Please tell me your positive relationship/marriage stories.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Here’s my situation.

My best friend (supposedly, :rolleyes: ) is totally opposed to me moving to Baltimore and getting on with my life with Boyfriend. It’s starting to get me down, because her motives are purely selfish, and I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t tell her anything about my life anymore. I haven’t even told her that I’m moving to Baltimore in June, and that there will be a wedding in the future. She tells me that I’m making a horrible mistake, and that I should wait at least another year before I do something as foolish as this. She tells me that I’ve jumped out of the frying pan and into the fryer, and that I’m going to end up getting hurt and regretting everything I’ve ever done in my entire life if I do this.

Well, I’ve made the decision. And I’m not changing my mind, because I’m doing what I want and need to do. But over the past year or so, she has inundated me with horror stories of how terrible her life has become since her marriage. I need some positive input, darnit. This weekend I went out with another married friend, and it was so nice to hang out with someone who actually had a positive outlook when it comes to marriage. I’n not so naive that I don’t think relationships can be difficult, but I’m just tired of hearing about how miserable I’m setting myself up to be.

So please, for the sake of my sanity, share any good, funny, or cool relationship stories with me. I just need to know that there are other people out there that have found some semblance of happiness.

2

My husband and I have a great marriage. I come from a very unstable family background, he comes from Leave It To Beaver. He’s a republican, I’m not. He is a dog person, I am a cat person. He listens to Glen Miller, I listen to David Bowie. He can balance a checkbook, I can’t even find my purse. He’s a neatnik, I’m a slob. We’ve had exactly two yelling matches - one when he got pissed that I’d lent my car to a friend, and one when I got pissed that he’d invested in a casino. We’ve had many differences of opinion, but other than the two mentioned, no really big fights. He likes my style (but confesses he really thinks I am a bit of a freak), I like his stability (and confess I really think he’s a bit of a nerd.)

We met on a blind date, and were married 18 months later. It’s been 15 years and it is not idle bragging to say that most of our friends are envious (if slightly mystified.)

So yeah. It can be done. Your “friend” is projecting her bitterness and her unhappiness onto you. Don’t let her.

3

I’ve told this one before but you get it because you need a little support.

My marriage worked out great. I met my wife at a business meeting that was, oddly enough, set up by my mom. I worked for a company that was seeking funding, and a lady my mom worked with said she knew a Russian woman whose father was looking to invest in an American company.

We met, and spent the night walking around St Augustine talking about ourselves. We never even discussed the business, just hit it off and started dating. 9 months later we were married.

For all of the bad things that come with marriage and relationships, there’s no better feeling for me than to know my wife is right next to me every night, and behind me all the way when I need help.

4

welby - oddly, that blind date where I met my husband was set up by…

my mom.

5

Sounds like your friend is projecting her problems on to you. While caution is always a good thing, when it comes to life and love you’ve gotta be willing to take some risks.

I met my husband when we were both working at the same place. I knew he was a martial artist, and I’d been a bit keen on him for some time, but wasn’t really sure of my feelings. Also, I was approaching the 1 year anniversary of a self-imposed vow of celibacy after an incredibly horrendous relationship disaster.

One day, the store we both worked at was robbed while I was there. He offered to let me tag along at one of his martial arts class to see if I’d be interesed (self-defense and whatnot). We hung out for a couple weeks and became the best of friends.

The romance wasn’t quite as quickly forthcoming, though, because there was one little snag – I thought he was gay. I didn’t know until later, though, that he also thought I was lesbian. It was a strange few first weeks, as I tried to decipher his intentions. Quite funny actually now that I think back on it. Finally one day it just kind of hit both of us, and it was such an odd moment too. We were at a park making fun of the ducks when one of us (I don’t remember which) said something to the effect of, “Shouldn’t we be dating or something?”

The funny thing is, that’s how we got engaged too. One day he turned to me and said, “Why aren’t we married yet?”

And it’s been wonderful ever since ::grin::

6

Ain’t that the way it works? I spent most of my life avoiding stuff set up by my mom, especially after I had a run-in with the Ultimate Psycho Chick (She proposed to me by phone after the first date, and it went downhill from there).

7

I’ve told this before and I’ll likely have occasion to tell it again. My husband was my sailing instructor. We had our first date after our first day on the water. We eloped 4 weeks later. We’ve been married 19 years. Considering we were practically strangers when we married, it’s been a remarkable life together. We’re a good team.

Yeah, right now we’re living apart, but we made the decision together for the good of his career and our daughter’s schooling. I’ll be joining him for good <fingers crossed> in about 17 months. Meanwhile, it’s frequent conjugal visits and lots of air and highway miles.

