Pouring my heart out on the SDMB...(long)

In My Humble Opinion
1

Note to Mods: This is pretty mundane, and largely pointless, so I thought I’d put it here. But I’m also looking for opinions. I’m torn between here and IMHO. If you feel it should be somewhere else, please move it. Thanks.

sigh Relationship quandaries. I’m starting to think I’m just meant to be alone in this life. I’m in a committed relationship with a great guy, and have been for the past three years. We get along well, almost never fight (and never over serious issues; just your standard tussles over mundane stuff) and I really do love him. He’s a great person- smart, attractive, funny, and all of that. It’s just…well…I keep having these weird attacks of romantic longing. I keep wanting, in a pathetic and unrealistic way, to be swept off my feet in a whirlwind romance. I want Love! Valor! Comapssion!, a mysterious stanger, a movie plot, adventures that are dangerous and thrilling, and test the boundaries of enduring love and faithfulness. And these dreams I keep having- these deeply fulfilling dreams of just such a romance.

What the hell is wrong with me? I consider myself a practical, down-to-earth person. I haven’t had this sort of fantasy since I was a little girl reading fairy tales. I have a personal theory about True Love™: that is not the whirlwind romance, however exciting that may be. That is only infatuation, and as such will pass. True Love™, I think, is a dedication by two people to work hard at building a life together and facing life’s obstacles as a team. It is not candy and flowers, but rather a long, unspoken union born of shared experience. It’s a state of being that is actualy pretty mundane in and of itself, but is truly satisfying in the soul. I picture old married couples who have been together for many years, perhaps not in total agreement, but always together, fighting back to back, with a sort of beautiful, everyday love that transcends anything you will ever read about in a crappy novel.

So what the hell is wrong with me? Whence comes this weirdness, this disruption in my wa? Is this a normal human emotion, or am I secretly unstable, frivolous and shallow? I am not precsisely unhappy in this relationship; I am not precisely bored, either. I love my b/f, and would be devestated should anything happen to him. I enjoy a healthy sex life, and want for nothing in that regard. I just have these dreams- these longings for something I know is unrealistic and unattainable. I can only ask, WTF? I have never felt this way in all my (admittedly short) adult life, and suddenly, just when I am finally beginning to reap the benefits of years of hard work in graduate school, just when my life is right on track and I’m getting into my groove, realizing my dreams and all of that, this bizarre and embarassingly silly little problem comes up. It’s not like I’m ready to abandon my present life and run off with a drifter; ye gods, no. It’s just this nagging little velleity. Am I normal? Am I weak? Are other people like this? Does this problem actually reflect on the universal appeal of movies and television, and thus is nothing to worry about? Should I just shut the hell up, be grateful for my good fortune and keep fightin’ the good fight? Will this, too, pass?

2

ratty, you are in no way weird or silly or any other self-denigrating adjective with regard to romantic dreams. Have you discussed this with your SO? Are there any ways, perhaps, that you and your SO can inject just that little bit more spontaneity, romance, thrill perhaps, into your relationship? Flights of fancy and imagination are just as important an ingredient in relationships as any other.

Your SO may be completely happy with things the way they are. But, IMHO, if you’re thinking about how things could be different, it’s because you really, deeply want things to be different.

Tell your SO.

3

Well, be careful of being too dogmatic on your version of ‘True Love’. I married my ex with a definition of love much like that - we got along, didn’t fight, were building a life together, bleah bleah bleah. Two years into the marriage I was bored out of my mind. The sex was bad. I told him “I think we have a problem because I never ever ever want to have sex with you.” He told me he though that marriages just were like that.

Um, not for me! We ended up splitting up, and now (5 years later) I have no doubt that it was the very best thing to do. Compatibility does NOT equal love.

The new almost-Mr. Athena and I don’t get along nearly as well as the ex and I did. We fight a lot more. We don’t always see eye to eye. We’ve had to struggle to find ways to be compatible. But that spark is there… not only do I love him, but I like him, immensely. I’m never bored with him. I have Love! Valor! Compassion! And it’s worth it, trust me.

4

Big shock to see me here, eh?

  1. I don’t really like either of your versions of love, and, as I tend to do, I blame Hollywood. For years the media has created this flase dictomoty: relationships are either dramatic, passionate, thrilling, or they are staid, stable, and mature. Everything is either Ozzie and Harriet or the rotating antics of teenagers. In truth, there are thousands of types of relationships: there are so many different ways that two people can work out sharing a life that it defies description. Do not lock yourself into thinking you have to settle for security or romance: both “all of the above” and “none of the above” are avalible.

