how did you know that your spouse was "the one"?

Parent Cafe
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<p>^^^Well, OK, I’ll take a stab, but I’m pretty sure my H and I are not a standard example. We held off having kids for a very long time. We both put formal education at the top of our priorities, lived in crapola apartments and moved around a lot while we got PhDs, did post-docs, tried out first faculty jobs in places that turned out to be the wrong places. There was always something new, a new place, a new program, new obligations; we didn’t do any one thing long enough for life to get stale. </p>

<p>We deliberately did not have kids until we had enough money to have some kind of house and to be able to take care of children without extreme financial stress. The other priority for me was not to have kids until my H had the time to be an involved father. We finally got moving on the family thing after 15 years of marriage.</p>

<p>So, our secret was keeping things fresh, and avoiding stress.</p>

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<p>geomom, that story is so sweet, producing an audible “awwwww” from me.</p>

<p>With h, it wasn’t love at first sight for me. (It was for him; he says he immediately imagined me carrying his child!) I had, um, a lot of dating experience, including two serious long-term relationships before meeting him at 24. I could have married either of those two men and been reasonably happy, but I think we have to listen to our instincts. The first was a high school/college love that lasted almost four three years. Those are such formative years, and, by my sophomore year in college, I knew we were headed in different directions – despite his presenting me with an engagement ring (which I didn’t take).</p>

<p>The next man was 11 years older than I. After a year, I broke off that relationship because I once again knew that, while we loved each other deeply, we weren’t in the same place. His life was all set – he had a house and all the trappings of adulthood, but my life was just beginning – graduating from college, getting my first full-time professional job.</p>

<p>I certainly know people who married their high school sweethearts young and are still happily together today. But I am sooo glad I didn’t marry that first long-term love. My life would be so different. I’m glad I listened to that instinct that said “Yes, you love him, and yes, you have lots in common with him, and yes, he’s a good person and will be a great dad, but you know he’s not the one.”</p>

<p>Oh, gosh, I forgot: How did I know my h was the one? Well, first off, he was relentless. On our first date, he laid it out on the line and said he thought I was the one and he wanted this relationship to develop further. WOW. On a first date. Usually, I would have been scared off by someone coming on so strong, but he was so sincere that I knew he was a good guy. So, I left that dinner to head to my second date of the evening (with the guy who had offered up the engagement ring two years before!) and told him, Look, I just went out with this guy who looks like he could be the real deal, so you and I need to decide if we are going to give this another go. He agreed we should pursue our other burgeoning relationships. The rest is history.</p>

<p>But marriage is hard. Lots of work. Don’t enter into it lightly. Good luck! : )</p>

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<p>I don’t know 99% of our 25 years of fights end up in silly giggles after a few minutes…But I know the difference between not liking her opinion vs. not liking her nose… (if you catch my drift). </p>

<p>I’d like to believe I have a real marriage. It’s loving, happy, sad, angry, silly, sexy, smart, stupid all at the same time… </p>

<p>I couldn’t think of anybody I’d rather argue with or make love to… so go figure? </p>

<p>A sense of humor helps I guess…</p>

<p>That and manopause… for the life of me, I can’t stop crying at the shows I enjoyed as a kid… A charlie brown’s christmas busted me up and last night as I strung christmas lights on the tree Rudolph the red nosed reindeer had me all teared up???
My wife just looked at me and thought what a wiener… :wink: Now I’m going to have to watch a war movie or something to man up…</p>

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<p>Incandescant- my in laws have been married a long time and make every one else and each other miserable much of the time; however that has nothing to do with divorce, they are just people who see the glass half empty, if they had divorced, they would be miserable alone or with some other person- it may not be that your parents ought to have divorced, but that they have not learned how to enjoy life!! :eek:</p>

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<p>i really don’t like to discuss this, but: my mother hates my father & blames him for all her life’s misfortunes. my father is basically a nice person but has resigned himself to a life of verbal (and occasionally physical) abuse because he doesn’t believe in divorce. there is a possibility that my mother suffers from borderline personality disorder. my family is a wreck. however, i do not want this to affect my own romantic relationships, & so far i have been successful. i also don’t want my parents’ mistakes to influence the tone of this discussion or to turn it too much to the negative, because i’ve enjoyed it very much so far!</p>

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<p>“affect my own romantic relationships”</p>

