Relationship Advice
Today, People Magazine posted a story online (I got the link from CNN, I swear) in which Vanessa Hudgens (she of High School Musical fame) shares the “secret to her great relationship with co-star Zac Efron.”
There are so many things wrong with this story, but I’d like to tackle her “secret.”
“If you really love someone, you shouldn’t have to work at it,” the actress tells Cosmo Girl! for its July/August issue, reports Entertainment Tonight. “You finish each others’ sentences and have the same sense of humor.”
First of all, it should be assumed that we all know this is a 19-year-old talking about the secret of her great relationship with her 20-year-old co-star. It’s beyond ridiculousness. Hudgens and Efron have been dating since October of 2007. For those of you that are bad with math, that’s less than 12 months.
While a great relationship should not feel like work, you still have to work at it. If I’m going to take a celebrity’s sage advice about relationships, I’ll stick with my boy Will Smith who said:
“Counseling, individual learning, books, conflict resolution,” Smith confided. “It is a full time job to try and be happy. People tend to think that they can go to work for 50 or 60 hours a week and then come home and their relationship is just supposed to work.”
That’s the truth. Why would you spend less time working at your relationship than you do on your career? I know that People’s business is selling magazines and driving traffic to their site, but it’s really irresponsible for them to prop up this lackadaisical attitude toward relationships, especially from a teenage pop star who has been in her supposed “serious” relationship less than a year.
Over the past several months, Alli and I have been doing some pre-marital counseling for a couple that I will be marrying in late July. It’s been a terrific experience because out of all the things I’m good at, I think I’m probably best at being married. It’s not a skill that will necessarily lead to a long, illustrious career, but it sure makes my life a lot more enjoyable.
One of the things that I’ve found is a constant in the couples that I look to as relationship mentors in my life is that if you want to make a relationship or a marriage work, you should work harder at your relationship than you would in your career. When you do, it won’t feel like work. You’ll be happier, your significant other will be happier, and you’ll find that working at a relationship can be the most rewarding thing that you’ll ever do. If I had but one piece of advice to give to couples, that would be it.
That, and don’t get relationship advice from 19-year-olds in People Magazine.