March 24, 2008
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On Love and Marriage and the Advent of Spring
I have no idea if it is because Spring is in the air or the HOPE of Spring is in everyone’s mind but there’s been a lot of talk on the Internet about it. I like to chat on Pogo while playing games and tend to go into the same room for different games. After a while, you get to know the people you play with all the time. There are a lot of us addicted to games on the Pogo. I love the Bingo Luau because you just put the cursor over a number and if you get a shadow of your daub, it means the number has been called. Makes catching up easy and, if you are chatting and miss a number or two or three, same thing.
Last night we got onto the subject of spring and how everyone is seeing signs of it coming if it isn’t already here. Everyone seems to have had their fill of winter weather, snow, ice and cold. From there we gravitated into talking about love and marriage. Seemed to just flow naturally.
People of all ages play in *my* room. We have young people and old and everything in-between. Some of us have been married all our lives (or so it seems) and others are either *in love*, *looking for love* or *living with* someone. It was amazing how similar the advice we *older* folks gave to the young ones *in love but….* and the ones looking for love. One young gal was *in love* but didn’t know if he felt the same way. Eventually we found out that he seems to go out of his way to be with her and that he’s always kind. Our advice? Don’t *cling* to him and give him the space to find his own feelings. Whether he felt she was a *sister* or if he had real interest, he needed to find out for himself. Guys hate clinging gals and it might just push him away before he had a chance to examine his feelings.
She didn’t have a lot of confidence in herself that she was *loveable* was part of the problem so we told her to make a list of things that were good about her. Then make a list of things that were negative. We also told her to work on the negative but keep telling herself all the positive things about herself. She had to believe she had something to offer a guy/man before she would find love. One man said to her, *Honey, if you don’t have confidence in yourself, someone could come along and just take advantage of you. We (men) can spot the gal that is ready to believe anything we tell her because she is so *needy* for love. We can make her believe we love her and take advantage like you wouldn’t believe because men are wired differently than women. We will say anything we think she needs to hear to get into her britches and walk away afterwards. We don’t need to *be in love* to get a hard-on. We just need to know we CAN get laid*
She was astonished (and so were a few of us women because how often does a man admit that fact?). Then we went on to discuss how long some of us were married (anywhere from 5 years to 53 years) and how we felt about our marriages and our choices. Some people had dated their spouses for a long time before marrying (I had dated mine off-and-on for 4-1/2 years); others had known theirs for as little as 9 days (this woman was married 38 years to the same man so there IS such a thing as *love at first sight*). Many of us said that they would still marry the same person but would have handled a lot of things differently if they had known what they know now. Others said that they would not have married the same person. Some said they would remarry if their spouse died. Others said *NO WAY* would they have another woman/man in their life.
One theme was the same though. All admitted that marriage was hard work and it required a lot of compromises and changes. We all agreed that having common goals helped. Not everyone agreed that you didn’t have to share the same interests (the disagree-ers were young). The Beast loves photography, woodworking and his fruit trees. I love crocheting, painting ceramics, my garden, my grandkids and my family, not necessarily in that order. I keep in contact with my family either through the internet or with phone calls. The Beast seldom calls his family and when he does, it’s usually his brother…well, ONE of his brothers. He only talks to his mother when her health has taken a turn for the worst. I can understand that more NOW since she is starting to show all the signs of alzheimers and he’s never sure if she knows who she is talking to these days.
In fact, most of us believe that having different interests really helps some marriages. It keeps you from spending 24/7 in each others company. I also believe it keeps you more interesting and your mind more alert. We even play (and love) different games on Pogo. The Beast is extremely competitive, I am not. I like to compete with myself and get better (or faster) at doing tasks. I track how long it takes me to complete a mahjongg puzzle and don’t care if anyone else does it faster (and a lot of people do!) I don’t track how many bingos I get; I just enjoy the company and love when I do bingo but don’t get depressed when I don’t. Somehow, I think being yin/yang is better for a marriage than being alike but that’s just me.
The Beast has changed from when he was younger. He felt that I should believe exactly the same things he did; he also believed that I should FEEL the same way about things that he did. This caused many, many problems in our early years of marriage because I can be very stubborn about those kinds of things. In fact, if I had been more *pliable*, our marriage would have gone much, much smoother and I would not have had many of the problems. I would, however, have been very unhappy and depressed over the constant compromising that only *I* was doing. I actually tried that early in our marriage but changed my ways when it made him worse because he actually thought he was totally right about everything. THAT is maddening.
Nowadays he does not expect me to feel like he does about everything, even in politics. He is also more respectful of my opinions because he knows I allow HIM to feel differently than I do about many things. I have always let him be himself and do things that I don’t enjoy or, worse yet, do things I DO enjoy but haven’t been able to take the time off from other obligations. That happened a lot when we were raising our one granddaughter and she was in school. I couldn’t pack up and go fishing in the Bahamas with him because of that. But I would pack him up, fix food to last him and his cousin for three or four days, make sure they had all the comforts necessary to enjoy themselves and wish them well as they left on another of their *adventures*.
I am flying into Chicago for a wedding of a nephew in a couple weeks. He jumped at the chance to stay home to take care of the dog because he doesn’t particularly enjoy those kind of get-togethers. He doesn’t dance, can’t drink (not since his strokes and on his meds), and we haven’t been particularly close to this nephew. It doesn’t matter to me. His mother is MY sister, he is MY nephew and it’s his first marriage. I have so seldom gotten to attend events like this while I was working or we were building our business that I wanted to attend. Besides, I wanted to see my family and have a nice showing of family for my nephew’s sake. I was told he was thrilled that I was coming (and my other sister, C, is flying up from Florida for it). He didn’t think either of us would be there. I live in the boondocks, so to speak, so flying from here to there is a major task with the plane changes. But….I will be staying with my sisters, Bee and Dee, so it is worth it to me. The Beast thinks I am nuts. C’est la vie!
What’s fun about having these conversations in a chat is not just the differences but also the similarities of feelings as we get older and/or are married longer. We all agree that, no matter what, we would miss our spouses if something happens to them. We also agree that we would survive it without having to move in with kids or find someone else to fill their spot. Most of us feel that if we should happen to remarry, well, it would be a surprise to find true compatibility and love but not a necessity.
Oh well, just found out we are expecting a four hour long freeze in the wee hours of the morning. This could be disastrous for our blossoming fruit trees. We lost almost all our fruit last year to something like this. Only those trees that have buds but haven’t blossomed won’t be harmed. I will report on what happened in my next post.
Love you all. Have a wonderful week and watch for Spring! It really IS on it’s way.
