by 
A thought that, in the middle of the night, makes sense: Love is like a samurai sword. Mishandle an important relationship and it can cut you, deep, to the bone. Many of us know this firsthand, but we still don’t always handle the people in our lives with the care we should.
Relationships are like a fine edged weapon in another, less obvious way: Good ones have to be deliberately, skillfully forged with painstaking, sometimes painful effort. Fans of the Lord of the Rings movies will remember the orcs mass-producing their blunt, brutal weapons, not even proper swords at all when compared to a hand-made samurai sword made by a skilled craftsman. Which is the better weapon?
A true samurai sword is a unique piece, made with great care over a long period of time. Rather than being stamped in a mold, the Japanese weapon is forged by hand, the steel repeatedly put into the fire, heated, beaten out, and folded over, again and again, until the blade is many thin layers thick, strong, sharp, and flexible. Because of this forging process, a master’s sword will not break in a fight. It’s resilient.
Likewise, lasting relationships are not made quickly. True, any fool can say he or she is in a relationship, but what is it, really, if the people involved have not made a commitment to each other? Life has a way of putting us into the fire and beating us up. Commitment acts on a relationship like carbon interacts with iron in the forging process it makes something brittle into an alloy, combining two elements into one that’s stronger than either alone. Take commitment away and a relationship will break like a cheap sword when put into the stress of battle.
There’s no doubt that chemistry is important in a relationship, just as it is in sword-making. A relationship without sparks is like a cold forge: nothing good can be made out of it. Similarly, romance, humor, caring gestures, and a thousand small trace elements must be added to the heat of the fire. But these bits, despite being glamorized in song and film, are not the essential elements of a relationship two people are. A samurai sword is made of two different types of steel; each is essential, in different ways, to the final product, while the trace elements are ultimately absorbed into the whole, not forgotten, but put in perspective.
The difficult times in life are the forges in which our relationships are made or unmade. Melding is a painful process because neither element is the same after a cycle in the fire and under the hard, sometimes hurtful blows of the shaping hammer. In this process, commitment is also the cold water into which the blade is plunged at the end of the forging cycle, finalizing the process and setting the blade or relationship in its final form.
Ultimately this is the great unknown in a relationship: Will both people make a deliberate determination to commit to each other? One committed person is not enough. It takes, as they say, two to tango.
