The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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How many people feel strong romantic connections with their partners? I feel like I experienced this in my first few relationships but not really in the decade since then. I'm not really clear whether you're supposed to still feel a spark in adult relationships or whether those are just irrational young love feelings that don't really pop up again, and most healthy adult relationships are just based on finding someone who's compatible and nice.
Yes. And if you're a decent looking young man with a job, settle for nothing less. Because it does exist out there and you're making a terrible gamble if you don't feel it, either of you could find it in the meantime.
I've been with my wife for over a decade, wherever we go we're having more fun than everyone around us. When we go to mass, or go to Costco, or make dinner, or drive three hours to see her parents, we're making little jokes to each other we're laughing we're discussing and debating we're judging and mocking. I've seen her naked by now, I'm still looking down her shirt every chance I get, she's still soaking wet when I undress her. When we're apart for 36 hours, the first thing we want to do is talk to each other about everything that happened.
And knowing that exists I can't imagine settling for less, because of I came across this when I didn't have it at home... Boy, I don't know.
It's much more complicated once you share taxes, chores, families. It was simpler when all we did was make love and read in bed after. I'm sure as life continues, it will change. I can't speak for your 40s or your 50s, but in your 30s? You should be in love.
I would add "neurotypical" to that. If you are unattractive or suck a bunch at something, but still want to do something, you're more focused on the least bad outcome than the best.
Would you rather be celibate for life? Have had a few passionate relationships that didn't pan out, and be single from age 34 to your death at 82? Be in a relationship with someone you find physically attractive, and who feels the same way about you...but who is also either kind of a shitbag or a stone cold shitbag?
I should have expected you'd turn up. How are plans going on your Alaska wilderness walkabout?
@Soriek , just in case you're like most mottizens: a touch of the 'tism never stood in the way of true love.
Luckily I have a lot of cool and normal hobbies like posting screeds on tariff policy on obscure internet forums.
In all seriousness I've been very blessed to have mostly had relationships with very good hearted, well adjusted women - part of why I feel guilty for not being able to meet perfectly nice people halfway.
I actually talked about this with my wife the other day. My wife is, in some ways, not a nice person; she was joking about how if she ever divorced me she'd float back into my life every time I found someone just long enough to break us up. And we laughed about women who we knew who were, you know, good enough, but who would have been no competition for her in a pinch.
I suspect, under sufficient social and societal pressure, you would probably meet these girls halfway. And under sufficiently strict social structures, I'm sure you would both figure things out. But we don't have those social and societal structures and pressures. Wishing them into existence seems foolish.
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Did you feel like you knew it right away or it kind of built/emerged over time? I've ended several relationships because I didn't feel this, but with 30 looming on the horizon I feel like I see every relationship decision with deadlines, that I can't put off long term life choices / having kids indefinitely.
As another data point that has basically the same feelings for and with my wife that @FiveHourMarathon outlines above, I can say that I felt this way immediately. We were friends for months before we were a couple and I was at least infatuated with her then, if not really in love (I don't know if "love" is ever the right word when it's not reciprocated, someone else can offer thoughts on that one). When we switched from friends to a couple, it was fast, electric, and obvious to me immediately that I was going to stick with it as long as I possibly could. We moved in together almost immediately. She was not my first serious relationship, I was in my late 20s at the time, and I'm glad that I didn't settle for one of the girls I was with that checked all the boxes but didn't light the world up for me.
Well, you guys have both definitely given me much to think about. I appreciate you adding in your own experience.
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I definitely feel you on deadlines looming. But keep in mind that you'll never be younger than you are today.
We felt it instantly, even before we saw each other romantically, but we were also much younger. It's perfectly reasonable for it to take months to get to know each other, imho, but in my humble opinion based on data from the Myers-Young Associated Statistical Survey: the peak of your relationship in raw animal feeling is going to be either the first six months of dating, or the first year of marriage. Numbers might get fuzzier for couples who cohabit or get married at unusual paces.
It will decline, quickly or slowly, from there. If the peak was never very high, you don't have room for much decline! If your peak is very high, it will decline, but manage the decline well and you'll still have many good years left.
Think of it like baseball player aging curves: everybody loses half a win a year after their peak whether they're a star or a scrub. But a star who peaks at a 7war year has fourteen years of .5war declines before he's replacement level; a player who peaks at average, 2war, only has five years on .5war declines before he's worse than replacement.
Obviously I endorse a lot of what other people have said as far as deciding on love, choosing it, acting it out, surrendering oneself to it, within this advice. I could have made different decisions, or she could have.
But if you don't get it now, you'll never get it.
Yeah, i know you're probably right. i'm pretty averse to hurting people's feelings so I think I've been avoiding making a harder decision based on things being basically okay, but I know it's likely not going up from here and dragging things out would make it worse long term.
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