I believe after you’ve been with enough " Not the Ones" it’s easy to recognize the one. I met my one on vacation . Had I met him through my friend earlier, I wouldn’t have been able to relocate. I’m a firm believer that people are placed in your life when they’re supposed to be, but maybe I’m a hopeless romantic.
I’m envious of all of you who met “the one” and had their feelings validated. I suspect I’ve been engaged more times than others on CC, but things fall apart.
I hope it works out for my son. I got the late night call on a Friday night, and my stomach turned. Turns out, he had A first meeting with someone. Always etched in my mind, he said, “I think I’ve met the ONE”, so how long should I wait to ask her out for a date? Me, “tonight”. They’ve been together now for 6 years, but are again living long distance.
What SSeamom said. I think Mr. B is a perfect life partner and more, but he is not the “ONE” or “my missing half”. I felt pretty whole before meeting him and still feel that way. 
We worked for the same company, different branches. My manager was his friend. Apparently we would have the same goofy reactions to things and made the same comments about things to him. We met at a company meeting and we all went out afterwards. We clicked and I mentioned we should hang out. He then started to tell me all the things he had going on, trips out of state to his parents, a reunion, etc. I told the boss/friend how he blew me off about getting together. On our first date he swore he was legitimately busy and had every intention of calling. Then he said 50 years from now are we still going to be arguing about this? I could see ourselves 50 years from then and right then I knew we’d get married. I went home and told my mom I just went out with my future husband. We got engaged a year later and married a year after that and next month is our 23rd anniversary.
Another related question: During your dating period which is prior to your engagement, did you have some “crisis period” when you need to adjust yourself to match each other’s expectation? It is hard to imagine that every couple will be completely “made for each other” and never have a disagreement or an argument before engagement or marriage.
Also, suppose that you had an argument occasionally, did you have more arguments (in terms of the frequencies and the degree/“intensity” of the argument) 1) before engagement, 2) between engagement and marriage, 3) after the marriage but not married for a very long time yet, or, 4) decades into your marriage life?
For us, I think it is either 1) or 3) – hard to tell in which period we had more arguments.
Wow you are getting close and personal. But my husband and I never had a fight before kids.
I would think the period 4) as defined in post #44 could be the most “happy go lucky” period for you. It could be the case for us as well.
I could not claim our kid never saw us fight (verbal only, never physical). But the fight would be very short and tamed, especially in front of the kid. Both sides know that it would affect our child and refrain from doing so. So, I think that, in our case at least, having a child could lessen the degree of fighting with each other.
For us, the arguments while dating, engaged were minor things, like the one we had about how to do laundry. Once married and with a baby and my two older kids, ex drama, jobs, financial issues and all that. THAT’S when we had our roughest time. As my older kids grew, the baby became less needy, jobs sorted themselves out, etc. it got easier.
Neither of is changed to meet the expectations of the other. We learned how to compromise and work better together. It’s a recipe for trouble changing for the other person. Changing for yourself and the good of the family is another thing. I’d think that if I felt I had to change to make the other person happy I would get resentful.
Even before we got married, I knew H wasn’t “the one,” (we are opposites/incompatible in many ways) but I married him anyway. 29 years later we are still together. If I had been in a different place, and met someone else, I would have a different life.
I told part of this story on a recent thread–H and I were in Peace Corps. The first time I had a long conversation with H, after he left, I said to myself “There’s SOMETHING about that guy. . .” I almost passed out. I had to sit down.
We “dated” (visited and talked) for a couple months. At some point, H told me a funny story about a prank he pulled as a kid on the first day of school, which involved convincing his teacher that his name was “Frank Spavlik.”
After about two months, we traveled to a conference for those leaving service. We had to get on the train at a small village depot at night and wanted to get a sleeping compartment. At that time/place you could not stay in a sleeping compartment with a person of the opposite sex who wasn’t your spouse. H lived near the station and said he would take care of the train tickets. When we were getting on the train (we were the only ones at the depot) the conductor called out “Mr. and Mrs. Spavlik?” We got into a really nice compartment (must’ve been first class–I remember it had a polished metal sink and wood paneling). As soon as we closed the door we laughed so hard. “Mrs. Spavlik,” indeed. (Remember the last scene of North by Northwest? 
