<p>Yes, but WashDad, now you have all us women on CC.</p>
<p>I agree with you, though. Deep emotional connection with one or many is the same and the most valuable commodity on our blue planet.</p>
<p>Incandescently, if you have a healthy view of yourself and the type of partner you deserve, then “experience” can be overrated. As someone who’s been married 25 years and who did NOT marry her first boyfriend (although we were engaged in college and I thought he was the love of my life at the time) with a 50% divorce rate I believe it’s the quality of the experience and not necessarily the quantity. We know several couples who met in college and there is definitely something about growing old with your first love–but there are some of us who are slower learners and have to make a few mistakes before we can recognize that THE ONE has shown up. </p>
<p>You can’t underplay the importance of timing either, although that doesn’t sound very romantic. If you are serious with someone when you are young, however, I think that dating for at least 3 years is very important; in college 3 years can bring tremendous changes and if you can go through them together and still come out as committed to each other as at the beginning, then that’s significant. The trick is that you each have to be true to yourselves and not feel like you have sacrificed any of your goals or desires to be with each other.</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>Experience with other people is definitely overrated. Experience with yourself is key. If you don’t have a pretty good sense of who you are and what you value, you have no basis for deciding who might or might not be someone with whom to spend your life.</p>
<p>If you are fairly selective about whom you “date” I don’t think that much experience is needed. If you are happy with your boyfriend you must have seen something good in him that made him stand out from all the other guys you knew casually. You chose well–be happy!</p>
<p>My advice, incandescently, is to choose from a position of strength, not weakness. By which I mean, choose only when you know and are happy with who you are, have achieved emotional and financial independence, are in a good place in your life, are working towards your goals and have an energizing vision of your future, etc…if you have chosen him/her to escape anything (including yourself), you will come to regret the choice and the chosen. </p>
<p>And yes, he was ‘the one’-but only after I spent months telling myself that there was no such thing and my life was just fine without him. 25 years later…he’s still ‘the one.’</p>
<p>I knew it was the real deal when she gave me 4 lap dances for the price of 4</p>
<p>Original poster reporting back, somewhat belatedly (“incandescently” was my undercover name). I reread this thread from start to finish after the question came up again [url="<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/693683-general-question-your-spouse-person-you-always-dreamed.html"]here[/url">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/693683-general-question-your-spouse-person-you-always-dreamed.html"]here[/url</a>]. I think I understand the wisdom in it far better now than a year and a half ago.</p>
<p>I’m still with the guy, for whatever that’s worth. We took a short break earlier this year, thinking we’d committed too early and needed to spend time apart; it lasted just over a month before we reconsidered.</p>
<p>We met two years ago this Saturday (at our college’s admitted students’ weekend) and have been dating since September, 2007. </p>
<p>As it happens, the award for prescient advice goes to lorelei2702 and JHS.
It did become an issue. We argued about it, a lot. (It was one of the reasons for our break.) I’ve worked very, very hard not to become my mother; I don’t think there’s danger of that anymore, but it’s something I always have to be mindful of.</p>
<p>Thanks again for the advice and for the wonderful stories.</p>
<p>Skipped from the beginning to the end, so apologies for not reading the stories in between. I’ll go back, I promise!</p>
<p>Liz, DH and I met when I was 19 and he was 20, at a fraternity party. We had our ups and downs for the next 4 years, as we were both still growing up and finding out who we were and what we wanted. Mind you, the ups and downs were important because at the point when we were 24 and 25 facing a life-time commitment we knew the good, the bad and the ugly. We knew we shared “core values” and goals for the future. Don’t look at “break” periods meaning it wasn’t meant to be. That’s Hollywood talk, not real life.</p>
<p>Fast forward 25 years. Yep, he was “the one.” We had the tough year 1 when we figured out who loads the dishwasher and how much goes into the retirement fund. The tough 1st year with a baby when this little being zapped my body, energy and focus. And countless little tough challenges with parental health issues or job stresses. But at the end of the day I adore and respect him more than anyone else in the world and I feel the same love and respect. Thing is, it’s always work in one way or another. But meaningful, valuable work… the kind you do because you want to, not because you have to.</p>
<p>But we still can’t agree on the dishwasher issue.</p>
<p>For me, it started when DH and I had been dating about a year. It was our senior year in college. It had started off with casual, joking comments about “Well if we ever get married, we are never…” or “if we get married you’d better learn to…” and eventually the “if” just started disappearing from the sentence. Finally one day we were having one of those conversations, only more serious, and he looked at me and said, “I’m not asking you now, but someday I am going to ask you to marry me.” I said, “I hope you do, because when you do I’ll say yes.” About a year later (so we’d been dating for 2 years total at that point), I was getting restless and found myself attracted to someone else. I told DH that perhaps we should not be exclusive for a little while and allow each other to date other people. He knew exactly who I was referring to, and said, “If you want to date <other guy=”“> go ahead. I don’t want to date anyone else, but I’ll wait for you. I know you will eventually come back to me, because you will never find anyone who will love you more than I do or who will treat you better than I will.” And at that moment I knew he was right. And that was it, even thought it was another year before we were officially “engaged.” </other></p>
<p>(Re-reading that comment it sounds like DH is an arrogant controlling guy - nothing could be further from the truth. He is the most mild-mannered and easy-going man I have ever met. We’ve been married for 23 years now!)</p>
<p>I just “knew” and am at a loss to explain it. Thirty seven years later we are as in love as ever though with less heat and more fun. I wouldn’t change a thing in our life together.</p>
<p>
I didn’t want us to be one of those on-and-off couples, but we both matured considerably during the break, and our relationship is much stronger for it. It’s nice to hear from somebody who made it work; thanks for sharing your experience. :)</p>