Chai wrote:nimh, how long have you been living with this woman?
It does sound like a harlequin romance, it really does, the way others have expressed themselves sound "weird" to you
Harlequin romance?
Haha.
Umm, no. That, it was not.
As regulars here will know... We probably went through as much pain and misfortune as in any average 20-year marriage. But nebbermind.
(Before that relationship, I shared my life with another woman for six years.)
But look it - to just get to the point. When you are equating your own response to my post, with how I described the way the separate bedrooms sounded "weird" to me, you have to reread our respective posts.
Before you angered me so, I posted one post here, in all, that described my reaction. It was extremely careful in assigning the whys and hows of my reaction to my very personal psychological make-up, and went to great lengths to make clear it was a highly individual and relative reaction.
Compare that with how you responded to my experience of love or "true" romance in your subsequent posts before I came back. Here, I'll reproduce the relevant bits for you.
I'd sincerely wish you'd check yourself after comparing these two quotes, lengthy though they may be.
nimh wrote:Well, I'll chime in to say its weird to me too. Thats just a fact: I read it, and I go, "urrgh.. thats awful!". Thats my first emotional reaction.
I dont know why exactly. First off, obviously, I guess, is that I wouldnt want to, myself - like, the desire is alien to me, and things that are alien to you tend to seem "weird". I mean - is
my reaction - isnt love all about enjoying the other's nearness? Waking up and seeing her hair.. [description snipped].
Thats precious to me, I guess, so I suppose I feel a little bit threatened when I read something like this? I mean, still purely talking instant emotional reaction - lemme do the full nano-second by nano-second analysis here
- I think I'd be quite upset if my loved one left the bed after making love, or never joined me at all in the evening, or would say after some cuddling - now go to your own bed. I would feel so alone, kinda - I mean, here's the person you love, and that you love holding - and she doesnt want you to be near! Or something. Thats the anxious counterpart to the romantic above.
So I guess there's some snap-second of self-defence going on there, like: oh god if this is becoming ever more common, then.. I might come across it too.
On another level, purely instinctively speaking, I react negatively to it in an abstract way, and its a kind of silly exaggeration that I sometimes do, taking any random incidental thing and associating / equating it with some grand universal pattern of "where society is heading", and passing judgement on it like that. Even though the incidental example may have very good concrete reasons and nothing to do with any broader thing in society whatsoever. Its annoying, I know.
But for the record, the instinctive association I make when reading little "lifestyle" items like this is with the tendency of people to live ever more separately, ever more individualistically [description snipped].
Yeah, like I said, its a dystopia (anti-utopia), a kind of abstract, apocalyptic (to me) vision. And you know, lots of little things that by themselves seem wholly innocuous, like for example [..] cornershops being replaced by online shopping, bla bla bla etc etc - well, its like, I dont like the general direction, so I tend to have a strong immediate negative reaction to any little "lifestyle trend" thats pointed out that fits in the pattern, or something.
So, feeling the same response as Bella had, this is, for me, the backstory of my response anyhow, FWIW.
Compare:
Chai wrote:Nimh, society isn't "headed" anywhere in this respect. [..] jeez louise.
oh nimh...I meant to say this before....you said something above about sleeping together and waking up together and looking into each others sleepy eyes and all that stuff, and asked "Isn't that what marriage is all about"?
Well, no, it isn't.
In fact it's a very very small part of the big picture of what being married means. Touching is bonding, but going through what life throws at you is infinately more so. [..]
yaknow...
thinking about it, I have been married to, living with or dating with weeking stays with men for a total of more than 20 years. I don't know about everyone, but [..] I never once have thought....
"oh wow, I wish we were waking up together and staring into each others sleepy eyes and pushing back each others tossled hair."
Sure sometimes you wake up and spoon for awhile, but [..] life isn't some harliquen romance novel, which quite frankly, are boring in the extreme. [..]
I'm romantic in ways that REALLY count.
You can discount that last line as a joke directed to someone else if you wish, and
still I think the contrast would be pretty stark when it comes to whether respect is expressed for the other's reality. And this was
before I came back in anger. Like Bella said, you were doing exactly to us what you accused us of doing to you.
Food for thought. OK, now I'm
really out of here..
