Really love? Yes indeedy. “The kind Hollywood obsesses over” doesn’t exist. It’s lust, designed to make our hearts pound (and our seats wet) when we go to the movies, but it’s certainly not real life.
Mr. Ellen and I just celebrated our 15th anniversary. Here’s a little example of our love. Two nights ago I was on the back porch and saw a huge spider completing a web between the poles. Really huge, like two inches long huge! Well I knew he’d be as fascinated as I was, I dashed in, informed him he’d be very interested in coming outside and, swear to goodness, we spent the next 90 minutes watching our spider complete the web and catching crickets to feed it. And last night? The spider spun again, and there we were with our frosty beverages and lawn chairs, taking in the nightly show.
We like being together; we like the same things. We’re nice to each other and still have a good old time in the sack. I’m keepin’ him.
I’ll ditto this one for me and my hubby. I sometimes wonder if anyone else would be able to tolerate me for as long as he has. He’s a wonderful, incredible person. My dear heart. And I’ve experienced what Cranky has: head-on-collision type romances didn’t last.
My wife and I have been together and in love for around 18 years. I don’t know if I could function without her. Personally, I think she would be better off without me quite often, but somehow she manages to put up with me. Now that’s love.
Is it Hollywood love? I’m not sure what that is. We once tried to run accross a field of heather towards one another and then hug and kiss. Unfortunately, a herd of cattle had been there first. Ruined both our shoes. Also it turned out to be alfalfa not heather and she is alergic to alfalfa. We still laugh about it though.
So out of 22 posts so far (I’m not counting Ellen’s double post) 13 profess to have something like the Hollywood love and 9 have something else. I have to admit that I’m a bit jealous of some of you.
I’m not sure what to make of the results so far. I dunno - they just don’t seem to jive with my own observations. For one thing no one has yet to say something like “My husband is a scum sucking pig and I hate his stinking guts.” And I know there are some of you out there.
Those people are not the ones posting to this thread, that’s all. You want a random sampling, you’re gonna have to go somewhere else.
Yeah, we really love each other. I’ve done that heart-skipping thing at an unexpected sighting too. We love spending time together, have plenty to talk about, and complement each other well. We’re a good team. We have bouts of romance, but the real thing is always there.
You ever noticed how a lot of stuff that looks good on screen isn’t very romantic or sexy in real life? Not just fields of heather/alfalfa.
IMO, it’s simple, really. SDMB posters are, on the whole, smarter/better educated (and no, I don’t necessarily mean “school educated”. If that were the case, I’d be ruled right out. ) than the population at large. Smarter, better educated people, on the average, make better choices. Needless to say, there are some train-wreck relationships out there, but I’m willing to bet you a case of beer (your choice) that a properly conducted survey of SDMB posters will show a higher level of relationship success than the general populace enjoys.
In most cases, the realtionships one hears about are the ones going through something dramatic, which is usually bad, so staking a position on those is chancy. Hell, staking a position based on this thread is chancy. I’m also willing to bet that most of the people in train-wreck relationships haven’t even opened this thread, as it doesn’t, on it’s face, apply to them.
Please note: I’m making no judgments, just stating a hypothisis.
I really love my wife. It’s not the “burning with passion while my heart is about to explode” thing, but most of the time, I love being with her. She is my best friend and the one person so far I’ve never gotten tired of and need to get away from. That sounds callous, but it goes a long way.
The romance comes and goes, but we both know that we are each other’s favorite person and best friend, and I don’t want to live with anyone else.
Been together 5 years, married for almost two now.
Mrs. Tygr (jkayla) is quite simply the best thing that’s ever happened to me in my entire life. We spend all our time together and it’s still not enough. It was only with Herculean effort that I was able to go to work this morning and leave her there snuggled up naked in bed. She is cute and pretty and genuinely beautiful and sexy all at the same time.
But I love her for her heart. She is hands down the most caring, giving, warm-hearted, sensitive person I have ever met. No matter who you are, she is able to find the good and worthwhile in you. That is part of the reason I’m married to her. She found the good and worthwhile in me (I’d lost it for a while there). Then she stuck around until she made me see those things about myself. I just couldn’t let someone with that big a heart out of my life, so I asked her to stay with me forever. I would say that the happiest day of my life was the day she said “I do”, but honestly, every day after that she’s been living that promise and the happiness gets greater and greater.
So yes. The love gets deeper and the passion doesn’t dim. Hollywood can only desperately grasp at what we have. My heart doesn’t skip when I see her. It swells to bursting in my chest; it aches with the depth of feelings like I’ve never felt before.
-Tygr. In love for six years, married for three. The child of our love, our daughter, will enter this world in about two months.
