state of the me
Feb. 23rd, 2007 10:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7This is long and fairly boring and overly academic, and is my followup to the post of the other day wherein I flipped out. I wrote this while waiting for work to start, and I tend to get horribly introspective and useless at times like that.
I will precede it with a follow-up to my most recent post, in the form of a brief snippet of dialogue from this evening. (This evening after work Z and I went out to dinner and had a nice time.)
Me: Are you giving anything up for Lent?
Z: *shrugs*
[background: last year Z randomly gave up booze without warning me, which sucks because I hate to drink alone. So I was mad.]
Me: I was thinking of giving up sex.
Z: *smirks*
Me: You'd think that was hilarious, wouldn't you.
Z: *says nothing for a moment* *smirks again* OK, actually that would be pretty funny.
Me: You'd laugh your ass off.
Z: ... Yeah.
Yeah, he would. I need it way more than he does.
Anyhow, my long essay from this morning. warning you, it's way way long, and not all that interesting. Uh, 2500 words.
So the thing is, I'm not a kid anymore. All my life I've resisted making commitments to things, resisted making decisions that couldn't be unmade-- like, growing my hair long. You can always cut hair short, but you can't un-cut it, so the temporary decision means you leave it long. You can always get a tattoo, but removing one is harder, so the temporary decision, or un-decision really, is not to get one. Throughout my youth I've never committed to anything, not even really buying a real car. It's hard for me to make major purchases because doing so would be making a commitment to something. It's hard for me to make commitments. I always defer decisions.
But I'm not a kid anymore and I can't live like that forever. It's fun, and gives you a feeling of freedom to think that you could just change everything in a moment. But it also means you've got your life pretty much on hold; it means you're not achieving anything, and time ripples by leaving you theoretically unchanged. But it doesn't; I'm getting older. Life is still something I do for fun but I am starting to feel the need to do more serious, permanent things. And these sorts of life goals involve deeper investments of time, money, and self than the less-intensive activities of youth did. I am starting to make long-range plans and begin to do things that require me to make decisions that aren't easily unmade, and to put down roots and commit myself to things.
For instance, even furnishing a house. I've never seriously purchased furniture because I was always anticipating that I would soon be moving, and so making an attempt to accumulate things that matched one another or fit precisely into an intended space seemed futile.
But I am beginning to feel a desire to have, say, a living room set, including matching furniture, carpets fitted to the particular floor of the room, and curtains that precisely fit the windows of that room, and match the paint, and suit the architecture. I want to be sure I won't move before I make this sort of investment.
I want a cat, but I have to be sure I won't be moving somewhere that doesn't allow pets, or somewhere distant to which transporting a pet would be problematic. (Having a fish has thusfar been more commitment than I would have made if the fish weren't given to me in the first place.)
I want, more ambitiously, to make improvements to the space where I am-- adding an office / study / library upstairs, for example. That would involve hundreds, even thousands of dollars worth of materials and labor. It would be futile to do that if I am not staying in the house, and indeed most people I mention it to say it would be rather stupid to do it to a house that does not belong to me.
As I have progressed through my twenties I have come to understand myself a great deal better. This has not been easy, and it has only come about through my increasing involvement with other people. I have gradually learned that I prefer to have the option of not being alone; I function at my best when I have at least one close companion, preferably someone with whom I am sexually involved. I do not need a great deal of affection or closeness, and do not require constant attention (in fact it's better if I don't have it), but I do need to have approximately daily conversations, and more than occasional reassurances of my closeness with this person. I used to think I was a much clingier person but, again, as I have matured I have realized that much of my neediness was born of my feeling that I ought to be that way, rather than any innate desire to be that way. Indeed I am at my best, creatively, when I have frequent periods of solitude, but they must be broken up by fairly frequent contact with outsiders, both my normal companion and by the society of less closely-involved people.
