The Kind of Life You Want
Redefining Love and Marriage
Not so deeply at all, I was to learn. In spite of the many epiphanies through our year-long travel escapade, what we did on a daily basis in the humdrum of a nine to five lifestyle eroded the lessons learnt and the coping mechanisms we had adopted. Outwardly we have a wonderfully marvelous life, yet our invisible introspection, unseen by those around us, slowly dims the light in both of our eyes. Old habits took over as we forgot to create special moments together. Our lives became mechanical.
Learning to redefine the meaning of love after 30 years means learning to redefine boundaries that no longer have any meaning. Boundaries that were significant to a 17- and 22-year-old couple madly in love are worlds apart from the boundaries of a 50- and 55-year-old couple at odds with each other’s idea of mid-life contentment. Finding a compromise that makes both partners happy is ongoing if you are to make a permanent home together.
The outcome depends largely on how much you are prepared to give
of yourself to make another human being happy whilst maintaining your own
happiness.
It does not mean, however, that you have to throw in the proverbial towel on your relationship. It just means you have to work together to find your way back to a common path that will lead you side-by-side to an ever-evolving landscape of sharing and cherishing each other’s dreams and strengths. My head swirls sometimes with the thought that it is up to me to make a difference, but really, it is not. That is another altruistic untruth I had to uncover – if we want something to change, we have to change ourselves first. It is only up to me to make a difference if I am the only one wanting things to be different, but if the feeling is mutual, then both parties need to make the effort.
And so, after 31 years of marriage (at the time of writing), we found ourselves living with the awkwardness of new partners rediscovering a set of guidelines to live by in which we could both flourish. We share platitudes like ‘How are you, How did you sleep, and How was your day?’ These are mindless banalities like ‘What would you like for breakfast?’ or ‘What would you like to do today?’
Conversely, ‘How are you?’ is completely different to ‘How do you feel?’ I’m not saying that we should rely on each other to make ourselves happy. Quite the opposite. I am happy and content to be a loner within the walls of marriage, but James would like to share more time together. Was I going to choose to love myself with complete self-indulgence or was I going to compromise and find ways in which I could both indulge in my own space and share in his preferences as well?
We had to learn new ways of connecting in a new era instead of going full circle and repeating past mistakes. That’s not to say we wouldn’t make new mistakes because I certainly know by now that a relationship never reaches ‘perfect’ status – perfect does not, and should not, exist.
To be perfect means to stagnate.
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