And having spent my formative years in Baltimore and vicinity, I can safely say it’s made me what I am today, sorta. Take that as you will… :smiley:

8

I’ve been happily married for six years and we dated for 5 years before the wedding. However… we got engaged about 5 weeks after we started dating… we just waited until he was out of college to get married. (especially since my father hated my bf)

Marriage is a wonderful thing when the two people involved really want to be married to eachother. Sounds like your friend doesnt want to be married to her husband and is living vicariously through you. She really doesn’t have your interests at heart and frankly with that kind of marriage is the last person you should take relationship advice from!

My hubby and I never fight… not to say we don’t disagree though. We learned to work things through without the fireworks and have each come around a little towards the other’s way of thinking/doing things. I hope we set a good example for our munchkin :slight_smile: We still honestly enjoy eachother’s company and we take the time to really talk every day.

Most of our friends tease us because somehow with the munchkin and the mortgage and all the humdrum of daily life we can still act like honeymooners… We’re not perfect but we’re both equally committed to eachother! I joke that we’re one of those 50’s sitcom families (except I don’t do my housework in pearls and heels) but I love my husband and our life as a family and can’t imagine myself with anyone else.

9

I think you friend is bascially saying But what about ME!. You might be getting a new boyfriend and husband but she is losing a friend. I’ve seen many friends get jealous over someone’s new partner.

10

I’m quite happily married.

I used to have a friend who loved to bitch about her boyfriend. When she got married, she continued to bitch about her husband. She often did it in the context of trying to compliment other people, as in, “I really appreciate your husband’s ability to do X; MY husband can’t do that!” But you know, it got OLD. And it bothered me. And god help me, back before I was married sometimes I’d join in, as if “bitch about your mate” was a conversational theme. UGH. It was such a downer. I soon realized that the less I hung out with her, the better.

If someone isn’t going to be supportive of your SO, or of the institution of marriage or couplehood in general, I think you’d do well to ease them out of your life. I find my husband and I are happiest when we are around people who are also happily married (or happily coupled) as opposed to snarky with each other.

11

Mr. Nighitingale and I went to high school together but hardly knew each other until I was a senior and he was a junior. We started dating just before I graduated and the rest is history. We married three years ago and in spite of the ups and downs that come with any relationship, we are still very happy and very much in love. A single friend told us (wistfully) last weekend that we’re the most fun married people she knows.

12

Many, many moons ago I was bored on an Amtrack train heading up to Chicago. I decided to make friends. I picked the two loudest, most obnoxious, silliest people I could find to go hang out with.

Two weeks later I moved in with one of them.

Lived together for months, had an amazing connection and a great time. Ended up breaking up due to circumstances beyond our control. He got back together with his ex, I blew town. I never forgot him.

Many, many years later I was reintroduced to the exact same man.

Two weeks later I moved in with him.

Four weeks after that we got married, exactly 39 days after finding each other again.

I’m pretty sure it should be illegal that I’m this happy.

When you know, you know. There’s been a bit of pain involved for a couple of family members, some very good friends and more than one old lover, but I cannot tell you how positive we are that we made the right choice.

13

If your boyfriend is an IV drug user or something, she’s right.

Otherwise – move to Baltimore. Live your life. Oh, and find a best friend who understands you enough to support your choices. I’m not in a relationship right now, but I’m glad for the relationships I had. I benefited a lot. Most of my exes are still important friends, and we are glad to meet.

14

OK Have I got a story for you! And I’d like to go on the record, right now, that none of this is made up. Ask verbenabeast, my brother and witness to this.

I met DH in sunday school. Swear to God. Being opinionated, I always appreciate someone who will argue (and cite!). We started dating on and off in June. We were married by the next June.

He was in the military (during the major draw down time - layoffs etc) and was being pushed out. He came over to my apartment one night and asked me to marry him. It was only after I tracked my sister down in a Kentucky hotel that I realized I hadn’t said “yes” yet. DH says he assumed I meant yes when I burst into tears and asked for the phone.

I broke my foot 2 months after the ceremony. 3 major surgeries, pins & screws, 4 weeks of bedrest, 9 months in a wheelchair. And DH took care of me every day; kind and generous when I’m strung out on morphine and picking fights. THEN he gets pushed out of the military. 3 years before he finds a job.

Turning this time, we find out that DH is sterile from a childhood illness. We decide that he’d be a great stay-at-home Dad (and that I would not be good at it). After learning how to walk again, I start fertility drugs. If I was a bitch on morphine, I was QUEEN bitch on shots. Argued about donors, etc. Nothing big.

