Thread: I'm a new comer
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Old 12-17-2010, 04:35 PM
  # 23 (permalink)  
Live
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Join Date: Nov 2002
Location: Bristol TN/VA
Posts: 12,431
I am on my 3d and I am almost 52 years old and that does make a heap of difference. No shared children so that is not even a concern in my life. My daugher is grown, has 2 boys of her own and lives in another state.

So this relationship is all about whether it works for the two of us and nothing more. That is a very different scenario.

We also both have a very detached live and let live style. I can't explain why but neither of us react to each other very much in the ways I always have in the past. I think age, having lived singly, several relationships and etc etc all play into this. The shared meal time is no big deal, for example. It always used to be. The way it is now..either one of us can cook and will fix a plate for the other, or maybe one of us will just grab a bowl of cereal or a sandwich and the other will feed themself.

That did not characterize my previous relationships and this way of being and attitude seems to go much easier on me.

I always did alot of reacting to the other person and they to me. Being freed of that has de-stressed my life and made all the good that much better for me. I think a very big part of what I like and what makes this work is that when either of us make a statement to the other, it is heard the FIRST time so that we can adapt, adjust, resolve the issue so things do not build up.
There is something about going over the same old ground multiple times that eats away at partners and relationships in my opinion.

I always had this vision of how marriages should be and how they operate. For some reason in this relationship I feel it to be like two single, independent people in a relationship. I am surprised that I don't feel cheated by this, but I have found that I prefer it. I am not trying to make us into "one".

I think that you are on the right track that the one thing you can examine and change is your expectations and reactions to them. Accepting your decision to continue in this relationship as your choice made upon what you have determined to be best and integrating that wholly. I think you will be fine. Marriages do grow and change over time. Some of the things that bothered me early in the other long term marriage with children resolved themselves rather naturally. Over time I couldn't remember why they had frustrated me so much, different things matter at different stages of life.

In my current relationship, if I found it to become disappointing I would consider leaving it. I deserve not to live that way and he deserves not to live with someone who is disappointed much of the time..we really can't hide how we feel even when we think that we are. It shows and is felt. So, he would deserve better also. In my view it would be the dignified thing to do to re-evaluate.

I have to laugh remembering a conversation with an old friend. He told me..yeah back in the early days when he and his wife were married they would fight about the best right way to make mashed potatoes. These days the very fact that someone would make him some makes him feel like a lucky man. LOL

The only constant in life is change.
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