--well, it wasn’t exactly like that, but H and I always wink at each other when we see that.) We got engaged a couple weeks later. We never fought before we were engaged, but in all those other phases, yeah, we fought. Probably when we were newly married, before kids, and when oldest kids were little (before they knew what was going on) were our worst fights. We still fight. We’re just quieter now. We don’t want to be a bad example to the kids. OTOH, they can see that we disagree, we fight, but we forgive, we stay.
A lot of quite romantic stories here.
Thanks for sharing.
My parents never argued in front of me so I grew up with the impression that people who are in love or married didn’t argue or fight. I decided that probably wasn’t realistic or healthy so we didn’t hide disagreements from the kids. I think the years where the kids were growing up were the most difficult and resulted in the most arguments.
I think it’s unnatural to not fight and arguing. I mean what kind of question is this?
Had been with my current wife 3 years and she threatened to break up if we didn’t get married. I considered the other women I was currently “involved” with and knew she was the best of them and so I decided to go for it. Became monogamous the minute I proposed. Proposed on top of a ski mountain on her birthday, she didn’t believe me and just skied away from me laughing. I didn’t have a ring cuz she told me she would use her grandmothers.Took her 3 days to accept.
Not even on my radar when we met, though he walked me home to my dorm.
I’m not sure when I realized he was “the one” but I think I was impressed that he took me with him to visit his HS friends (not local to his home any more), which he certainly had no reason to do if I wasn’t “the one” for him
Of course, daily affirmation of him remaining “the one” is more important than first recognizing that he was “the one”.
We hardly ever fight, but have a very passionate attraction and love life after 25 years. The adage about “don’t go to bed angry” is a pretty good idea. I can think of two major fights, in that 25 years, that lasted more than two lines back and forth. Both were resolved partially by writing a letter (on my part). Email makes life easier in that regard, but one has to write with the end goal in mind - stating your case and not beating up on the other person’s position.
As for fighting in front of the kids, at some point if you are fighting a lot, you will fight in front of the kids. My friend who is getting divorced told the kids, together with the spouse, and the kids (pre-K to HS) were pretty much yawning and like “of course you are, you fight a lot and don’t go out together at all”.
Oh, wow. That’s the unfiltered truth when the kids have reactions like that. It is hard to know when to cut bait and stop fishing. I think it boils down to are you better together or separately? That may sound simple but it can be really hard to know it especially if one side is hanging on for some reason, usually an irrational reason.
On the subject of fighting, it helps to do some amateur psychology, if you can. My wife and I haven’t had many fights in as long as I can remember but quite a few years ago we were in a rough patch and it wasn’t getting better it was getting worse and it was happening in front of the kids. My wife is hard to argue with because she shuts down instead of communicating. It would take me HOURS to get to the root problem and only then could I begin to fix and/or address it in a logical way. The classic example of using psychology to find the root problem, for us, was that she really missed her family who had moved to LA after we moved to Texas (we met in Miami). So, somehow, in her head, I became the root of all evil from El Nino to the bad economy to not doing this or that including but not limited to hating Santa Claus and a few other things most of which had nothing to do with me.
After you cut away all the clutter she was unhappy because she missed her family and in her own convoluted way she thought if she broke up with me that was the best way to get back to them. Once I figured it out I would address that problem directly. It ended the fights instantly. She didn’t even realize what was bothering her. I became the villain because I was, in her mind, the reason she wasn’t with her family.
We really don’t fight much anymore. She takes more vacations than she used to. She still misses her family but she doesn’t displace her feelings onto me anymore. I don’t have any sort of psych degree but I was adopted and I did grow up in a dysfunctional household and that was all the education I needed on that topic.