I am happy in my current situation because I have a companion who gives me plenty of space, and also engages me in frequent conversations of exceptional quality. He amuses me, enlightens me, and inspires me, and I could ask for no better conversation partner. I find him extremely attractive but not overly-distracting. I am, indeed, deeply fond of him, and feel a far deeper emotional tie to him than I ever have for a romantic partner of any description-- it would certainly not be out of line to say that I was in love with him.
The only dissatisfaction I experience is that while we have enjoyed a long and mutually-satisfying relationship, replete with experiences both wonderfully pleasant and, shall we say, challengingly educational, I remain uncertain as to the exact nature of his investment in the relationship. As a younger woman this disturbed me for no reason, and as our relationship progressed beyond the initial stages I learned not to worry about it so much. But as I have grown still older I am increasingly preoccupied with the fact that I have set myself all these goals and begun to make myself all these long-term plans, that require so much investment, and all of them involve having a companion-- indeed, this companion.
But he has made no indication of any desire to be included in these plans, indeed avoiding any discussion more serious than idle speculation. My raising of the question of reproduction-- I have become slowly more convinced that I would perhaps like to raise offspring at some point-- has met with only joking dismay, and nothing more. I am left stuck with the quandary of either making plans around him or without him, and I am reluctant to do either-- and yet do not want to abandon my plans, as while I have enjoyed my youth, I would rather move on into my adulthood and no longer live quite the same way. I sort of feel like much that I do is seemingly in preparation for something, and I really would like to move to a more concrete phase of this (like, where I have a real goal in mind, as opposed to a general feeling that I'm just learning the necessary skills to face whatever it is my life is supposed to be), as accumulation of nothing but money is rather wearisome. I don't know if I said that well; I'll try again. I feel like my life up to this point has been preparation, learning how to cope with everything, and I'm supposed to be facing some particular challenge, making some particular decisions, to make my mark in the world. I really would like to be done with the learning stage and get down to the doing stage.
Quite apart from my own plans, I have become so fond of this person, and admire him so greatly, that I would like to be a part of his plans. I believe strongly that he is an exceptional person, and as such is destined to achieve some fascinating and wonderful things, and I want to be there, both as witness to them and hopefully as a participant in some role or another.
However, I must confront the fact that I am still not certain of the exact nature of our relationship. It has been four and a half years. Five years ago I was in another relationship, an open relationship with a man who was then polyamorous. In fact I began pursuing my current companion while still in the previous relationship, as the man was seeing other women and I also knew he was about to embark upon a career that would remove him from my presence nearly permanently. So when the man I am with now first sparked my interest I was free to pursue him, and did so-- nearly from our first meeting I knew I was interested in him, and let him know that.
Shortly after my current companion and I first became sexually intimate, he began to refer to me as his girlfriend, which was a term I found significant, as I had not been called such by previous partners. Half-joking questioning soon established that he considered us exclusive sexual partners. This pleased me, as I had realized that open relationships did not exactly suit me-- I have not the attention span nor the emotional freedom for multiple partners, not without considerable reassurance, and while perhaps I could grow used to it, I do not particulary desire to pursue that course. It requires too much attention and is quite risky and rather confusing.
At any rate, it was an exclusive sexual relationship and we were calling one another "boyfriend" and "girlfriend"-- which was quite a novelty for me, as I had previously had only one serious relationship, and that with a woman.
In the confusion of the emotions aroused by all this I began to tentatively make declarations of love to him, but quickly learned that he is not that demonstrative nor effusive a person, and I may have been being overenthusiastic. But I did quickly decide that I was much happier with him than staying in my mother's house, and so upon learning that he in his turn was happier with me there, I moved myself in to stay with him.
To this day he half-jokingly says that he just came home one day and there was all this furniture there and a woman living in his house. I am not certain how serious he is; I had assumed at the time that he was pleased by my being there, and he certainly did not seem overly dismayed at the time. Perhaps I was oblivious; I am not certain.
At any rate, when we got a new apartment he was quite willing to move with me. We even bought a few furnishings together, and he told his mother about my status. (Which was a bit risky, as she had earlier told his sister she was "no better than a slut" for living with her boyfriend.)
