What is a relation in plain simple English? Can someone explain in simple English what a relation is? I found this definition: A relation between two sets is a collection of ordered pairs containing one object from each set. If the object x
x
 is from the first set and the object y
y
 is from the second set, then the objects are said to be related if the ordered pair (x,y)
(
x
,
y
)
 is in the relation. But I feel as though it is not intuitive

Just to get an informal intuition, a relation between two sets is a way to extract pairs from them. For example, $\textit{being married}$ is a relation between the set of men and the set of women.
