relationships

I was talking with a female friend of mine about how language isn't the best form of communication because we all perceive words differently, even if the general meaning of specific words are known.  For example, the word "chains" could mean tire chains to European Americans while African Americans might picture slave chains, and it's the emotional reaction to some words that can lead to misunderstanding.  The same misunderstandings through cultural differences are also present in gender differences.

No way, she says. Boys and girls brought up in the same culture will have the same definition of a word because they learned it the same way.

Ok, says I.  What comes to mind when you think of the word relationship?
After some thought, she said:  "The relationship between a man and woman or friend or a special person you care for.  Your lover.  The one you are attracted to that makes you feel so good to be with you can't live without them.  Family, your relatives, anyone you're related to by blood."

I said, what about how things relate to other things?  The relationship of subatomic particles in a constant state of attraction/repulsion that keeps them together but always at a distance?   Or the attraction relationship between the Earth and Moon with gravitational forces strong enough to change weather, alter oceans, and make people crazy, with just enough repulsion, in the form of inertia, to keep them from crashing into each other.  If relationships were attraction without resistance we'd all be part of the Suns mass speeding toward the center of the universe in a reverse big bang.

Then it dawned on me... Attraction alone is only half a relationship.  Attraction without balanced repulsion can only result in crash and burn.

Does YOUR lover repulse you? 
Or would you rather have the big bang?