After 23 years of marriage YES I still love my LIONsob.
We have been through all kinds of good and bad, we have raised one child, buried another. Raised on several others that weren’t ours. We have fought, and made love. We have have seperated and gotten back together. Cried and laughed, been broke and been flush, attended weddings and funerals of people we cared deeply for. We have done it all. Together.
Love is more than an emotion, love is also a commitment. I love you even if you hurt me, I love you even when we don’t agree. I love you when you are sick and bitchy, I love you no matter what.
I still get butterflys when I look at him, and there is not one other man in the world who I think would be a better lover, a more caring partner for me. Even when I want to rip his face off, I don’t because I love him.
Tranq, I’ll go with that hypothesis, but I think it only explains about 50% of it. I think that reasonable expectations and responsibility go a long, long way towards making a relationship work. I mean, there are things about my spouse that I could choose to fight with him about and we could easily have a miserable relationship. However, I manage to laugh about many of them and cut him slack and acknowledge that I’m as bad or worse in my own way. He’s the same. We both have an attitude that makes it work. Good choosing helps–but I have some friends who made good choices, but they’re unhappy because they can’t stop harping and rolling their eyes long enough to see how good they have it.
I think that a good proportion of dopers are thoughtful, reasonable, fair people. They consider things. They think. They consider alternative viewpoints. They recognize their own shortcomings and selfishness. And they bring that into their marriage, which goes a long way towards smoothing over potentially rough spots.
I am not saying that people whose marriages don’t work aren’t reasonable or fair, of course, or that none of us haven’t made some godawful choices. But of those who have good working marriages, I suspect the typical Doper approach to things plays a pretty big role.
Oh, and one more thing. Most Dopers seem to be highly attuned and averse to “Martyr syndrome.” They don’t tolerate it much on here. I think that means they don’t indulge in (and wouldn’t marry anyone who indulged in) that victim crap. I used to do that in relationships, where little things = “you don’t love me!” and circumstances beyond anyone’s control threw me into a self-pitying poutfest where I’d demand that my partner make it up to me. No wonder those didn’t work out.
The fact that I don’t translate unfolded laundry into long-suffering diatribes about how hard Mr. Cranky makes my life is definitely a factor in a healthy marriage. Betcha that’s true of many Dopers.
My husband is my best friend, my confidant, my lover, my soulmate. Loving him isn’t just about Hollywood style passion, it’s about the everyday things that make up our life together. We do our fair share of bodice-ripping, but even when the passion is on the back burner, he’s still the person I most want to be with.
Together for six years, married for two. Can’t imagine life without him.
Ick. I hate double posts. The spider story wasn’t that good. (He was at it again last night, BTW – the spider, that is.)
I agree with Cranky about the victim and bitching crap. I think early on intelligent people realize The Perfect Person isn’t out there. You simply are not going to find someone who is thoughtful, tidy, a good conversationalist, great in bed, funny, stunningly good looking, etc., etc. Everyone’s got their foibles and you do your best to live with them. People who are immature in their relationships focus on what’s wrong with a person; more mature people accept imperfections as part of the package.
I would say yes on the REALLY love part, but it doesn’t have anything to do with Hollywood. I never quite know what’s supposed to be going on in romances on film, but I do know they bear no similarity to the Dearly Beloved and I. I’ve never seen a couple in a film get very excited and sentimental about putting South Carolina § in their state quarters collection, which was the theme at Chez Del last evening.
Just like some people have mentioned, I did have a few relationships pre-Dearly Beloved that were more fraught with drama. Or trauma. Or something. Looking back, it was the drama I liked, not so much the actual person. One of the best things about the DB is that I love being with him even when nothing dramatic is going on. He is not perfect, but he is perfect for me. I, of course, am completely perfect. Ha.
It does my heart good to see so many positive responses to this thread.
After nearly 19 years, I’m still suprised that Mrs. Stoney finds it as much fun as I do. I really feel lucky that she choses to be with me, cause she ROCKS MY WORLD!!!
What I love about threads like this is that there seems to be as many types of loving relationships and levels of burning passion as there are couples.
I didn’t think I would ever find a true match for myself. I’m fairly odd, as well as being quiet IRL, and as you quiet folk know, that translates into being overlooked a lot. Then I met a guy who is pretty quiet himself, and he managed to pay attention to me long enough to discover that we are weird in most of the same ways. Early on when we were in the declaring our burning passion stage, I said that I wasn’t in love with him, but that I just loved him. Like I had always loved him, and I always would. A year and a half later, we’re still having a great time together (some nights we stay up late making each other laugh in bed - telling jokes and stuff, that is, not the way you perverts were thinking :D).
Together for a year and a half, going to be married next August.
Lucky me.