<p>Hey as long as you see it coming, it won’t. This is the value of observation. No one says you can’t keep the positives and avoid the negatives…</p>

<p>the strength of my situation also comes from being the youngest in my family and watching brothers go through chaos… Watching their mistakes and learning from them made my situation a bit better. You see what you don’t want in a relationship and in a way that’s helpful if you think about it.</p>

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<p>“being the youngest in my family and watching brothers go through chaos… Watching their mistakes and learning from them”</p>

<p>Amen to that. I can’t say more on the internet, but amen.</p>

<p>I think my mother had a mental (and possibly paper) checklist re husband attributes, met my father in her sophomore year of college when she was 17, verified that he satisfied the criteria, and that was that. It sounds unsentimental, but they’re still together, and not making each other miserable, 46 years later. Small wonder that I’m not very critical of cultures that arrange marriages. If we were still in the old country using matchmakers, my parents would have been a likely match.</p>

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<p>incandescently: as aware as you try to be, you have witnessed the drama of their relationship, and memorized their script…so be careful how you “dramatize” how you feel. Your feelings are not invalid as you develop a relationship, but it is in how you communicate (and fight) that relationships can be preserved and peace reign. Good luck.</p>

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<p>Seeing it coming is actually only 50% of the battle. You see it coming with your mind. When you marry your heart and body show up at the table and say their piece too.</p>

70

<p>My in-laws had a terrible marriage. I am so thankful that my h had had therapy before we met. Maybe you should consider some counseling, too.</p>

71

<p>Yes. One of the things it’s impossible to appreciate at 18 or 21 is how much when you marry, you’re marrying your spouse’s parents, whether or not you ever actually see them or speak with them. My wife has never been close with her father, and we probably average 5-6 hours per year with him (during which he is perfectly gracious and charming), but I have lived with the reasons for that distance, and its fallout, practically every day of my adult life. (And, believe me, if my wife could push a button and wipe my parents out of my psyche, she would do it in a heartbeat. And I have a great relationship with my parents.)</p>

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<p>One night I was at a dinner party with a bunch of women friends of mine. The question “What was your most romantic experience with your husband?” came up. As one friend after another related a story of how her husband proposed to her, I felt weirder and weirder. The image that came into my mind was the night my husband and I were sitting out on the concrete steps of our triple-decker tenement in Somerville, and he was playing guitar, and we were both singing, and drinking beers, and there was an AMAZING sunset. I related my story to polite, but puzzled, smiles.</p>

<p>Then I went home. I asked my husband “How did we decide to get married?” He said, “I don’t remember, we just talked about it, I guess.” Then I asked “What is the most romantic time we had together?” He said “Remember that night we were drinking beers and singing…”</p>

<p>Oh yeah, he thinks my jokes are funny, too.</p>

<p>The only reason I feel comfortable relating that here is that I got two ‘that’s so sweet’ responses to my first date story. Which means (some of) you guys must be as off the beaten path as we are. I like College Confidential better and better.</p>

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<p>geomom,</p>

<p>I like this story too :)! </p>

<p>That’s a good dinner party question, by the way!</p>

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<p>By the way, re the list?</p>

<p>May I humbly suggest the following: List the names of your 5 favorite friends on earth… the ones you really rely on, trust, love, and enjoy.</p>

<p>Under each name, write down 10 things that you love about that peson-- specific qualities they possess or ways they make you feel.</p>

<p>Now look at all 5 lists. You will see the same things coming up again and again. They may be phrased differently for different people, and there will be unique things too. But there will be a core of 5-6-7 items that reappear again and again.</p>

<p>THIS IS THE LIST!!!</p>

<p>Add to it “wild sexual attraction” and “similar view of what constitutes a good life” and you’re done.</p>

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<p>JHS, Amen.<br>
DH was so excited about dating me – I wanted a career! (And I wanted a guy who would be supportive of me having one!) I thought this was fabulous. (Esp. since the guy I had been engaged to wanted me to quit school and wait on tables in Bloomington while he went to grad school.) I thought it was incredible that DH had survived the dysfunction and chaos of his childhood and had emerged intact. To me, it showed perseverance and strength of character. We both had to put ourselves through school, and that shared struggle was one of the things that brought us together. And that’s what I hung my hat on. </p>

