damp things in hampers? ick
Hamper? Would that be the floor area in front of my washing machine?
Better than the floor area just outside my bathroom. I better just move some of that now before I trip over it.
PS, neither of those previous two statements are in any way a joke!
I've come to the conclusion that it's necessary for BOTH people in a relationship to be EQUALLY considerate of the other for things to work. From my observation this rarely happens - one partner tries harder than the other, one is more thoughtful & obliging ..... Inevitably this leads to stresses, strains & bad feelings. Anyone whose met their "perfect match", I envy you!
I came to that conclusion as well. A friend is going through her second divorce. She met her first husband in college and, from her point of view perhaps, he would have been a college beau and they would have separated at graduation, but he hung in until she gave up and married him. What they didn't share eroded the marriage. Her second husband was different: he blew into her life like a hurricane. But, you know those people who pull out of a side street in front of your car with inches to spare and then drive below the speed limit? Well, her second husband was like that. He acted like marriage was something that ought to be successful immediately. When it wasn't, when she wasn't just the woman he found so attractive whose music he loved but a mother whose music needed more than a little practice to support it, he withdrew. She did all the work and he stayed in the background, never moving into her house!
Noddy, you are an example of a wise woman!
"You can take all my women, you can sure keep 'em all
I've got a brand new secret that your men can't catch on to at all
I'm a jelly roll baker
I bake the best jelly roll in town
I'm the only man baking jelly and I'm keeping my damper down"
plainoldme--
I'm not wise--just seasoned. All the same, thanks for the kind words.
plainoldme wrote:I've come to the conclusion that it's necessary for BOTH people in a relationship to be EQUALLY considerate of the other for things to work.
That's not true at all. I can think of one perfect example. I know a husband and wife that have been married for over 30 years, and she still insults him, snaps at him, belittles him in front of people, and generally treats him like a child. And he seems to be okay with that. That works. Just because we don't approve of that, doesn't mean they aren't happy with it.
I think that to make things work, all a couple needs is complementary psychoses.
Complementary psychoses is sure ONE way to go!
Well, complimentary psychoses may work but who wants to be sick together? I'd rather be well. But, actually, when I think of kissing some of the men I see, I get a little . . . let's just say . . . disinterested.
plainoldme--
Good taste can be a life-saving handicap.
There are very few Frogs With Potential in this world--and like the rest of the croaking amphibians they are in danger of extinction-by-enviromental pollution.
Noddy,
Good taste can be a life saving handicap.
That sounds like something that should go on a contemporary embroidery sampler!
Frankly, I would love, as a very sexual person (geeze louise, I hope writing something like this doesn't encourage the presence of squirrel and his ilk), to have a man in my life. The problem is the men that stayed the longest in it were in different ways (at least I learned, or, rather, reacted to the previous mistake) not very good for me.
During my first two years after college, I encountered very few men with whom I wished to go on a second date. I yawned through a dinner with a fellow grad student. There were a dozen or so men to whom I felt no physical attraction who convinced me to go out with them and who became angry with me because of the lack of chemistry. There was the man who begged one of my closest friends to fix him up with a woman because he seemed unable to find females who shared his love of jazz. The friend, a man, consulted with another mutual friend and decided to fix him up with me because I had a couple of jazz albums, was attractive and friendly. Although we went to a great concert -- Nina Simone -- the guy just didn't talk. He sat almost motionless and smoked a pipe. As my second post-grad year wound down, the wedding of female friend approached. I wanted a date for the ceremony and reception because I had an awful feeling about going stag. I met someone with whom I had a disasterous 15 month relationship. Too bad there wasn't a better guy ahead of time to save me from him. Part of the reason why I stuck it out -- neither of us ever said the words I love you and I know I never thought them -- was he was very energetic (tennis, touch football, skiing), had tons of friends and talked a mile a minute. He was, unfortunately, a pathelogical liar and it took a little time to unravel his lies.
My ex-husband was a bigger and better liar. The last man in my life to date was at least honest but there were other problems there.
Hmmmm. This is making being alone sound much more inviting.
I tend to go for years between relationships. The next one seems to come along whenever I finally resign myself that there won't be another one.
Ok, so I'm resigned now. Where is he? :wink:
I believe it is learnable. When I first moved in with my bf, I was also the inspecting type. I had a clear vision of how to do things, wanted them my way. But he cares so much about his paintings and photos. I don't care too much for them and didn't want the house cluttered. It started to boil inside of me, but neither of us is a fighting type. Suddenly it hit me that those things are sooo unimportant. i let him hang his pictures, he let me pick the wall colors. i let him attempt to put in chandelliers (major disaster, but we laughed through it), he let me arrange the furniture. I let him keep his hideous old couches that he grew up with, he let me drag in my pitiful little green writing desk that i love so much. we learnt to laugh at those things, instead of feeling hurt and insulted. in the end, i'll be spending the evening with him, not with his couches or my ugly desk. so why spoil it. i love the cohabitation now, and trust me, the first month i thought i will never be able to make it and was ready to move out every other day.
Yep. E.G. and I have this code, it is having your hands in front of you, palms in, fingertips touching, and then stacking one hand on top of the other. (Geesh, hard to explain.) Anyway, it is code when we sense a certain kind of argument coming on for our very first huge argument, when we'd just moved in together and were trying to figure out whether two identical bookcases should go next to each other or one on top of the other.
HUGE fight. I insisted on next to -- fit the space much better, made a nice long countertoppish area for vases, plants, etc. He insisted on vertically aligned.
We finally figured it out (next to, ahem), and moved on to other decorating battlegrounds. (I insisted that his naugahyde couch go far, far away, he prevailed on that one.)
Anyway, my point, and I have one, is that for each of the big fights there was something else going on, or some difference we didn't know we had that was highlighted. For example, he can't see things in his mind's eye (though, interestingly, learning ASL has seemed to help him with that), so when we were standing there with the bookcases next to each other, he couldn't "see" what they would look like vertically aligned. The couch was ugly, yes, but also had been an old girlfriend's, and at the time that gave me the heebie-jeebies. (Seems long ago.) (Well, guess it IS -- 11 yrs or so.)
Anyway, we did a lot of talking, seemed to help get to the core of things and either show how silly they were, ultimately (so it was his girlfriend's! big whoop!) or solve them. (He can't "see" things in his mind's eye, so fine, we'll actually do it. Looks crappy, right? Right.)
mac,
Saw Carrie Fisher on television Sunday and she stated your question. She said when you stop looking, you're supposed to find someone. Well, that's not true.
dagmarka,
It sounds like you and your boyfriend have a good thing going. I realised too late that my ex husabnd and I never had a good thing. He's a lot like Soames Forsyte and just doesn't understand.
sozobe,
My former husband can not visualize things in his mind either. I think he has an auditory reception problem as well. If I drew plans on graph paper, that sometimes helped him. However, since he and his second wife decorated their house in a way he would never have allowed me to do -- it's black and red and white and very contemporary. He insisted that the only colors he could see well were orange and yellow and that furniture that wasn't custom made in the traditional style or purchased from Paine's wasn't appropriate for a New Englander. -- I think that the intersection of two personalities has more to do with matters than the actual taste involved.
My long time boyfriend's difference with me seemed to revolve around an inability to edit, a sort of untrammelled aquisitiveness. His apt is so full, one needs to turn sideways to walk from one room to another.
If you look for a man to complete yourself, you are doomed. If you look for a man to extend yourself....that's the beginning of a good relationship.
Of course, a good man is hard to find.
