So, I recently got back together with my most recent girlfriend. Since that time we’ve talked much more extensively about what we both want and think than we did the first go-round. The possibility of something serious is on the table, but I feel weird about it.
Okay, maybe not “weird,” just not how I expect to feel. I don’t feel any overwhelming passion or profound longing to have her around. When I describe our relationship to friends, I say it’s better to have her around than NOT have her around. (And since she started opening up, her company is more enjoyable, too.) The thing is (and I have talked with her about this) our relationship could work great as one of those relationships where both parties have an understood role, and they come together for certain things and then maintain lives of their own (not secret lives, just sometimes she does her thing, and sometimes I do mine) as well. She agrees with me; she said one of the things she likes about me is that I have a life of my own, and don’t obsess over her.
This is not the type of relationship I’ve been looking for, or expected to have. I thought I’d get involved with someone whose company I would crave above all else, who is into everything I’M into, who I would spend almost all my time with, etc.
But she isn’t really like that, and I’m wondering if that matters, or if my idea of relationships is really not as important as I think. People get into them for all kinds of reasons, don’t they? I’ve also been reading about the modern idea of Significant Others who are all-encompassing friends, and how this was never expected by spouses of each other before. This tells me that maybe what she and I could have is an old-fashioned relationship, where our most important needs are met (companionship, sex) and we take care of the rest ourselves, without burdening the other with it any more than necessary.
I haven’t committed to anything, and I’ve been very open with her about all this. She hasn’t balked yet. Does it sound crazy?
I think those “really into each other and into everything about each other” relationships are doomed. If you ever (gasp!) have kids, have a job that takes critical time, have a family situation that pulls you away - you can’t get that crave met (if its still there). And if the crave does die down (which is a normal thing), you may think the relationship is broken. IMHO, relationships that have several spaces - mine, yours, ours (and even “extended family, shared friends, etc.”) are easier to maintain over the long term. And I think they are healthier for individuals as well, getting “most of what you need” from a single person leaves you open to a lot of vulnerability if that person isn’t there to provide it.
It sounds like you are on the brink of an adult relationship, rather than being “Gasp! OMG!! I’m in LOVE”. It has been my experience (and I am 46 years old) that having a life of your own to complement the shared life leads to a fuller life for both parties. My husband and I have been married for over 18 years after dating on and off for 11 years before that. We each have things we like to do that don’t involve each other as well as things that we do together. Sex we do only with each other. Hockey games are my passion; sometimes he goes and sometimes he doesn’t. I’m a member of our team Booster Club, with a single membership instead of a family membership because he’s not the least bit interested. He likes to go to the cabin and tinker with the JetSki; I only want to be around the thing when it is in the water and ready to run.
It is my firm belief that no matter how much “in love” or “in lust” you are, a long term relationship will usually not work and will definitely not be healthy if you are not friends. Being “in love” can fade, but if you are friends you can work through the ups and downs that happen in any relationship.
I guess I’m a little confused about what a relationship is for when that passion isn’t there. Why are we together? To raise kids? Just so we have *someone * to come home to? What’s it about?
No, it’s not "just to have someone to come home to, although that is very nice. And we don’t have and will never have children, Mr. SCL knew that was part of the deal when he married me. I don’t like kids, have never wanted kids, and have never thought I would be a good mother.
Who says passion isn’t there? It is! It’s just not the same “I have to be in the same room with him all the time” passion it was nearly 30 years ago. I don’t want that back, it was fun when I was young but I am too old and tired for that now!
It’s about caring about someone and being confident they care for you. It’s knowing that no matter how nasty the world is today, someone has your back. It’s knowing that no matter how nasty they world was to her today, you have her back - not because you have to, not because it’s expected of you, but because you want to.
It’s knowing that when something wonderful happens in the part of your life she’s not actively involved in - getting a promotion, hitting a home run at softball - or even something as simple as seeing a beautiful double rainbow on the way home from the store - you have someone to share it with.
I guess I’m not describing it very well. I have it and I hope you find it!
I’ve said this in various ways many times before, so pardon me if any of this sounds familiar. I studied social psychology specializing in interpersonal relationships, and my advisor taught a class on the topic. What she generally taught was that the “fireworks” part fades with time - “fireworks” are the “pay attention to this person!” part of a relationship where biological urges push you together. You need more than that “must mate to pass on genes” push to carry you further in a relationship, and as she said, you’d burn yourself out if you had to live through that rush of emotions continually. If you expect love to be like that constantly, “you will doom yourself to a series of short-term relationships.”
I went through this while dating my now-husband. I fretted when the initial rush wore down, I worried about us not having “much” in common any longer, and so on. He told me that we still complemented each other well, and that we could grow together. Years later, we’re married, we’re best friends. We don’t do everything or love everything that the other does, but there’s enough that we do together or at least side-by-side. It’s more of a quiet, happy comfort. There are plenty of times where I’ll look at him and just smile at how happy I am with him, how handsome he is.
I agree with SCL. My husband and I don’t have children either, we’re fine with that, and it’s not just to have someone to come home to, though it’s wonderful to come home to him. He’s got my back and I’ve got his. When one of us complains about being old and jokes “time to trade me in,” usually the response will be a joke back to the effect of “nope, sucks to be you, you’re stuck with me. Can’t get away that easily.” We’re getting older together and we’re happy with that.