  2. Do not confuse intensity of emotion with quality of emotion. Again, I blame the media. All advertiseing is rooted in making people feel like someone else has it better than you. And an incredble portion of it is rooted in making you know that other people have better relationships than you: we are constantly bombarded with messages that other people feel more love than us, have better orgasms than us, laugh more than us, and they have a product to fix that.

  3. In the same vein, be open to the many forms of romance. Hollywood has defined Romantic pretty rigidly–flowers, jewelry, the feeling of being swept of your feet. My husband has never done ANY of that. My husband has never said he loves me. But we have an intensely romantic relationship. Be open to the idea of finding your own type of romance.

  4. There is one thing I find interesting about the timing here–you say:

One thing about Hollywood-style romance is that it is something done to a woman: you are just standing there at the bus stop and someone comes along and sweeps you off your feet; a romantic guy dosen’t ask you what you want to do Friday night, he just knows what will make you happy. It could be that at this point in your life, when you are justifyably proud of yourself, you are also sort of scared: you are suddenly 100% adult: your not a student anymore, you are not a “young adult”–from the perspective of others, you are every single bit as much an adult as your parents are. I would think it is pretty normal to be constructing castles in the air where someone comes along and takes care of everything. Remember that it’s OK to feel ambigous, to be 95% happy that you are an autonomous individual, and 5% wish you could be somebody’s trophy wife.

  1. In your particular case, I notice that you nowhere say you enjoy being with your SO. To me, simple enjoyment is the most important factor: more than intensity of emotion, more than whether or not you fight, more than how good the sex is. When people say “marry your best friend”, this is what they are talking about–do you enjoy hanging out with your SO? Do you look forward to talking over news events with him, or things that happen in your life? Do you have long conversations together? If you are not enjoying the relationship, then you need to put some serious thought into what you want to do.

  2. I will end with my standard spiel–you choose to be with this person. Do not feel trapped, because you can chose to leave. For more in that vein, feel free to read my manifesto.

5

I don’t find your desire for the romantic to be silly at all. In fact I agree with Ice Wolf but don’t think he/she went far enough. It is obvious that you have a need for passion/romance/drama in your life.

So, put some there.

There are many ways to do this.

Some married couples still “date.” That is they adopt all of the trappings of single guy takes out single girl as they try to impress each other. This adds a texture to being together that you lose by just living together. Seeing each other is commonplace so you need to find someway to make it exciting again.

Some people go as far as one partner going to a club/bar/etc. first with the other partner coming in later to “pick up chicks/hunks” and putting the moves on their partner.

You could also write letters to each other. May sound silly but even good conversation is not the same as a well thought out letter. One way to spice this up is to take on personas in the letters. You can go the 19th century fiction way with this as in Charlotte and Heathcote or just write as if you were 3000 miles away and want to romantically connect with your distant partner.

A method I recommend and have enjoyed is to bring your partner into your dream. Tell your SO your dream up until the hero has a chance to act and let him decide what action the hero would take. Then you share back what effect that has. Then he gets a turn again. etc.

All of these ideas incorporate some form of role-playing. Many people are uncomfortable with that because you what you are doing in no longer “real”. To that I of course reply “horse hockey!”

If you were to decide to do any of these things you would still be doing them with your partner. I would also point out that you would also be experiencing parts of your partner that you don’t encounter every day. Namely imagination, humor, dramatic flair, etc.

I have done some but not all of these with my wife and we both found a great deal of satisfaction.

Today’s world is about the worst possible to inspire romance. So in order to make up for the world you are born with I suggest you step outside it for a while and make your own where romance is king.

6

Thanks for the advice and reassurance, everyone. I have talked about this with my SO, but we never seem to get anywhere with the discussion, I think because of two very important reasons:

  1. He just doesn’t feel the same way. He thinks everything is perfect just the way it is.

  2. I have my own issues in bringing this up- I feel incredibly guilty. I feel selfish and shallow, because he really is a wonderful person, and I’d never want to intentionally hurt him.

Manda Jo, you bring up some good points about how the media influences our perception of relationships. {b]Athena**, you also bring up some good points. Maybe I am oversimplifying the whole thing. Obviously, a relationship with another human being is seldom so simple as I would paint it.

Do I enjoy the time I spend with my SO? What a question…it cuts right to the heart of the matter. I don’t know. If feels like we’ve been together so long that being with him is second nature, not something I can say I enjoy or not. I will have to do some serious thinking on this.