In due time when he decided to move back to Buffalo I resolved to come with him, as I did not much enjoy the place we lived then, and had little to no interest in returning to my native city. I had enjoyed Buffalo on my visits, and more importantly wanted to stay with him. I was lovingly accepted by his extended family and I cherish those relationships.
However it was natural that his family began to ask when he and I would marry. As years have gone by the questions have become more pointed, and my own family has joined in. (I was even given serious financial advice, from the brother-in-law who is a financial advisor, that it would make more sense financially to marry.) But my companion is less and less interested in discussing the matter.
He has never said anything more definite beyond that very early conversation wherein he indicated that he intended to be exclusive. He has never claimed any particular depth of feeling for me, although he is quite affectionate and solicitous and is very concerned if I am ever in distress. Still he has made no declarations and no firm promises, and I have not had the courage or inclination to really press him on the issue. I have spoken at length of my own future plans but he only nods. Questions about his own future plans do not receive any definite answers. On the one hand, there is nothing wrong with not having plans set in stone.
But on the other hand I have to accept that I cannot make plans with him without his permission and involvement. He has promised me nothing, and so I cannot expect anything of him beyond what has been made clear-- I am his girlfriend and companion, and he takes no other lovers and expects the same of me. I am happy to do that. I have never been so happy with anyone else. Our domestic arrangement, while stressful at times, is basically happy, and we have a pretty good financial system set up-- I may pay for more things, but I earn more, and it is no hardship at all, especially when you consider that for the first two years of our relationship, I paid for much less than half of our expenses, and was frequently unemployed. I did what I could to keep the house and fix the meals, but I was often distracted (especially with writing, which used to absorb me to ridiculous extents-- for a time I was spending over 100 hours a week just writing) and have never been much of a housekeeper.
But I do want to make more concrete plans, and they require a great deal of commitment on my part. I am going to have to choose to either make my plans around him as I can, or make my plans without him. I do not know how well either of those two options will work. Many of the plans I have will not work unless I have a companion, so I cannot simply say, well, I'll be here doing this, and if you want in, feel free to join me. No, I need him committed to it before I can do it. But I cannot demand commitment of him, and cannot command what he will not freely offer. If he does not want to make a formal commitment to me, if he remains completely disinterested in reproducing with me, then what is the point of my making a fuss over it? He is breaking no promises, for he has made none.
But that is why I am so liable to freak out at him over perceived slights. I am very happy with him and have complete faith in him not to break any commitments he has made to me: he would never be unfaithful, and if he has said he will do something, he will either do it or will have an excellent alternative or reason for not doing it. But I want it to be true that he wants the same things I do, and I want him to want to be included in my plans. It is irrational to become angry when he shows no signs of doing so, but I have never claimed to be a particularly rational person.
I will precede it with a follow-up to my most recent post, in the form of a brief snippet of dialogue from this evening. (This evening after work Z and I went out to dinner and had a nice time.)
Me: Are you giving anything up for Lent?
Z: *shrugs*
[background: last year Z randomly gave up booze without warning me, which sucks because I hate to drink alone. So I was mad.]
Me: I was thinking of giving up sex.
Z: *smirks*
Me: You'd think that was hilarious, wouldn't you.
Z: *says nothing for a moment* *smirks again* OK, actually that would be pretty funny.
Me: You'd laugh your ass off.
Z: ... Yeah.
Yeah, he would. I need it way more than he does.
Anyhow, my long essay from this morning. warning you, it's way way long, and not all that interesting. Uh, 2500 words.
So the thing is, I'm not a kid anymore. All my life I've resisted making commitments to things, resisted making decisions that couldn't be unmade-- like, growing my hair long. You can always cut hair short, but you can't un-cut it, so the temporary decision means you leave it long. You can always get a tattoo, but removing one is harder, so the temporary decision, or un-decision really, is not to get one. Throughout my youth I've never committed to anything, not even really buying a real car. It's hard for me to make major purchases because doing so would be making a commitment to something. It's hard for me to make commitments. I always defer decisions.