To me, my relationship is about love, rather than passion. Yes, I’m still passionately in love with my husband, but we have a deeper bond than that. Yes, we have children, so we have that bond also.
But sometimes, we’re not all that passionate. Constant passion would be exhausting, for anyone. We’re comfortable, content, perhaps complacent. We’re best friends, and we know each other well. We don’t share many interests, so when he wants to go camping, he does, and when I want to shop for cookbooks, I do. Then we come home, and it’s all about us again, talking about our day, the kids, what to do next weekend, what’s for breakfast, snuggle, snooze…
It’s like warm, fuzzy comfort love, rather than burning hot passion, most of the time. And who wants burning hot all of the time?
Sorry, there is no answer we can provide that has much relevance to you. If GF is a screaming harpie, you should probably feel pretty bad. If she is Mother Teresa with benefits, you should probably feel pretty good. OTOH, how you feel about a relationship has been largely influenced by what you witnessed between your own parents.
You feel what you feel. Maybe a better question is to ask for help in interpreting what your feelings mean.
To respond particularly to that sentence.
In a word, no.
In particular, look at it this way. Other posters have already gone in depth about their relationships, about the “adult” relationship feeling as opposed to the “lust” feeling.
But regardless of anybody’s interpretation, I think the most crucial part of your post is
“it’s better when she’s there rather than not there”
THAT is the essence of a relationship, everything else in your post follows from it.
In fact, in my personal experience, something like what you “expected” really… it isn’t what you expect when it happens, the…calm… for lack of a better word feeling that you have about this girl is a much more powerful thing than hot passion will be. Don’t let your preconceived notions get in the way of what seems to be a description of a great potential long term relationship. OTOH, I would also strongly advise as you progress not to allow yourself to feel like you’re merely satisficing by staying with her, and if things REALLY cool off, to re-evaluate the situation.
Yeah, the calm IS a pretty powerful thing. There are times when we just lay in bed and she runs her fingers around my neck, and I can just feel tension oozing out of me. The funny thing is, she said she likes doing this. I don’t have to ask for it, or anything else. She just does it. She said she likes taking care of me. The only problem with that is that I had/have a strong negative reaction to being taken care of, and this goes to what another poster said about what I witnessed in my parents.
Well, my parents were divorced when I was a year old, and my mother hardly dated until I was in my 20s. We moved to an area where we knew nobody and had no relatives, and as a result my immediate family (my mother, brother and sister) consists of people who are self-reliant in the extreme. Neither my siblings nor myself got married before our 30s. My girlfriend has been taken aback at my negative reaction at letting her do things she thinks are just the province of a girlfriend, such as cooking me dinner. We’ve talked about it, and we agree that she had a much more positive adult relationship between her father-stepmother as a role-model than I have ever witnessed. (Even my grandparents were divorced before I was born.) My opposition to being served also has something to do with my own mother, who would insist on taking care of me and then treat me as if I were immature, no matter how old I got.
So, to sum it up, I have issues. She has issues too, but unlike other relationships Ive been in, we’ve talked about them and she has taken full responsibilyt for how she is. I think that is as big a reason as any that I am considering renewing this relationship permanently.
See, that’s what love is all about–you’re going outside your comfort zone in allowing her to take care of you, and you’re doing it because A) it makes her happy and that pleases you; B) you trust her not to push your boundaries too far because she cares for your wellbeing and wants to take care of you; and C) you’re beginning to see that nothing of what was true for your parents necessarily has to be true for you and your girlfriend–you’re in alien territory where you guys make the rules and you have to pull together in order to achieve a mutually satisfactory consensual reality for your relationship.
So, to recap:
You guys communicate.
You do things for each other just to make the other one feel good.
You’ve both confronted your baggage and demons and have made individual progress toward controlling and integrating them.
Being around her makes things better for you, both in general and specific.
You have realistic expectations of what a relationship is and what it can give you–actually, if anything your expectations are pretty low.
You both appreciate the individuality of the other.
Congratulations, you have a fine beginning to a long and happy marriage! Keep it up and you’ll end up dying a very happy old man surrounded by people who love him, with your wife right next to you. You poor bastard!
On the one hand, previous posters are right that grown-up love is not all passionate fireworks and happily tweeting bluebirds. On the other hand, I’d be sad if my husband didn’t feel a profound longing to have me around.
My husband is my best friend. We don’t spend every minute together, but my day doesn’t feel complete unless I get to spend some time with him, even if it’s just eating dinner together and vegging out in front of the tube. When he’s gone for a couple of days, I miss him terribly. Don’t get me wrong–I want him to have his own friends and his own hobbies. But I also want to be first in his heart.
If your relationship works for you, more power to you. But don’t marry a woman if you don’t love her deeply. It’s not fair to you or to her.
Well, it sounds to me you have what I would call an “ambivalent relationship”. You like having this person around, but you aren’t actively seeking them out. Much in the same way you would prefer working next to a pleasent coworker instead of in an isolated room, but if that coworker doesn’t show up to work one morning, you don’t really miss them. Your negative reaction to her doing things like cooking for you may come from an aversion to becoming more intimate. You could be perceiving her actions as an audition for “wife” and you may be pushing back against that.