<p>Fast forward: DH needed me to have my identity as wrapped up in my work as his was in his career. Why? He was afraid that if I stepped off the hamster wheel, I’d turn into his mother, who had severe mental and physical illnesses dating back to his early teens. At some level, if I was working, then he could relax and feel that I wouldn’t turn into that person. </p>

<p>Then we had kids. We both can’t work 60 hour week plus commute. Something has to give. I went off the fast-paced career track. The kids started school and activities. I went part-time. Then I became ill. After a while, I couldn’t work any more. I became his worst nightmare. </p>

<p>So, I guess I’m saying that the hackneyed advice about looking at how your SO treats his/her parents has some merit. I wish I had dug deeper and paid attention to some of the potential warning signs.</p>

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<p>geomom, i love your story, and i actually think those kinds of moments are much more romantic and meaningful than the proposal… it’s like fantasizing about your wedding day years in advance (i just found out that it’s common for girls to do this, but it’s not something i’ve EVER thought about) when what really matters is the marriage, not the wedding. there’s so much emphasis on that one day, but honestly, i think that would be pretty anticlimactic.</p>

<p>so when i think about my boyfriend, i don’t think about our first kiss, which was clumsy, tentative, and more than a little awkward… i think about, i don’t know, the night he surprised me when i was working late in the art studio, looking like a teletubby in his ridiculous bright red fleece, and trying to warm his ears with my hands while kissing him on the mouth and surprising myself with my own intensity (& that’s just one example)… but that’s enough sentimentality. :o </p>

<p>as for therapy, i don’t really believe i’ve said anything here that warrants that suggestion. i spent two months in therapy my senior year of high school and hated every moment of it. of course, that might have been because my particular therapist was mostly interested in getting me through the year in one piece, something i felt perfectly capable of doing on my own (i’d managed well enough for the past 17 years; surely i could handle a few more months?). anyway, considering everything, i think i’m actually remarkably well-adjusted.</p>

<p>and i know that every relationship necessarily involves disagreements, but i think proper communication can resolve most of them. that’s something i really appreciate about us, actually: we’re completely open with each other & talk about everything. so far, at least, whenever something uncomfortable has come up or one of us has felt hurt or irritated about something, we’ve been able to discuss it and reach a solution without losing our tempers. (i’d include a specific example, but it’s sort of intimate and i’m not comfortable posting it in public.)</p>

<p>oh, and for whatever it’s worth, i adore my boyfriend’s family, immediate and extended. it sounds really lame and clich</p>

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<p>I haven’t been keeping up with this thread but just wanted to comment on your response to my post awhile back:</p>

<p>My comment was not to imply that just because you are asking about successful relationships means he isn’t ‘the one.’</p>

<p>To clarify: What I meant was that, once you do feel strongly that you want to be with this person, no one will be able to convince you otherwise. It won’t matter what others think. Now, if you aren’t at that point yet, that doesn’t mean it won’t still happen with this particular person. (and maybe you are at that point - as I said I haven’t read all the posts.) But if/when you feel that strong pull, even well-meaning advice from others won’t deter you.</p>

<p>Now, reading your last post, you seem to have a very good handle on relationships, especially for having come from a dysfunctional family! It sounds like you are figuring it out quite well!</p>

<p>Having said that, even if you ARE feeling that strong pull to be with this person, it is still very, very valuable to ask others for advice, the way you did. Relationships are very complex and if more people took the time to educate themselves about them, we’d all be a lot happier! (same goes for raising kids!)</p>

<p>As someone who’s been married for nearly 24 years, I will share some tips that have helped us:</p>

<p>Be in sync on VALUES, but different enough in personality to keep each other stimulated (you said something to that effect). This means that you both agree on the important issues, like how to raise kids, what you want to strive for in life, what is really important to you, etc. but you need not necessarily both like to go skiiing or whatever. You want to have enough differences so that you enrich each other, share different things with each other so each can learn and grow from the other. Sure, it’s nice if you both like the same sort of activities - makes it easier to go on vacation if you both like to go skiing, for example. But many couples get together because they both like the OUTER, superficial things like recreational activities, but deep down they do not share the same values. Superficial recreational activities are fun at first but are not enough to hold a relationship together. On the other hand, even if one person is outdoorsy and the other not, if their values are solidly in alignment, they can probably overcome the differences in recreational taste, to a point anyway. It might be challenging for a hardcore metalhead stoner to connect with someone into classical or country music, but it’s not so much because of the difference in musical taste as it is the overall outlook on LIFE which is reflected in the music. Does that make sense?</p>