But I'm not a kid anymore and I can't live like that forever. It's fun, and gives you a feeling of freedom to think that you could just change everything in a moment. But it also means you've got your life pretty much on hold; it means you're not achieving anything, and time ripples by leaving you theoretically unchanged. But it doesn't; I'm getting older. Life is still something I do for fun but I am starting to feel the need to do more serious, permanent things. And these sorts of life goals involve deeper investments of time, money, and self than the less-intensive activities of youth did. I am starting to make long-range plans and begin to do things that require me to make decisions that aren't easily unmade, and to put down roots and commit myself to things.
For instance, even furnishing a house. I've never seriously purchased furniture because I was always anticipating that I would soon be moving, and so making an attempt to accumulate things that matched one another or fit precisely into an intended space seemed futile.
But I am beginning to feel a desire to have, say, a living room set, including matching furniture, carpets fitted to the particular floor of the room, and curtains that precisely fit the windows of that room, and match the paint, and suit the architecture. I want to be sure I won't move before I make this sort of investment.
I want a cat, but I have to be sure I won't be moving somewhere that doesn't allow pets, or somewhere distant to which transporting a pet would be problematic. (Having a fish has thusfar been more commitment than I would have made if the fish weren't given to me in the first place.)
I want, more ambitiously, to make improvements to the space where I am-- adding an office / study / library upstairs, for example. That would involve hundreds, even thousands of dollars worth of materials and labor. It would be futile to do that if I am not staying in the house, and indeed most people I mention it to say it would be rather stupid to do it to a house that does not belong to me.
As I have progressed through my twenties I have come to understand myself a great deal better. This has not been easy, and it has only come about through my increasing involvement with other people. I have gradually learned that I prefer to have the option of not being alone; I function at my best when I have at least one close companion, preferably someone with whom I am sexually involved. I do not need a great deal of affection or closeness, and do not require constant attention (in fact it's better if I don't have it), but I do need to have approximately daily conversations, and more than occasional reassurances of my closeness with this person. I used to think I was a much clingier person but, again, as I have matured I have realized that much of my neediness was born of my feeling that I ought to be that way, rather than any innate desire to be that way. Indeed I am at my best, creatively, when I have frequent periods of solitude, but they must be broken up by fairly frequent contact with outsiders, both my normal companion and by the society of less closely-involved people.
I am happy in my current situation because I have a companion who gives me plenty of space, and also engages me in frequent conversations of exceptional quality. He amuses me, enlightens me, and inspires me, and I could ask for no better conversation partner. I find him extremely attractive but not overly-distracting. I am, indeed, deeply fond of him, and feel a far deeper emotional tie to him than I ever have for a romantic partner of any description-- it would certainly not be out of line to say that I was in love with him.
The only dissatisfaction I experience is that while we have enjoyed a long and mutually-satisfying relationship, replete with experiences both wonderfully pleasant and, shall we say, challengingly educational, I remain uncertain as to the exact nature of his investment in the relationship. As a younger woman this disturbed me for no reason, and as our relationship progressed beyond the initial stages I learned not to worry about it so much. But as I have grown still older I am increasingly preoccupied with the fact that I have set myself all these goals and begun to make myself all these long-term plans, that require so much investment, and all of them involve having a companion-- indeed, this companion.
But he has made no indication of any desire to be included in these plans, indeed avoiding any discussion more serious than idle speculation. My raising of the question of reproduction-- I have become slowly more convinced that I would perhaps like to raise offspring at some point-- has met with only joking dismay, and nothing more. I am left stuck with the quandary of either making plans around him or without him, and I am reluctant to do either-- and yet do not want to abandon my plans, as while I have enjoyed my youth, I would rather move on into my adulthood and no longer live quite the same way. I sort of feel like much that I do is seemingly in preparation for something, and I really would like to move to a more concrete phase of this (like, where I have a real goal in mind, as opposed to a general feeling that I'm just learning the necessary skills to face whatever it is my life is supposed to be), as accumulation of nothing but money is rather wearisome. I don't know if I said that well; I'll try again. I feel like my life up to this point has been preparation, learning how to cope with everything, and I'm supposed to be facing some particular challenge, making some particular decisions, to make my mark in the world. I really would like to be done with the learning stage and get down to the doing stage.
