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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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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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.
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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