<p>For example, my hubby and I both come from similar backgrounds - in our case, abusive families and teenage years during the 70s and we were both part of the rock-stoner-concerts-Pink Floyd-Led Zeppelin subculture. We have a lot that we are able to relate on. We were both brought up Catholic but are no longer Catholic. And because we came from abusive families, our values on marriage and parenting are very much in sync - breaking the cycle of abuse and having a happy, secure family life is the top priority to both of us. We also both have a quest for spirituality which takes us in interesting directions. So we have that foundation in common. Beyond that, however, we are quite different. He’s more the thrill-seeker type (motorcycles, martial arts, skydiving, etc.) whereas I was never very physically active. Well, we have enriched each other tremendously! His adventurous spirit helped me to expand my boundaries. With him, I have done many things I otherwise would never have done (like bungee jumping, scuba diving, etc.) Likewise, my interest in esoterica completely intrigues him. So…the end result is that we each bring out the strength in the other. And it’s not just regarding recreational activities, but in ways we relate. I am very sensitive so him having to deal with me has helped him to become more sensitive. Likewise, me being with him has helped me to become much stronger and more confident. </p>

<p>So, we balance each other out quite nicely. Which brings me to the next point: I think one of the key ingredients in successful long-term relationships is that each person draws out the BEST in the other. Just by relating to each other, each person learns and grows and changes. And, they learn and grow and change TOGETHER. Not in exactly the same way, because they are different, but each provides stimulus, catalyst, for the other. And each time they have a conflict, they are willing to learn from it, and become CLOSER and stronger because of it. That is not to say they won’t have conflicts! Oh yes, they will have conflicts! But it’s not the conflicts so much as it is how they resolve those conflicts, and do they grow from them. Some couples never communicate their deep feelings and their relationships are very shallow. They may look peachy on the outside but lack any depth. Such relationships may fall apart at the slightest test. But those that can ride the storm and become stronger…they will be stronger the next time there is a storm. And life does sometimes have storms!</p>

<p>I agree that communication is the single most important ingredient. Be best friends and be honest with each other, always.</p>

<p>“Love is not 2 people looking at each other…Love is 2 people looking together in the same direction.”
(saw this quote on a poster when I was a teen, not sure who said it)</p>

<p>btw, here is the absolute very best book on relationships I have ever read: The Shared Heart by Barry & Joyce Vissell
Incredibly awesome book! Very deep and profound! Should be required reading for engaged couples, imo.</p>

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<p>I’d had several long term, consecutive relationships in high school, then college, then afterwards. It was excruciating to spend a year, two years, with the same person and then have it go to pieces. I remember praying to God one night to please bring someone into my life- a good man. Almost like magic, within a couple months I met my H. It was unlikely- he was/is 11 years older than me (at the time I was 23). Although he’s very immature so it doesn’t matter. :wink: Anyway, we got engaged exactly a year after we met, got married 6 mo. later, had a child 11 mo. later and another 15 mo. after that. It was pretty whirlwind. Things were tough at first, but it’s worked out. I think the ‘secret’ is, he adores me. Seriously, there’s something pretty magical about a strong male who adores you. Works for me.</p>

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<p>Oh, and you’re right: the marriage is far more important than the wedding. How many lavish weddings have we seen end up in divorce? The wedding’s just a party. The marriage is LIFE.</p>

<p>pssst: OP, if you hadn’t told us you’d outed yourself, we wouldn’t have noticed. No matter. You’ve said some wonderful things and you can be proud of your words. Best wishes on your relationship! You sound very happy with this guy! Savor it!</p>

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<p>Oh yes! Works for me too! So glad you brought that up!</p>

<p>Being on the same level. Evenly matched. Not necessarily in every way, but…I think if one person is a lot stronger than the other, that might make it difficult. Of course each person will be stronger in some ways than the other, so I’m not talking about personality or even intelligence…but SPIRIT. My hubby and I often say “I’ve met my match!” and what we mean is that the other person provides stimulation and catalyst, and keeps it interesting. We’ve had our rough times, to be sure, but it has never, ever been boring!</p>

<p>It’s an essence of SPIRIT, if that makes any sense…</p>