The Secret Order of People in Happy Relationships

Gruntboy · Post by **Gruntboy** » Tue Feb 19, 2002 10:59 am

Oooh, wow. Fable's thread was getting a little depressing there for a while.

I'm in a loving relationship... for now. But not for much longer, I think its gonna end in flames like the last couple.

No love for Gruntboy. Only dirty movies and lousy fake plastic women.

Ned Flanders · Post by **Ned Flanders** » Tue Feb 19, 2002 11:05 am

by Gruntboy
Only dirty movies and lousy fake plastic women.

Yeah, but, does she ever complain??

I found out they don't complain so I went out and got three of them, one for each floor in the house. They don't even fight amongst themselves. Ain't life grand.

Gruntboy · Post by **Gruntboy** » Tue Feb 19, 2002 11:08 am

Wow Ned. You don't even have to move floors - clever man. Clever.

Bloodstalker · Post by **Bloodstalker** » Tue Feb 19, 2002 11:18 am

lousy fake plastic women

Well, you must be buying substandard equipment. For a few extra bucks, you can get better fake plastic women.

Of course, you just described most of the cast of Baywatch, but I doubt either of us could afford one of them.

HighLordDave · Post by **HighLordDave** » Tue Feb 19, 2002 11:47 am

Originally posted by Bloodstalker
you can get better fake plastic women.

Of course, you just described most of the cast of Baywatch,

What'choo talkin' 'bout, Willis?!?!!?

The Baywatch girls are some of the finest female specimens God ever put on this earth; surely you don't mean that they've had any sort of collagen and silicone cosmetic enhancements . . .

What's next? Are you going to tell me that Janine Lindemulder dyes her hair? Or that Dyanna Lauren's boobs aren't real either? Is nothing sacred, Bloodstalker?

Bloodstalker · Post by **Bloodstalker** » Tue Feb 19, 2002 11:51 am

Sacred? on SYM?!?!?!?!

By the way, just for the record, Yasmine Bleeth is the best Baywatch has ever produced.

And who said plasic was bad anyway?

HighLordDave · Post by **HighLordDave** » Tue Feb 19, 2002 11:58 am

Originally posted by Bloodstalker
By the way, just for the record, Yasmine Bleeth is the best Baywatch has ever produced.

But even that can't make up for the whole David Hasslehoff singing thing . . . oh, the horror, the horror . . .

Bloodstalker · Post by **Bloodstalker** » Tue Feb 19, 2002 12:05 pm

Yasmine Bleeth running in slow motion can make up for a lot.

Ned Flanders · Post by **Ned Flanders** » Tue Feb 19, 2002 12:17 pm

by BS
Yasmine Bleeth running in slow motion can make up for a lot.

I second that.

How is it that a thread dedicated to discussing happy relationships degenerates to plastic women and porn stars.

@HLD, Are you insinuating Dyanna Lauren's boobs aren't real. I never noticed.

Bloodstalker · Post by **Bloodstalker** » Tue Feb 19, 2002 12:28 pm

How is it that a thread dedicated to discussing happy relationships degenerates to plastic women and porn stars

It was bound to happen.

Besides, who couldn't be happy with a porn star? MMMMMMMM Kobe Tai.

Ned Flanders · Post by **Ned Flanders** » Tue Feb 19, 2002 12:37 pm

by BS
Besides, who couldn't be happy with a porn star? MMMMMMMM Kobe Tai.

Again BS, I second that. However, I just don't think this is what fable what looking for when starting the thread.

I'm a little unclear to the collagen and silicone references to the cast of Baywatch. Can someone please explain.

HighLordDave · Post by **HighLordDave** » Tue Feb 19, 2002 12:54 pm

Originally posted by Ned Flanders
I just don't think this is what fable what looking for when starting the thread.

Sure he was. Take a look at some of the components of a healthy relationship: common interests, communication, fun, mutual trust, unconditional love, porn. It's all there.

Gwalchmai · Post by **Gwalchmai** » Tue Feb 19, 2002 1:29 pm

I met my wife about 11 years ago, and we married five years ago. She is intelligent, calm, practical, and a very good match for me. We have two beautiful kids.

In my job, I often find myself walking or driving long distances by myself. I thusly spend a lot of time contemplating my life and the decisions and directions I have taken. Having read a fair amount of Science Fiction as well as being an archaeologist, my thoughts usually turn toward “What if” scenarios. I find myself toying with the idea of going back in time and reliving parts of my life over again. Sort of along the lines of “If I knew then what I know now….” Once I get past the nitty-gritty details of time-travel (like what stocks to invest in and which sports games to bet on), I invariably wonder how I would change how I dealt with relationships.

Why did I let my infatuation with Karen, who never gave me the time of day, cause me to ignore Molly, who was beautiful, nice, and attracted to me? Why did I even bother dating Claire? I never should have ruined the friendship with Pam by taking the relationship to another level. There were missed opportunities and bad decisions everywhere. But the fact is, I could never change a single thing without running the risk of affecting the relationship I’m in now. All that pain and those failures put me in a place where I could meet, relate to, marry, and have kids with the woman I’m with now. This is the best thing I’ve ever done in my life, and I wouldn’t want to change it.

The amazing thing is that I was nearly 30 years old when we met, and I was 35 when we married. Since we married so late, we often joke about how we skipped over the first failed marriage that many of our friends have had, and went right to the second good marriage. I guess my advice to the love-lorn out there in SYMlandia is that there is no set timetable for relationships, and that nothing ever meets your expectations, so why even bother having expectations?

