<p>Don’t you think you want to have one of those “head over heels” “starry eyed” “can’t see the faults” relationships? I think everyone deserves at least one - you don’t have to marry the person, but if you’re lucky, you will. Don’t settle for compatible.</p>
<p>It’s good to be young and foolish. I married one of those and now we are settling for “compatible.” I am keeping one eye closed, soon I may be blind. Just had my 26th.</p>
<p>You need to ask yourself if you can live with these differences. If he doesn’t pay a bill or spends money on himself rather than household costs or kids how will you feel? Does his mother really nag or does he just percieve it that way? What if you ask him to take out the trash or mow the lawn is that nagging? Will he tune you out if he percieves those necessary tasks as you nagging him? Are you willing to spend your social time without him and will it bother him if you do? On the other hand are you willing to join him in his hobbies and will he expect it? Do you want to spend the next however many months or years reminding him not to be rude in public. These are all very basic differences and you can’t expect it to change. It may change but don’t count on it. My husband still forgets my birthday and leaves his clothes on the floor after 23 years, but I can live with that. JMHO</p>
<p>My advice to my daughter:</p>
<p>Find a best friend you can’t keep your hands off of.</p>
<p>Look at your closest friends. Is he ‘one of your people’ on that fundamental level, a resonance that makes you relaxed and happy?</p>
<p>Is the physical chemistry superb?</p>
<p>Everything else is negotiable. Some points being bitter negotiations, true.</p>
<p>But I think those two components are the key to “in love.”</p>
<p>A friend recently quoted her mother’s advice: “Marry an old shoe.” Hilarious but has great merit!</p>
<p>There is no Mr. Right. Everyone has some faults. The trick is to find someone whose faults you can live with and who in turn can live with yours.</p>
<p>Wow, mothers sure give good advice! I was head over heels for my husband when we married and definitely did not perceive any faults. Over two decades of marriage, I’ve started to notice a few, but now he has mellowed into “an old shoe”. Basically, he is a kindhearted guy. You can’t go wrong with a kindhearted, old shoe.</p>
<p>Thank you Oldfort for a laugh out loud moment.</p>
<p>" I am keeping one eye closed, soon I may be blind."</p>
<p>lol</p>
<p>so will someone describe to me, in their own words, what an “old shoe” is? </p>
<p>i have some idea of it - an old shoe… someone you live in comfort with, to pass the days with, whenever you go out the it is like a happy reminder and provides you with pleasure to the very tip of your toes, something worn…old…familiar to you, but makes you happy nonetheless.</p>
<p>and for women - nothing like an old shoe to make those pains and blisters from heels forgettable and go away</p>
<p>kissingurami–
“nothing like an old shoe to make those pains and blisters from heels forgettable and go away”</p>
<p>–very clever! (and, true…)</p>
<p>Advice that has always served me well: “When in doubt, do without.”</p>
<p>Do you like his father? Does he like your mother? Because even though you won’t believe it now, he will turn into his father and you will turn into your mother. After my husband and I had kids, I realized that I was married to my father in law and I don’t like him. (Neither does my husband, but he IS him.)</p>
<p>Do NOT think marriage with this guy at this time. As others have said, maybe is no, and all sorts of other negatives. You are only in your 20’s so you have a lot of time to make a legal commitment that would be a hassle to undo. Sharing a religion doesn’t count for much, you both could be more compatible religiously with different churches in your backgrounds. You have raised too many doubts, the specifics aren’t as important as the fact that things bother you. You lose nothing by waiting, keep yourself open to new romantic possibilities. This time next year things will either be better or worse, then you can begin to wonder about permanence. You haven’t even gone through a full cycle of year’s events with each other. If it comes to the point where you would live in different cities, let each other move and see if the relationship survives. Never get married for the sake of being married.</p>
<p>“Look at your closest friends. Is he ‘one of your people’ on that fundamental level”</p>
<p>I don’t have any marriage expertise, but based on my 15 years of dating, I’ve come to believe that I need someone who’s quite different from me in temperament. My closest friends are, like me, talkative, highly reactive, excitable, strong-willed. I’m in a relationship with someone who is quiet and mellow compared to me and my friends. We get along very peacefully. (We are similar in terms of education, financial outlook, politics, etc…but not personality.)</p>
<p>I tend to agree with Hanna. My wife and I are very different in temperament. That causes problems sometimes, but they aren’t desperately serious ones. When we started out, we were considerably more different than we are now in some superficial things, too, although at a fundamental level we shared many basic assumptions, and in fact have never really disagreed about anything really important (e.g., child rearing, where and how to live, not politics or what movies we like).</p>
<p>I disagree with missypie somewhat. I certainly paid some attention to my future mother-in-law (although I had no idea that someday I would be the only person whose name she could remember), but my wife is not much like her at all – much more like her father. In fact, she’s much more like MY mother, although in ways that are obvious only to me. (The two of them have always been oil and water.) And I’m not all that much like my father, although there are certainly large areas of overlap.</p>
<p>As for liking each other’s parents: We’ve lasted 30 years in which my parents basically don’t like my wife and she returns the compliment, although everyone tries to be civil about it, and to make periodic attempts to appreciate each other. I never particularly liked my mother-in-law, but owe her a significant debt of gratitude for her help when my children were infants, which I have happily repaid many times over. I like my father-in-law fine, and we have probably averaged about five hours per year with him over the entire course of the relationship, so my liking him or not is pretty irrelevant to anyone’s life.</p>
<p>missypie – It’s a good question – and hard for me to answer. I don’t like either my mother or my father very much (long story), so I hope I’m as different from them as possible! I don’t have much in common with his Mom, but I really like his father a lot – although I can see some negative traits he shares (such as being self-centered sometimes). His parents have been married more or less happily for 30 years. Mine are the same (they get along okay with each other now, after their kids are grown, but are not good at parenting).</p>
<p>You know, living with someone for the rest of your life is such a huge undertaking, it’s almost a requirement that you go into it with an exaggerated sense of his good points, such as happens when you’re in love. Otherwise, when the inevitable happens and you wake up with that cold eye, there’s not much to buffer it.</p>
<p>By “your people” I meant “does he share core character traits with your best friends?” Not necessarily the same temperment/style… I agree that yin/yang can be a good match.</p>
<p>i agree with hanna, jhs, and sbmom. people of different temperament provide each other with an oustanding balance - whether it be outlooks and perspective, ways of doing things, thinking, mannerisms, humour, etc. </p>
<p>although it’s different from what you expected, you’re not butting heads and even if you are, it’s not too difficult to come to a conclusion in midst of a fight. </p>
<p>after all, who wants to be with someone totally like themselves? or, as my bf says, you don’t want to be dating yourself. </p>
<p>/hijack of this thread</p>