I'm tempted to snip in lines of poetry or book quotes or song lyrics, but this is supposed to be about me, right?
Love is the feeling that someone else is important, and increasingly so.
It is a joy that exceeds its boundaries, imbuing other parts of life with color and light.
Laughing for no reason.
Waking up early, staying up late, and not pulled down by sleepiness in between.
Love is a layer of silliness on the mundane.
It is feeling more kindly toward others, whether or not they seem to deserve it.
Breathing more easily.
Dreaming better dreams.
all of life is negotiation and compromise. There is no way to fully know or understand other people. The best we can do is to try, and that works out by listening to what they say, observing the things they don't seem able or willing to say, and of all things to observe their behavior. Actions do reveal a person's unspoken preferences. It can be easy to fake words, but it's far more difficult to realistically convey actions.
A smart person (whose own relationship has persisted for 60+ years) once gave me great advice. He told me that, if I were to marry, I should expect that the work of marriage would not be a 50/50 proposition—rather, I ought to plan to do 90% of the work. Listening, helping, preparing, taking first steps, apologizing, caring, loving, and compromising. It seemed like strange and unfair advice, until I discovered the brilliance: he'd said the same thing to my fiancee. If we each went into it planning to do most of the work, then we'd be doing better than most.
when I was married, we pooled everything. Nothing was kept separate or held back. It made for some complex moments, like trying to get a bigger gift for someone who's seeing all the account statements—or trying to pretend a gift is a surprise when you balanced the checkbook that month. We decided at the beginning that we had to be open about it, though, and so we were. It helps (?) that we didn't have much to begin with. Neither of us came into the marriage with a lot. I was working 2 jobs and he had 3, in addition to both being full-time students. Our parents were able to help us out here and there but neither family was footing the bill for us. If we had car trouble, we skimped somewhere else to afford repairs. If we were low on grocery money, we ate mac and cheese, ramen, cereal, or hot dogs.
Since then, I've been in relationships where I was earning far more than my partner, around the same, and most recently, far less. None of these has been a marriage, though, so "financial disagreements" have a really different tone.
• "We can't go there or do that because I can't pay for it, and I won't let you pay."
• "You might want to spend your money on that, but I don't; that's not how I prioritize what I have."
• "I make more than you, so you should always let me pay."
• "I make less than you, so you should always pay."
None of these is particularly productive, but it's the same for innumerable arguments. Is it about money, or power? Is it about practicality, or emotion? Is it accommodation, or manipulation? I think that more often than not, financial disagreements are simply an alternate venue for the relationship's main argument to play out.
buying flowers. The classics are classic for a reason.
a well-chosen card. It's not a cop-out if it has a message meaningful to you.
a meal, or a dish, prepared to their taste.
sharing a previously-unseen photograph of oneself.
complete a task, and the more distasteful or particularly disliked, the better.
a handwritten letter. Words are worth a lot, as is the effort to convey them.
silliness. Tell funny stories about oneself, play a childhood game, or indulge in lighthearted banter.
cuddling for no other purpose than being close to someone who wants to be close to you.
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when I was young, I thought that love was "the pinnacle of feelings," a destination toward which all relationships were focused. I thought it was impossible to define and muzzy to understand but had a sort of you'll-know-when-you're-there sureness. It's impossible to deny someone's feelings, right?
I think that love is the fuel. Lust is (often, not always) the spark. Sometimes that's purely physical, sometimes it's emotional, and sometimes—the best times, for me—it's mental, intellectual, linguistic. It's a peek behind the veil, a clue that you two vibrate at the same frequency, operate at the same or at least a harmonious intensity. But that's only where it starts.
Love, what keeps it going, is constantly having or finding or making new material to burn. This is an imperfect analogy, so don't focus too much on the burning or consumption and instead on the production aspect. Good stuff is created when fire happens: heat, light, energy. All that requires a source of raw material. The spark can't keep it alive forever.
Friendship. Common interests. Independent interests, shared. Admiration. Willingness and desire to meet and know and support the people they have yet to become (because the person you meet at 25 changes, fundamentally, by the time they're 35, and 50, and 75, and 90. Not just on a cellular level but in appearance, emotion, sexuality, priority, and infinite other ways). Constructive argument and reconciliation as a form of renewal. Celebration. Loss, injury, illness, grief. Stupid decisions and triumphs. Separation and convergence. Appreciation. Leaning and sustaining. It's what you do.
6 How often do you discuss your feelings with your partner?
my most recent partner is not a "talk about your feelings" kind of person. Quite the opposite.
The last partner I had with whom I could do that was Nick. Weird to think of him in a good way, y'know? But he really was easy to talk to, and operated on a level where he was concerned about deep thoughts and feelings. In fact, he was probably more of an emotion-sharer than I was.
We spent many nights—together, indoors, outdoors, on the phone—in the dark, pouring out whatever was seeping through us. Some of it was good, productive talk, where we were finally able to put into words things that really needed to be said, that were weighing on us. Some of it was awful, melodramatic or manipulative or childish. Overall, though, it was one of the most open and direct relationships of my life, and I miss having that kind of openness and freedom with a partner.
Clean. Tidy. Meet-cute moments and blind dates that actually work.
Resulting in marriage with surprising and unrealistic frequency.
Easy to deal with, or easily-enough handled in a (hilariously easy to get and prompt) session with a therapist.
It's often portrayed as On or Off, where a date that doesn't work is so patently obvious that any bystander can tell, or a date that's a good match practically gives off its own light. What about a bad date with a good guy, a good date with a creep who covers it well, or a lousy venue that sucks the life out of everyone rather than fostering connection?
Our media focuses everything about love toward women and girls, making it stilted and stereotyped, and excluding boys and men from what is a place to learn some things.
It makes normal some things that are really wrong, like subtle bias, obsession, or manipulation.
Overall, it is unrealistic and unattainable.
[from here; the title quotation is by Helen Fielding, from Bridget Jones’s Diary]
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