HighLordDave · Post by **HighLordDave** » Tue Feb 19, 2002 2:32 pm

I think a lot of people have mistaken notions about how relationships are supposed to work and unrealistic expectation placed up on them, either by their own doing or by their families. For instance, I think a lot of women believe that if they're not married by the time they're 30, they must be destined to be spinsters. This is of course, hogwash. Unfortunately, some people buy it and end up marrying someone they don't truly love just to meet some artificial deadline.

As I said before, I don't believe in soulmates. That is, I don't believe that there is one person out there whom I'm meant to be with for eternity.

I look at love as like walking through a garden full of people. Some are walking along a path, some are running. Some are sitting on benches, some are smelling the roses, some are napping and a few people are just milling around aimlessly. Every type of person is there; some are alone, some together.

You walk along a path for a while and you run into all sorts of people. Some you like, some you don't. Some are interesting, some repulsive. Sometimes you meet someone and you decide to walk with them for a little while. Maybe you just hit it off right; maybe you're just going in the same direction at the same time. Maybe you've known the is person for your entire visit to the garden, maybe they ran into you (literally or figuratively).

Sometimes, you and the person you're walking with decide that the two of you are not moving at the same pace or in the same direction (or maybe not moving at all), so you decide to go your separate ways. On a few rare occasions, you and the person you've run into may decide that you like each other so much and are both going the same way, so you decide to stick together. Sometimes, it means that one of you has to change directions completely.

I believe that no one is fated to be with only one other person. It's all about circumstances. Sometimes you meet someone and the timing is off; they're moving on, while you're sitting down, or you're on the rebound while they're ready to go. Either way, I don't think dwelling on "what might have been" is productive and that it's important to keep looking at everyone you encounter as one more person to meet along the journey.

VoodooDali · Post by **VoodooDali** » Fri Feb 22, 2002 4:13 pm

Originally posted by Gruntboy

I'm in a loving relationship... for now. But not for much longer, I think its gonna end in flames like the last couple.

You're in a relationship with a couple? A menage a trois?

VoodooDali · Post by **VoodooDali** » Fri Feb 22, 2002 4:24 pm

But seriously, folks...

I'm in a relationship that's lasted 8 years. We have not gotten married. I suppose we will for tax purposes, but I see no point, otherwise. It's a very happy, fulfilling relationship. I always think about conversations I had with an old friend of mine--he talked a lot about how you have to trade off security or freedom, that it's just not possible to have both. I think that is true to a point.

I related a bit to Gwally...how as you get older you think about what might have been had you made that decision instead of this one... I think that's the hardest part of middle age. Accepting your own life and your decisions. I sometimes reminisce about a german guy I was so in love with--we met each other in south america and the relationship ended when we both had to go back to our own countries. If anyone ever seemed like a "soul mate" to me, it was him, but we were both too afraid to really tell each other that, though I did hear it much later from other people we confided in. And I couldn't see how he or I could make it work in two different countries...but you wonder about stuff like that.

I also agree with High Lord Dave, though, that there aren't real "soul mates." If there are, I've met quite a few in my life.

C Elegans · Post by **C Elegans** » Fri Feb 22, 2002 8:07 pm

I've been married for 2.5 years - we were together only a short time before we married since there seemed to be no point in waiting for years to feel what we both felt then. The marriage was just a symbolic act, a way to express long term committment. In Sweden, registered partnership is in most ways equal to marriage and many younger people chose this rather than marrying. Most of my friends are not married to their partners.

Like HLD and VooDoo I don't belive in "soulmates" or one particular person who is predestined to be your partner. Whether a relationship is to work out or not is very much a choice we make, and also, we change over time and two people who are a perfect couple at one stage on life, might not suit each other well at another stage in life.

fable · Post by **fable** » Sat Feb 23, 2002 10:06 am

My wife and I have been married nearly twelve years, and we lived together for three before that--as I put it, to see if we could stand all that close proximity without choking one another to death. Apparently, we succeeded.

It wasn't a soulmate thing. We met through a shared afterhours commonality of interests. I was a public radio station manager who decided to get involved in Celtic folk dancing. (We had live, local groups performing every week. It was great fun, since I knew about half the regulars from other venues.) My wife was an RN at the local hospital. This was in a medium-sized city in her home state. After a couple of hours of heavy workout (remember, this was years before fitness centers sprung up), about six to eight of us would head over to a local hottub place, then sometimes catch a late night bite to eat.

We started dating. Neither one of us was young; she was thirty, I was thirty-five. (You don't form too many longterm relationships when you're hopping from one station to another to advance a career, and that's about the only way one could do it in public radio.) But we did have other possibilities. It's just that we shared significant interests and possessed great differences, so there was always the sense of having on hand both a friend who understood, and a person who was a mystery and unique.

I moved to another job far away after being there for two years. We supported a phone company with our calls, and occasionally she visited. Finally, when my latest job fell through (a really bad and ineffective board of directors), we decided to get together.

There were difficulties; no question about that. But in our case, the secret to the relationship was close friendship and mutual esteem. (The steamy sex helps, too.

) If a problem occurs at work, either of us can sit and discuss it with the other. It's by no means perfection, but from everything I've seen, we're managing better than most. There's none of this "the man does one thing, the woman in the relationship does another" BS. We're very different, temperamentally speaking, but it's all worked well thus far. And we have a commitment, given what we've got, to continuing to make it work.

Der-draigen · Post by **Der-draigen** » Sat Feb 23, 2002 11:21 am

Originally posted by fable
Neither one of us was young; she was thirty, I was thirty-five.

30 and 35 isn't young?

fable · Post by **fable** » Sat Feb 23, 2002 4:17 pm

Originally posted by Der-draigen

30 and 35 isn't young?

By no means: a lot of people are married in their teens. I can't speak for where you live, @Der-draigen, but most people in the US and Europe are married before 25. We didn't get married until I was 38, and she was 33. (The above age is when we decided to live together.)