During a routine ultrasound, the tech found a cyst. Not uncommon, considering, but it was VERY large - the entire screen was dark with just a little white streaky around it (supposed to be vice versa) After a year of just about every treatment known, the doctor finally removes a 10 lb growth that had twisted around a fallopian tube. So THAT’S why I felt like I was being ripped apart!

DH gets a job. We decide to give my body a rest before going back on the fertility drugs. … Within a year I develop Chronic, Ideopathic Hives. Huge red whelps all over - a daily hell of itching - tongue swelling ick ick ick. It’s been over 3 years now. Still have hives, but I can semi-function because of all the drugs (6 antihistamines a day). But I’m practically catatonic most of the day.

And through it all, DH has been kind, supportive, loving. I don’t deserve to have someone so wonderful, but I’m awfully glad I do. I love him so very much. And I’m so glad that I didn’t listen to those who said we rushed things. And though kids are no longer a part of our future, he’s still the best thing that ever happened to me.

Follow your heart, skerri. You’ll know what’s the right thing to do.

15

i’ll chime in with the “glad we did it” chorus. hubby and i have been married close to 16 years now. our start-up was a bit rocky…he happened to have someone living with him at the time, although he said the relationship was a mistake. i finally drew a line in the sand and said “Don’t bother me any more until she’s gone.”

so about a year later, once he finally got his act together, we started going together again. i never hesitated when he proposed, and can’t say i’ve ever looked back from that point on. i couldn’t have found a better person to put up with all my foibles, and he tells me often that i’m one of the best parts of his life.

i won’t say everything has always been peaches and cream…but you know better than that too. but we support each other in our work to try and become better people.

yes, i’d agree with all the others that your “friend” is projecting a major case of sour grapes on you. apparently she can only see from her perspective, where everything isn’t the ‘happily ever after’ that she might have had unrealistic expectations of getting. but no two snowflakes are alike…and hopefully you and this flake have no more in common than the former friendship that she’s been steadily poisoning lately. just because she can’t figure out how to work things out is no guarantee that you can’t do a better job of it, despite all her nay-saying.

lachesis

16

Frankly, it doesn’t sound like your friend give a rat’s ass for your happiness. Marriages fail, but just because hers didn’t seem to work out, that’s no excure to project her troubles on you.

I met my wife in a creative writing class. I was married to someone else at the time and wasn’t looking. She knew I was married, which meant I was safe (she didn’t want a commitment). I think I spoke to her directly once, to tell her I liked a story she had written.

The week after the class ended, my wife left me. I was devastated, especially since I was also unemployed at the time. Luckly, the people in the class had decided to continue meeting to improve our writing. The meetings were the only bright part of my life at that point (other than a letter from an editor saying he’d buy my first sale if I made “a few small changes”). After a few meetings, and the separation agreement had crashed into place, I asked Mrs. Chuck out.

She knew my situation (I had spilled it to the teacher of the class, who was a close friend) and we started dating. Eventually, when I got on my feet, I proposed.

It hasn’t been smooth sailing. We have our fights. We drive each other both crazy at times. But I love her dearly and the good times far far far outweigh the bad. We celebrated twenty years last August, and I wouldn’t want to have to do without her. As a matter of fact, we’re both looking forward to having our daughter go off the college next fall, so we can have more time for just the two of us.

17

My husband hated me when he first met me because he felt I was too loud, too brash and trying too hard to be Madonna (circa Truth or Dare). All of those things were true.

But then I realized that when I was around him, I didn’t want to act that way. When I was around him I didn’t care how ‘shocking or alternative’ I was being, I was just comfortable and happy, like when you put on clean jammies after a hot bath.

I was also pleased to finally find a theatre person who a) had a similar faith that I did and b) liked sports :smiley:

After our play that we were in together (Pirandello’s Henry IV), a group of us went out to Big Boy for coffee and dessert and he had apple pie.

I said, “You know, I make the best apple pie EVER” and he said,

“If you make me an apple pie, I’ll love you forever.”

So naturally, I went home and made him a pie from scratch!

We got married two years later and have been married eight years since then, and I can NOT imagine being without him. He’s like a necessary organ. :slight_smile:

(Thanks for letting me share that, I was having a bad day)

18

Mr. Ujest and I marvel at other couples who fight about money, who left the toilet seat up and Other Tales of Woe From Suburban Mundania ™

Clean/dirty houes, money, waist lines, dented fenders, squeezing from the middle of the toothpaste and clothing are all transitory things in life. Fighting over these things makes no sense to us. (unless it is out of controlled spending or behavior, then that is a different barrel of monkeys to contend with.)
When we were dating, his parents were in a horrendous motorcycle accident. 30+ years of riding and this was their first and only accident. (they were t-boned by a car.) It left his dad paralyzed from the nipples down and his mom’s left leg *severed * below the knee and severe head trauma. It was a long,long road to back to semi-normal (they, like any inlaws, are not normal and I mean that in a loving, respectful way.) and I think other girls would have turned their back on the situation because of the stress and lack of ‘what about me’ attention. Coming from my family of illness, death, trauma and other Assorted Chocolates of Life’s Amusing Whims, I was practically at home in the waiting rooms and listening to the Doctor’s prognosis with a totally detached view on things.

