A
male
age
36-40,
*ustin587
writes:From a guy's perspective, relationships cost a lot. From the first dinner on up until marriage, it's usually the guy footing the bill. From a female's perspective, she has to be miserable for 9 months and then raise the kid(s). Most of the time, the marriage ends in the divorce, she ends up having to raise the children and abandon her life's dream. The guy gets to pay child support for 18 years.How can people be truly happy in a relationship? To me, it just seems like relationships are an attempt to fulfill a role deemed necessary by the rest of society. Neither partner seems truly happy in the end.This is just something I have been thinking about lately. I really want to get this question answered as it's very hard to start a relationship with someone if you're constantly wondering if it's really worth it. It makes it even harder when you have older co-workers telling you how much they wish they could be like you (me) and be single and free =/.
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female
reader, anonymous, writes (4 October 2008): Well, they won't be if it isn't something they really want, and it doesn't sound like you do - at least right now. That's okay. Your post indicates that you're only 18-21 -- you may feel differently when you're 28-31, or older.
Being in a relationship, getting married, becoming a parent, raising a family -- each of these steps requires an increasing level of selflessness. You give up more of yourself to invest it in someone else - in a larger picture. When you are young, people tend to be inherently selfish, which makes relationships hard, marriage harder, and being a parent really, really tough. The sacrifices don't seem worth it. That's because you haven't had a chance to do the things for yourself that you NEED to do. It's important to have time to be young and single and live for yourself.
But the thing is, for a lot of people, with time, if they do the single thing right, they reach a point of self-fulfillment. At some point, they realize that they've done most of the things they wanted to do just for themselves. They've gone on the cool trips, and they've bought the cool toys, etc., and after so many years, they're ready for something different. It's not because what they had during their youthful single years was bad - it's bc they've grown to a different stage in their life. A woman at 40 and a woman at 20 aren't the same, and they shouldn't be. Same for a guy. If you're living your life right, it's supposed to go in phases.
Now, that won't necessarily mean marriage and kids for everyone. But it should mean that as you grow, you find that you've dealt with more of your own stuff, and you find that there's more room for the stuff of other people. Maybe that's through community service or volunteer work, or maybe it's through raising a family. I think the important transition is from living with a focus on yourself, to a focus on others.
Once you get to the point where you actually WANT to live with a focus on others (and it just comes naturally - it's not something that's forced on you or out of guilt), then the sacrifices a mother makes for her kids ... they seem less like sacrifices, because it's just a joy to do them.
The co-workers who are telling you they wish they could be like you either (1) didn't do the natural process of maturing and getting to where they needed to be, so they aren't actually ready for the selflessness that's required of them in their current lives, or (2) wouldn't actually trade their current lives, but still remember fondly and with nostalgia the fun times they did have when they were your age.
There are things that are more fulfilling than having fun. It sounds weird, but you start to realize it's true after a while, and you crave it.
A
reader, anonymous, writes (4 October 2008): In any long relationship there will be good and bad times and happy and sad times. There will be arguments, misunderstandings, feelings of hurt and rejection and sometimes some hurtful things said. No long relationship is perfect.
That is the bad part. The good part is that there will be times of great happiness between the 2 partners, times of love, times of great and exciting sex between 2 people who know exactly what the other likes and want to make the other feel good and the advantage of having a soft and warm body to sleep beside every night. There will be sharing of the expenses, work of keeping a home and of raising the children if the couple decide to have children.
A person can concentrate on the things that I mentioned in the first paragraph or the person can concentrate on the things that I mentioned in the second paragraph. It is their choice. The 2 people can handle an argument 2 different ways. They can each continue to try to show that they were the one who was right or they can stop the argument, come to a compromise and apologize to the other for the argument. They can blame the other for any financial problems or problems with the children or they can just recognize the problem and work together to solve the problem.
My wife and I have both been married twice – to our first spouses in our 20s and to each other for 23 years (29 years together). Our first marriages didn’t work because of various problems that the partners didn’t work to solve them. Between our first spouses and us living together and then getting married we had various sexual partners. My wife was attractive and could pick up a guy most anytime she wanted to. I did pretty good also, but I was not much for picking up women at bars. We both had some nice partners before we decided to be together. There were exciting and happy times with these other partners, both in and out of bed, but those times were never as good and happy as we have had together most of our years together. Yes, there were times of arguments, hurtful things said, feelings of rejection when the other person felt hurt and rejected the other, times of stress at work that resulted in arguments at home and other problems. But these times were few compared to all of the happy and fulfilling times that we have had together.
You may go through several failed relationships before you find the right person to settle down with. That actually might be a good thing, as you will find out what is important in a future partner and be more likely to end up with a successful long term partnership. That is probably one mistake that my wife and I made with our first spouses. They were each our first really serious relationships. Neither of us knew what we really wanted in a partner. By the time that we had decided to make our relationship permanent, we knew what qualities were really important to us and we also knew that no partner is going to be the perfect one and that we were each as perfect for the other as one could reasonably expect. Even through the bad times that have cropped up over our years together, we knew that the other was still the best that we have ever had. This is in all ways – sexually, affection wise, compatibility in doing things together and compatibility in what we want out of life.
Yes, freedom to do whatever you want has its advantages. You don’t have to worry that your partner wants you to do something else. You don’t have to work out the many problems that crop up in a relationship. You can pick up any hot woman who you can convince to jump into bed with you that you want. You can go out with the guys without having your wife ask you where you have been for the past 5 hours. You won’t have to worry about a bitchy wife nagging you. (To the ladies, flip all of this around to change the sex.)
However, it has it’s disadvantages. You will miss the true affection of a partner who loves you. You will not have a loving partner to try to make you feel happy when you are sad or depressed. You will not have someone to snuggle up to when you go to bed or when you wake up in the morning. You will not have a sexual partner who cares about your enjoyment of sex. Of course, you have to return all of this to the other person too.
A marriage or a long term relationship is what the 2 people make of it. They can just see all of the bad and concentrate on that or they can work hard to solve the bad and enjoy all of the good and happy things that come from a relationship when both partners work on any of the problems that crop up from time to time.
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