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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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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