I was speaking to a friend last night who was asking my advice (I know .. I laughed too!) .. 
Her “problem” was that she had met someone who she really liked but the relationship is not going smoothly. The girl who she has met was honest with her from the start and said she was not looking for a serious relationship and was dating other people.
My friend however, wants to take this relationship to a new level. She asked me whether she should lay her cards on the table and fight for this.
My first instinct was to tell her that she had to sit down and talk to her “friend” but on reflection I think I may have given her the wrong advice.
Relationships have to be a two way thing, both of you need to put effort in. A one sided relationship never works and the person putting the most effort in is usually the one who gets hurt.
I have twice fought to keep a relationship going, once I lost, once I thought I had won. In reflection I never won. It ended up being a relationship where I felt I was the one putting all the effort in with no emotional or physical return and in the end I just gave up. In hindsight I was wrong to fight, I should have just let it go and moved on.
Maybe I’m too cynical these days to fight, maybe I’m just tired, I don’t know. What I do know is that no matter how good you are at fighting in the end you will lose.
I know that there are women out there who like to be fought for. What that says about their insecurities and their emotional maturity needs a wiser woman than me to work out but I know that I would never again want to be with a woman who made me fight for her.
Cynical or wise? I’m not sure!
Comments for and against welcome!
Brae. A gay woman's tale! 
Jun 10, 2011 @ 06:57:20
i agree on 1 level. i fought for my ex . it was a 1 way street.. you are correct in saying someone that needs to be fought for is full of insecurities, its you fighting that gives them the confidence they need to move on and find another.. this said. an easy smooth non fight relationship is too easy, you start to be complacent. love is a very 2 way street so its finding the balance. like you ceej. i will never fight for a woman as hard, i was ripped to the core. but.. i would fight to keep the woman i now have.. tell your friend to search her soul. takes weeks apart to realise they were not worth fighting for..good luck x
Jun 10, 2011 @ 07:12:29
Well, I think that if you really want something, then yes, you should fight for it. This is where that saying comes in: “Anything worth having is worth fighting for.” I mean, if you don’t fight for it, you’ll always wonder what could have been. If you fail, at least you’ve tried and maybe learned something along the way.
But I do understand where you’re coming from. In the past, you fought for something and ended up getting hurt and you don’t want the same thing to happen to your friend…
Jun 10, 2011 @ 07:36:34
I believe the word ‘fight’ should not exist in any relationship in any form or shape because relationships are what we make them, ‘we’ being the significant word.
We all have choices available to us and it is our good choices that will make a relationship successful, we can choose to communicate well – say how we feel, what we want, what our dreams are where we want to go etc.. If two people can do this and like what they hear and feel excited and invigorated by the prospect then they have a relationship that will work and will be a wonderous journey.
If someone has to resort to ‘fighting’ for a relationship then it is clear the other person is in a totally different place – they are already walking a different path.
‘Fighting’ for a relationship is what we do when we are starting to experience loss, it is a very selfish act because we do it purely because we don’t want to experience loss or grief, regardless of what the other person wants, it’s all about ‘I’ and not ‘we’ at this stage, this is a good marker for the state of any relationship as at the begining it is always ‘we’ and at the end it is always ‘I’!!
Jun 10, 2011 @ 09:44:39
Hello 🙂
As hard as it may be for her to hear, your friend already knows all she needs to know about the situation – her “friend” doesn’t want a relationship and it sounds like she has been quite open about it. I think your friend could hurt herself more if she “fights” to change that. I think your friend, like everyone else, deserves to be in a relationship with someone who doesn’t have to be persuaded to love them on an equal footing. Sometimes we just have to accept, as hard as it is to do, that our love for someone is unrequited.
Jun 10, 2011 @ 17:15:37
Well hello…my stance is rather different….I have found myself in a simular situation..and this has taken some thought to reply. I put my cards on the table and got a semi positive reply…which was that they want to come to me with their heart and their head sorted, this person does have issues around a very recent breavement…..they have also said they want this to happen in time however am not in the right place at the moment…do I wait around for that woman of my dreams and be there and carry on the relationship thats I have with this person, although it is not a realtionship strickly speaking.
However what people percieve and think are sometimes very different and then there are their actions again that is different…is it not better to have loved and lost?…and learnt rather then to not love at all? The thing is we will never know unless we try…. what is wrong with having true feelings for another, and sharing those feelings…sometimes it takes for someone to say something to get the ball rolling in my case the other persons feelings are growing, which can only be seen as a positive thing…if and when i have had enough I will know and then will be back on the market lol all pics welcome…JOKE ! x x
Jun 10, 2011 @ 17:38:32
Great blog post and some interesting and diverse replies………I think I’m going to go with the Yorkie on this one……….if you’re fighting, especially at an early point in a relationship then I think there are going to be some fairly big differences in outlook. When someone is honest and forthright from the start and someone else has an ‘i’ll change you’ attitude it’s doomed………..my personal view on love and relationships is that it does take a hell of a lot of acceptance, trust and communication to make it work…….some people can do it and some can’t…………..life gives us opportunities to experiment, to learn lessons and to eventually get it right and no one does that on their own and no one does it without some pain and some introversion. Love comes from a place where you can accept yourself for who you really are…warts n all , and the person who holds your affection truly …….love should be unconditional but rarely is…………. I’m not a ‘religious’ person and actually I don’t even like the word but this quotation from the bible kind of sums it up
Corinthians 13
1 If I speak in the tongues[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
Everyone tells their own story and wether love is worth fighting for is entirely circumstance dependent, but don’t fight a war that will never be won and never compromise the self that you know, and should love….
Jun 11, 2011 @ 10:31:08
Good Morning,
I personally am not a fighter for no go relationships, if clearly in the start of the relationship it is made known that the other party just wants `fun no strings’ then i accept that and don’t let myself become any more involved and enjoy the moment so to speak.
If the boundaries are a little grey then i ask `what next?’ and LISTEN to what is being said. sometimes we as humans shut off areas that we don’t want to accept in order to just enjoy what we want to hear. Hearing isn’t listening.
Sometimes it is good to sit on the fence and view the relationship from a safe vantage point before diving headlong in and saying or doing things we later regret. Some people just don’t want to be loved and are happy just having fun. I would have said to my friend ` can you cope with a negative answer? Can you still be just friends with fringe benefits when you know it won’t go any further? I would say `sometimes it is better to leave a boat floating on the high seas than to be it it when it sinks`
That would be my counsel.
Brightest Blessings
Jun 13, 2011 @ 23:07:57
Hmmm: I think it’s reasonable and adult to be honest and open about you want in a relationship, and with the one that you wish to be in relationship with. As lesbians we are not good at communicating our expectations, at discussing what we want in a relationship, and what we can give, will give and what we need and desire: too many of us are willing to settle, hoping she’ll come around and love us as equally as we love her.
Love isn’t equal at all time..it balances out, but why would anyone want to be with someone who doesn’t have the same desire to be in relationship?
I do not believe that fighting, chasing, fighting for her affections, proving love is healthy or adult: even as I recognize that there are many women who play that game throughout their whole life. The come close: stay away might work when we’re 14. It’s rather boring and unnecessary when adolescence is over. Fighting for it at the beginning does not bode well for anything except more fighting.
Of course I would wonder what it is the draws women to women who don’t want them and hope they can change their mind but that’s just me ;-).
Jun 14, 2011 @ 19:00:02
fight + love = oxymoron xx
Jun 14, 2011 @ 19:33:41
Yus exactly!