Quite apart from my own plans, I have become so fond of this person, and admire him so greatly, that I would like to be a part of his plans. I believe strongly that he is an exceptional person, and as such is destined to achieve some fascinating and wonderful things, and I want to be there, both as witness to them and hopefully as a participant in some role or another.
However, I must confront the fact that I am still not certain of the exact nature of our relationship. It has been four and a half years. Five years ago I was in another relationship, an open relationship with a man who was then polyamorous. In fact I began pursuing my current companion while still in the previous relationship, as the man was seeing other women and I also knew he was about to embark upon a career that would remove him from my presence nearly permanently. So when the man I am with now first sparked my interest I was free to pursue him, and did so-- nearly from our first meeting I knew I was interested in him, and let him know that.
Shortly after my current companion and I first became sexually intimate, he began to refer to me as his girlfriend, which was a term I found significant, as I had not been called such by previous partners. Half-joking questioning soon established that he considered us exclusive sexual partners. This pleased me, as I had realized that open relationships did not exactly suit me-- I have not the attention span nor the emotional freedom for multiple partners, not without considerable reassurance, and while perhaps I could grow used to it, I do not particulary desire to pursue that course. It requires too much attention and is quite risky and rather confusing.
At any rate, it was an exclusive sexual relationship and we were calling one another "boyfriend" and "girlfriend"-- which was quite a novelty for me, as I had previously had only one serious relationship, and that with a woman.
In the confusion of the emotions aroused by all this I began to tentatively make declarations of love to him, but quickly learned that he is not that demonstrative nor effusive a person, and I may have been being overenthusiastic. But I did quickly decide that I was much happier with him than staying in my mother's house, and so upon learning that he in his turn was happier with me there, I moved myself in to stay with him.
To this day he half-jokingly says that he just came home one day and there was all this furniture there and a woman living in his house. I am not certain how serious he is; I had assumed at the time that he was pleased by my being there, and he certainly did not seem overly dismayed at the time. Perhaps I was oblivious; I am not certain.
At any rate, when we got a new apartment he was quite willing to move with me. We even bought a few furnishings together, and he told his mother about my status. (Which was a bit risky, as she had earlier told his sister she was "no better than a slut" for living with her boyfriend.)
In due time when he decided to move back to Buffalo I resolved to come with him, as I did not much enjoy the place we lived then, and had little to no interest in returning to my native city. I had enjoyed Buffalo on my visits, and more importantly wanted to stay with him. I was lovingly accepted by his extended family and I cherish those relationships.
However it was natural that his family began to ask when he and I would marry. As years have gone by the questions have become more pointed, and my own family has joined in. (I was even given serious financial advice, from the brother-in-law who is a financial advisor, that it would make more sense financially to marry.) But my companion is less and less interested in discussing the matter.
He has never said anything more definite beyond that very early conversation wherein he indicated that he intended to be exclusive. He has never claimed any particular depth of feeling for me, although he is quite affectionate and solicitous and is very concerned if I am ever in distress. Still he has made no declarations and no firm promises, and I have not had the courage or inclination to really press him on the issue. I have spoken at length of my own future plans but he only nods. Questions about his own future plans do not receive any definite answers. On the one hand, there is nothing wrong with not having plans set in stone.
