There were more than the few boyfriends I’ll mention, these are just the relevant ones.
Boyfriend A- My first. Dated off and on for several years, his sisters wanted and assumed we’d get married. I thought about it but he was content to settle back in the country and would expect me to be a ‘good little wife’. NO
Boyfriend B- Ah, a good one. We dated prior to boyfriend A but he disappeared from my life and broke my heart. He reappeared. We became friends and lovers but were not in love or so I thought. One day he freaked me out and asked me to marry him. NO. I told him to go back to Virginia and grow up and then come back and ask. He was rather good in bed and funny and easy to be with but he also like to drink a bit to much sometimes, and had no goals that I could discern.
Boyfriend C- Really nice man with money that did nothing for me in the lust department, I just didn’t find him sexually attractive. He propose I said NO.
Boyfriend D- After almost a year of voluntary celibacy The One fell into my life. He was six years younger than me, had been on his own for four years, since he was 14. Was working in a chicken factory while he went to night school to get his GED or whatever the navy said he had to have to join. He was funny, smart, well read, liked to read, great in bed, thought I was the most beautiful female on the face of the earth, thought I hung the moon and was asking me to marry him three weeks after we met.
Two and a half months after we met he left for the Navy still saying ‘marry me’. I said go see the world, see other people and we’ll talk about it in four or five years. Only problem was I couldn’t stop thinking about him. He called, we wrote, long letters. Six months after he left to join the navy he came home to visit his family. A month after that I married him.
Common sense and my family and his said don’t marry him. Actually his family said don’t marry her. But I knew I would never find a man that made me feel the things or the way he made me feel. I took a leap of faith.
Sixteen years later, he still makes me feel those thing, he still thinks I am the most beautiful female on the face of the earth and he still thinks I hung the moon but now he knows I hung it crooked.
, but I never said a word afraid that if he realized it what he’d done, it would complicate things before he was ready to “share” his feelings. I agree with you that relationships are work and that if we value them and the people we have them with, then we will do the work, and do it as respectfully and compassionately as possible. You mentioned epeepunk’s, respect for you, but I see from the way you write of him that you have a wonderful respect and admiration of him as well. Change happens whether we want it to or not. It’s great to see someone articulate that the success of a relationship is due in part for the effort of growing with the inevitible changes instead of resisting them. 