Your assertions that the media often portrays something happening to women is correct, MJ. This is something I’ve always secretly sort of wanted, in a complete reversal of my usual tendencies. In this relationship, I’d have to say I’m the more outgoing and dominant personality. I made all the first moves in the beginning, as I have done in every prior relationship. To this day, we have some fundamental differences in our personalitites, not that this is a bad thing, you realize. I only point it out to make a clarification. He’s definitely a shy person, more reserved with his feelings and actions, while I tend to express myself often and extensively. So I sort of what something to happen to me, although part of me realizes that not much ‘just happens to you’ in this department, it takes two to tango, etc, etc. I just sort of can’t help wanting to be swept off my feet. And it makes me feel silly and guilty to feel like that, but I can’t help sort of wanting it nonetheless.

Obviously, I’ve got a lot of soul-searching and talking with my SO to do. I just can’t shake the feeling that I have no right to feel this way, and that I’m being unrealistic.

I’m glad the SDMB exists; it’s important to get widely varying perspectives on a situation, and I thank you all for your advice.

7

Well, I’ll say this: it’s ok to enjoy ambiguity. You **can’t ** have a swept-off-your-feet romance where you let someone else take over and still retain your independence. Letting someone take over means biting your lip when there big romantic suprises interfere with the night alone you were eagerly anticiipating; it means living with whatever decisions he makes for both of you. It means acknowledging that he knows you better than you know yourself, and agreeing to take his word forwho you are. There is nothing wrong with fantasizing about a relationship where someone else takes over–hell, I have fantasies in exactly that line, and I enjoy the hell out of them with no guilt. But I also recognize that in reality I’d hate that type of relationship: I’d hate not being able to give, but being stuck in the role of grateful recipient all the time. But I enjoy my fantasies. Go ahead and enjoy yours, and don’t feel that enjoying the fantasy is a commitment to making it exist in real life. Fantasies are a great way to soften the fact that in life we can’t have our cake and eat it too.

This is a seperate issue from whether or not you are happy in your current relationship–you need to decide whether or not you want to stay in this relationship on its own terms, not by judging it against some mythical relationship–the important issue is whether or not you are happy, not whether or notsomeone else in some other relationship is.

8

I think this may be the part you should concentrate on. I’ve been married eight years to my best friend, and I still feel a little prick of excitement when he returns home from work.

Of course our relationship isn’t a swept-off-your-feet romance at this point in our life. That would get tiring, not to mention–as Manda JO pointed out–frustrating as one or the other would always be the grateful recipient. We enjoy being in each other’s company on a daily basis: talking, laughing, being silly with each other.

I understand what it is you want, and it’s not unrealistic to wish for more romance in your life, but maybe at the heart of the matter is that this particular relationship just fizzled. Some relationships have a lifespan of two weeks, others three years and others seventy-five years. Every relationship is different. Or to put it better:

Don’t make any quick decisions. Maybe you should try another talk with your SO and possibly show him this thread, or at least Manda JO’s post.

Best of luck! I hope everything works out for the best.

9

ratty, it is your inalienable right as a sentient being to feel this way or any other way you like. It’s even possible that some non-sentient beings, such as politicians, experience similar feelings of longing - it’s just the way we are.

Personally, I that you may not be 100% sure what it is you want.

And, yes, that sounds like Hollywood-style psychobabble, but bear with me for a second. You are certain that you want something more - that certain rush that you presently associate with foot sweeping romance.

Thing is, the rush that comes with being in love isn’t the rush of being swept off of one’s feet. They feel much the same, but the true rush of love, IMHO, is more the imperceptible quickening of one’s pulse, the serene micro-moment, that occurs when The Perfect SO* comes into sight. It is, IMHO, more “chemistry” than sensationalism that really produces that feeling called love.

Not that the occasional romantic outburst is unnecessary or anything, but maybe the two of you are just on different internal clocks when it comes to thinking it’s “time” for a surprise romantic interlude. Personally, I think your bringing it up with him would have tipped him off that now is the time, but, hey, maybe he’s just really trying to surprise you. :smiley:

On a closing note, you have to bring this up because it makes you unhappy. And if you don’t bring it up, it’ll fester and lead to resentment, and resentment leads to hate, and hate is the path to the dark side…

Um, can I take that one back? :smack:

  • I’m not saying, by the way, that there is a Perfect Significant Other, as this may also be a Hollywood myth. It does, however, look nicer in print than Your Current More Than Adequate Romantic Partner.