But on the other hand I have to accept that I cannot make plans with him without his permission and involvement. He has promised me nothing, and so I cannot expect anything of him beyond what has been made clear-- I am his girlfriend and companion, and he takes no other lovers and expects the same of me. I am happy to do that. I have never been so happy with anyone else. Our domestic arrangement, while stressful at times, is basically happy, and we have a pretty good financial system set up-- I may pay for more things, but I earn more, and it is no hardship at all, especially when you consider that for the first two years of our relationship, I paid for much less than half of our expenses, and was frequently unemployed. I did what I could to keep the house and fix the meals, but I was often distracted (especially with writing, which used to absorb me to ridiculous extents-- for a time I was spending over 100 hours a week just writing) and have never been much of a housekeeper.
But I do want to make more concrete plans, and they require a great deal of commitment on my part. I am going to have to choose to either make my plans around him as I can, or make my plans without him. I do not know how well either of those two options will work. Many of the plans I have will not work unless I have a companion, so I cannot simply say, well, I'll be here doing this, and if you want in, feel free to join me. No, I need him committed to it before I can do it. But I cannot demand commitment of him, and cannot command what he will not freely offer. If he does not want to make a formal commitment to me, if he remains completely disinterested in reproducing with me, then what is the point of my making a fuss over it? He is breaking no promises, for he has made none.
But that is why I am so liable to freak out at him over perceived slights. I am very happy with him and have complete faith in him not to break any commitments he has made to me: he would never be unfaithful, and if he has said he will do something, he will either do it or will have an excellent alternative or reason for not doing it. But I want it to be true that he wants the same things I do, and I want him to want to be included in my plans. It is irrational to become angry when he shows no signs of doing so, but I have never claimed to be a particularly rational person.
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no subject
Date: 2007-02-24 04:56 am (UTC)b) how old is he? and you?
c) what plans, other than children, are you interested in?
d) have you ever discussed marriage?
no subject
Date: 2007-02-24 11:05 am (UTC)I don't think it is. Or perhaps it's irrational in the sense that getting angry won't help the situation, but the situation sounds so frustrating that anger is a clompletely normal response. It's normal to want to plan for the future, and since you guys function as a sort of team in the present, it's normal to want to include him in these plans.
His unwillingness to discuss these matters sounds jerk-like to me: I am pretty sure would much rather be told in which of his plans he is or is not willing to include me straight out, than left to infer all sorts of rejections from vague hints. I suspect you might find this ultimately less stressful, as well.
You are too hard in yourself. Especially, if you actually fully believe what you are saying, and are not just going out of your way to be fair in a written evaluation.
My blunt opinion: you judge this relationship and this man far too kindly, probably because your early relationships were mostly awful. Even though I am extremely cynical about these things, I am certain you could find someone who would be much nicer to you. Of course, love makes these things much more complicated, since, as you point out, just being around a person you love is compensation for many things--and this is why it has made sense for you to stay with this guy while you didn't care so much about the future. Now, it's kind of a present-future trade-off: would you be willing to give up the warm fuzzies of love for a while (a couple of years?) and try to find someone who will treat you better in the long run? (Yeah, yeah, Z could change for the better too, but I think it's unlikely, given that the status quo suits him so well. It's probably marginally more likely that he would change if you said "change or I am leaving" and meant it, but this is not something one should build a plan around--and anyway, if you meant it, you might not care so much.)
Seriously, Bridget, I am *not* just being all girlfriendy and taking your side from a biased position. I really believe that, given your change in life focus, this relationship as it stands is a bad one for you.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-24 11:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-24 12:35 pm (UTC)b) We're both 27. I told him I was going to flip out about all these things before I was 30 and if he was going to dump me over it, he'd better do it before I'm 30 because I refuse to be the 30-year-old-and-desperate chick.
c) I want to buy a house, maybe raise children (not totally decided, and I don't want them *now*, but I just see how happy my parents are with us now that we're grown, and I see my childhood in a new light, and it just seems to me like children are such a meaningful life project. It's a lifestyle I think I'd like.