What he has to contend with, besides a raving lunatic for a wife? and he does so valiantly, is my widowed mother and her panic attacks and worry-fests (they are almost laughable to us when we are not near her. Around her, OYE!) and dealing with burying four, well, three, well two brother in laws from a terrible disease that only pedophiles should be inflicted with upon conviction, Muscular Dystrophy. Their deaths affect him harder than me. He carries some might weights on his broad shoulders and never before have I met someone so able, nice, decent and positively insane to have asked me to marry him. He shoulda married a nice german girl, but I’d like to think that I’ve made him a better person too.

[hijacking myself]
Just last night we were playing a game I kinda invented. (new variation of Score Four. Mr. Ujest built it in his shop.) It is about strategy and blocking your opponent. I had just successfully, for the nth time, stopped him from gaining a point, when he says in total frustration,
*“You’re blocking me like a peice of cheese.” *

Who needs Valentine’s Day cards when sentiments like this mean so much more? I won, btw.

Humor, like that, doesn’t come often from a kraut.[/hijack]
**And now my lesson in looove you you, my close personal friend. **

True love is knowing deep in your heart that this is the person you want to be with, even when they are not at their best, whether physically, mentally, socially or financially.

It is not always going to be sunshine, roses, mountain top views and stupendous sex. Sometimes it is a friggin downpour, dandelions and it feels like you are living in the valley of Doom with a chastity belt. In order to see the rainbow you gotta put up with a little rain. You help each other up when the is down and when you are on the same ground, nothing, and I mean, *nothing * can stop you.

It’ll be 10 years this May of wedded hijinks and 15 years in the fall.(we would have married sooner if his parents hadn’t had their accident.) Only fights we’ve had (two) have been over his sister ( who is very much not like me that if were weren’t SIL, I wouldn’t associate with her. ) and even those weren’t fights because the man will not argue. His is too damn reasonable. ARGH!

If any of this was cohesive, it was by purely unintentional and will not happen again.

19

It just did!

20

the story of my long-distance relationships …

In university I fell in love with a man, spent several wonderful months with him in our hometown, and then he moved to England. I was devastated to have found love and then ‘lost’ it like that. I was still a student and so couldn’t go to be with him, and we tried to maintain a LDR. It was draining in a lot of ways, but I truly loved him and although I went out with other people I couldn’t think of really being with someone else.

As time passed the relationship got kind of bad, but I couldn’t tell if it was because we weren’t compatible, or because of the distance.

So upon graduation I moved to England, not so much because I couldn’t live without him but because I needed to see if it could work: I needed closure of one kind or another. I couldn’t live forever thinking ‘what if.’

As it turns out I realized soon after arriving that it wouldn’t work, we had grown in different directions and we weren’t compatible at all. But I was in England and having fun, after all, the move had been for me as much as for him. And after 1.5 years there (I had a 2 year visa) I met someone else, and fell so much in love with him that it made everything else (including the original guy and the baggage left over) completely irrelevant. But I had to move back to Canada !! The irony. It was a really unfortunate situation: I had tried a LDR in the past and it almost killed me (figuratively). But, I told myself, that was because it was the wrong guy, and this one is quite possibly the right guy. I returned to Canada and all the pain of the LDR came flooding back. We were constantly in contact with each other but of course phone calls and e-mails permit only a very limited sort of ‘relationship.’

This was a time of great soul-searching for me. I have never been the sort of person to make my love life run the rest of my life, but I find LDRs positively debilitating: it’s all the stress of a relationship, with only a bit of good stuff and none of the snuggling, all-night conversations, walking home from work together etc. I couldn’t stay ‘with’ him when we were on different continents: it was either find a way to (physically) be together, or break up. I couldn’t face breaking up, so I married him. (He came here.)

I can’t tell you it’s been easy but I can tell you that I haven’t regretted it for a second. And I’m pretty sure that if we’d taken the second option and given up, I’d have regretted that until my dying day. Your true love is worth fighting for, and making sacrifices for. And if you aren’t certain about that, then he’s probably not your true love.