive - or by having her attention compromised and missing chances to pass, which again the male driver would interpret as her being an incompetent driver. Truth this, however, that it doesn't matter how old, young you are, black, white, man or woman, harrassment does chip from your concentration, and push you to behave or act in a way that's not your natural way, but which falls in line with the preconceived idea your harrasser has about you.
Indeed it is often our own behavior what conditions the way others behave around us and about us. A curious thing about this is that, if you behave in a way different than the "norm" - this norm being the preconceptions and prejudices applied to your given group - then the rest of the environment often would move out of their assigned role to complement your behavior. I have no scientific proves about this, but I have my own empiric experience about my own relationships. Admitedly I'm rather "male-ish" in many things I do. That doesn't mean that I'm a tomboy - I could never pull that successfully - but it means that I don't have many of the expected behaviors of a woman/lady, and instead I have many of the tendencies men normally are expected to have. Sure, I shop and I bitch, and when I get mad I can bitch at someone so much that a dent is created on their body where waves of ym angry voice clashes on them, but I don't nag constantly (except on small things about chores), and don't have the usual compulsive controlling, mothering and "when will we get married" behavior most women are expected to have.
As we are all socially conditioned to expect certain things of all our relationships, what often happens is that one of the parts (this being usually them), starts taking the behavior that's missing from the other side. As result of this way of trying to establish a given balance, they - in my case men - start falling out of the box they are normally filed into. They are no longer all about being lazy and watching the football, with a wondering eye on the street and constantly making numbers about how to cheat and how to make the relationship as informal as possible. Now, it's not about faking it, about pretending that you are not trying at all costs to get married so that guys want to marry you, or at all costs pretending that you don't give a fuck about women spending your money so that your girlfriend stops seeing you like a human ATM or a walking wallet. It's about honestly breaking with our stereotypes, about honestly looking at where we are and what could be triggering in the other part that behavior that we don't like.
As a matter of fact many of these roles assigned to different stages of our life or relationships entail a type of behavior, a type of attitude that's not natural for many of us. Monogamy, for instance, isn't natural for many people. For others isn't even the concept of monogamy, but the bond, thr prohibition that doesn't set natural with them. I'm one of those. Monogamy doesn't bother me in the least until it is demanded or expected. For others the police-behavior, controlling the other and making sure they keep their part of the "deal" isn't natural. So the other one is seeing other people or forgets your anniversary or something of the sort? So what? Or are you going to check all their belongings not because you have suspitions (and if you have suspitions, dude, ASK! That's what questions were invented for!), but so you can see what secrets they are hiding from you?
Friendship is normally one of the free-est kinds of relationship, where people can usually be the way they normally are - though not always. When one of your friends enters a relationship, it often happens that the person breaks off from the group, and maybe not so much because the given relationship is time consuming - say having children or taking care of someone - but because their new relationship demands them a given behavior and they need to "stay in character" in order to perform successfully within it. Complains about people who get married, have kids or get a given type of job being able of only speak about that excluding all other types of concersations, are cases often of "staying in character". Purposeful or not it happens. Curiously, the people who speak the most about it are those who are unhappy, and need to reinforce their character either by inforcing a fake image of happiness, or by reinforcing their position - often portraing themselves as helpless victims - by pushing the negatives.
There are relationships harder to break than others, for instance job relationships. Not everybody would agree with this, but truth is that you often need a lot of nerve to quit a job, specially when you don't have another one ligned up, because we all need to support ourselves, and usually a paying job makes the trick. Well, jobs are relationships that more often than not demand us to alter our behavior and things about ourselves, in ways that might not be natural for us. Often these things are even set in rules. Dress codes or uniforms, hairstyles allowed, types of shoes, personal care, writing styles, ways of speaking, times to get in, leave, eat and so on. These we usually accept, but when it comes to our private life, where we make the rules, why should be fall into patterns and roles that make us feel unsatisfied and deepen misconceptions that only twist and ruin our perception of others?
Try being honest. A relationship with a loved one, a friend, a family member, a lover... these aren't work. These aren't about a payment, but about the person you are with. So try it out, concentrate only of the two (or more) of you, cast away the social rules that do not set with you, and see where that takes you to. Who knows what sort of amazing surprises await for you at the end of your journey.
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