I also want to devote myself to being a published writer, and the thing with that line of work is that while it can be enough to earn a living, it tends to be in irregular chunks of payment, and so I would be a great deal more comfortable as part of a two-income household. I also will not raise children alone, as everyone I know who's done it has had to pretty much devote their lives to it and I want to have more going on in my life than single-minded devotion to my dependents.
d) we've discussed weddings in a fair amount of detail, and I have let him know my feelings on marriage, but he hasn't really answered. Which is his lookout really.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-24 01:34 pm (UTC)Another point is that a while back I told him I'd probably be freaking out about this sort of stuff a bit before I turned 30 so he'd have to either get cool with it or dump me in advance of that.
I'm much more comfortable with our situation now that I've had a chance to work out all my thoughts and feelings on the topic, so I'm not writing this so academically because I'm trying not to be emotional-- I'm writing it academically because I'm not worked-up over it. I'm not freaking out.
And I don't feel that I convey his side of it at all, and I feel bad about that. We do have such a good relationship. I'm having trouble typing this because he's awake and making me coffee and chattering with me about roller derby poster art. I can't state enough how comfortable and happy we are together. And do I want to flip out at him for not being on board with my proposed lifestyle changes when I have only just worked them out for myself? That would certainly not be illogical.
I am in a frustrating situation, but it is not that we have never compromised on anything in our years together, and it is not that he may not have plans of his own which he hasn't explained to me the way I haven't fully explained myself to him. We don't tend to have serious conversations out loud-- we communicate better, in serious matters, via email. Out loud we're too busy chattering about less-serious, more interesting things, and the blame for not Having It Out about underlying issues rests equally with me as with him-- I too would much rather discuss politics or roller derby or sports (OMG did you see the Sabres' 20-minute brouhaha with the Senators (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAPhqXj_24I) on Thursday night wow) or what-have-you.
I dunno, man, I can't organize my thoughts right now. I do appreciate your advice and will consider it again more closely. But I don't think I'm being too hard on myself and I am worried that I'm not conveying his side of it at all. :/ I have to go to work now, though.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-24 01:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-24 05:05 pm (UTC)It turns out that all this kerfuffle isn't really about how awful it feels to read terrible things about yourself on the Internet after all. What a relief; it would have been pretty surreal to have to invoke Godwin's Law on your life partner.
Yeah, I know your friends are bristling at the phrase. What a doosh, trying to make her feel obligated to stick around when he's got nothing else going for him. But we didn't get together because of necessity or practicality, we haven't stuck together this long because anyone says we have to, and we don't work out our problems because it's cheaper than splitting. We're together on our own terms, because we want to be, and that is not a union to be underestimated.
And we are life partners. I don't know what else you'd call it or how else you could explain someone as contrary and stubborn and selfish as I am following you around like a puppy. We've been all over God's green earth together, and I don't know about you but I've had a blast. We've been through happy times and sad times and some pretty lean and frustrating times, but we're still together and no matter what happens, I won't regret any of it.
No, I haven't made any promises, but it's not because I'm a doosh. We are together of our own volition, because we're happier together than we are apart. I know that circumstances change, people change in ways we wish they wouldn't [and don't change in ways we wish they would] and if the time ever came that we'd be happier to be apart than we are together - God, that would be a difficult decision to make - I sincerely want you to feel happy, not obligated.
And no, I didn't get you anything for Christmas. That is because I'm a doosh.
There, I've said it. Now can we please stop trying to make each other miserable?
Yours for as long as you'll have me,
- Z
no subject
Date: 2007-02-24 11:24 pm (UTC)c) have you talked to him seriously about that>
d) propose to him?
I dunno... if you can handle that sort of person, and you value him enough to work though things, then do it. But I'm a different sort of person.
PS I WANT CHICKENS TOO
no subject
Date: 2007-02-24 11:27 pm (UTC)i agree dude!
Date: 2007-02-25 11:32 am (UTC)Wow, I've found the same to be true too! How did you find that?
Bye, - MyGirl!
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no subject
Date: 2007-02-25 02:09 pm (UTC)*sigh*
At least somebody I know has things happen in the happy, romantic way.