How you and your partner handle seven events may be a predictor of the longevity of your love.
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Regardless of how close you may feel with your love, until you and your partner have gone through these seven major events, you are circling the periphery of really learning each other. You may wonder, what if we went through a death together…I know my sweetheart would amaze me with their sensitivity. When in fact, how your lover acts in the reality of the situation may run contrary to what you’ve envisioned.
These seven events may even be relationship predictors.
1. Losing a Loved One…Yes, Pets Count.
When someone you love dies, it takes your wind and reduces you to a scrap of yourself. You are vulnerable, wondering, pensive, worried. You need reassurance and turn to your partner in this naked, stripped-to-the-core stage. The last concern you want to have is how am I presenting myself? You are you, in all your red-faced, weepy glory, in your anger, and in sharing your opinion that life is unfair. You need an oak during this time, an unquestionable tower who wants you to lean, who reaches through the space between your two bodies with their heart, traversing the unspoken. It’s a defining time, where the reaction of your other can make or break you both, so intense and important is this event. It’s indicative of who your partner is…selfish, accepting, nonjudgmental, supportive.
2. Raising a Living Being Together
At our basest, we are feeling humans. Every voluntary action we take is rooted in emotion. Does your SO nurture, are they playful, do they push themselves to let minor annoyances go? Do they welcome this tiny being, be it your human child, or a fur-baby? These moments reveal to us what’s at the heart of intention. Is this person inherently kind and self-aware, or are they controlling and fearful? When you discover the truth, it may not be your ideal. If your partner seems uncomfortable, it might be because failing in this area is not acceptable to them and the fear of failure makes them uptight. Talk to your mate and soothe their mind by telling them how wonderful and needed they are to you and your mini being. They are wanted and appreciated. Of course, any abusers must be shown the door.
3. Living Together
The Otter, my other and I, began as players in a long-distance relationship. I fantasized about living with him, imagining he would perform perfectly, as if in a film. He would be clean. Our house would smell of lemons and love, our goals easily attained and we would agree on everything. Ah, romance, the key in infatuation, a hijacker taking us into fathomless depths of love. Romance allows us to fool ourselves. What we know now, is a huge part of participating in a tenable relationship is centered in compatibility. Can you handle the decisions this person makes, or doesn’t make? When you get to the point in your relationship when infatuation morphs into the deliberate choice to remain with your love each successive day, you will choose your partner over and over again because you can live with them, their weird foibles and idiosyncratic natures. Or you may not choose them if you find you can’t tolerate who they really are. When you do accept, when you put both of your interests first (without keeping score of who is hanging what picture, displaying what art, picking out the sofa, etc.) then you’ll find you can and want to live together because this is where you realize your comfort.
Next: “Money, money, money.”
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These are really great. In some of them (money), there are ways to prepare. In others (derailment, illness), I don’t think there’s any kind of preparation for it. When my husband was in a serious car accident 10 weeks ago, no one could have prepared us for it, but we’re making it through and definitely stronger for it.
I have learned this one thing about life and love…
You will win and lose with friends, SO’s, family members and work-mates too. It doesn’t feel good to lose, and yet some how my heart wells courageously: I’m glad you exist…it’s been a privilege to lose with you [for you] too. We lived, earned, learned, loved and lost. Thank you.
You’re still pretty f*cken cool. (This you already knew).
You know we’ll bounce back!
*Huuuuuuuug*