I want to hear about good relationships
Conversations about finding and losing love are everywhere. Which is no suprise, when people are swimming in new love drugs they want to talk about it. Likewise when they're drowning in loss or trying to navigate relationship troubles. And they're interesting conversations to have because almost everyone can relate. Love and relationships are at the core of the human experience.
But so are relationships that last. Love that keeps working in spite of the constant drag of, sometimes mundane, everyday life. High functioning love.
It's quieter, less interesting for uninvested parties and more difficult to articulate in a simple, accessible way without sounding boring or cliche. Which is maybe why it gets talked about less. It's not that it doesn't have all the hallmarks of a good adventure. There are highs and lows, challenges that seem impossible in the darkest moments, unexpected redemption, soaring elation. It's often exciting when you're in it. But more often by volume, if somewhat less in memory, are small moments of shared joy, companionable silences, ambivalence, soft landings on hard days and endless personal growth to support the happiness of another human. Or maybe more accurately to support the health of this third space you've created together.
There's also shared identity, which amounts to the expansion of your idea of self. There are the sorts of moments in life which no one can really understand if they weren't there without the help of especially inspired poetry. And, most of the time, there's this other person who was, in fact, there. No explanations needed. More than that, they bring different context and add different perspectives to the experience that become a part of your own.
There are the moments when you face the reality of impermanence, mortality and futility and the way that somehow having this warm, breathing second witness takes the edge off the howling chaos at the edges of civilized existence. It makes it easier to accept the process of life and death in ways that are difficult to articulate. It's sort of a non sequitur but something that comes to mind is the way that curling up by a fire on a stormy night is somehow more cozy than if it was tropical out and you didn't need a blanket at all.
I could go on, but my goal wasn't really to talk about my ideas about love. I'm hoping other tildinians will be excited to talk about their experiences with, and thoughts about, love that lasts. That could mean your own relationship(s) or it could mean general musings. Whatever comes to mind.
Equal space for the parts that are good and bad. There are usually two people involved but there's nothing binary about it. It's all nuance.
I can probably chip in here as I have been with my wife for 24 years now, though we are maybe a bit of an edge case as we met each other when we were only 15. This means we have matured and developed into adults together, so our priorities, and even personalities to an extent, are very much aligned due to that. This means that we rarely have conflicts on the bigger decisions in life and generally just want the same things.
When we are just living it, it is hard to figure out exactly what works and why. The usual things of giving each other space and time to be themselves is important, as well as accepting that we can't demand the other to change who they are. Of course being together for decades means that the "in-love" thing is replaced by something different, that is more about familiarity, predictability, comfort and simply finding joy in the every day daily routines. Especially with kids and jobs, many days are very similar and not that exciting. Of course we both look forward to vacations and dates alone, but I think it is important not to hinge the entire relationship on the special days alone. The daily routine has to be a good time together as well.
Similar to you minus a few years; we met as late teens and been together just over half our lives now.
Because we basically grew up from young adulthood together, there's been a LOT of changes to who we even are as people, what we believe, what we like to do and how we get energy or motivation to get through the day, or what we look forward to in the future.
Our teen selves could hardly recognize us today:
we both changed religions; I no longer want to live in megacities; he's no longer an extrovert; I agreed to have a baby and now consider child(ren) a blessing; he was Texas style Conservative now Bernie style liberal. Some traits remain the same which creates friction in the other direction, making one of us less than thrilled at a time: example, we both loved travelling, and now I alone have wanderlust.
@Johz mentioned communication. For the longest time I would also have said that is the single most important secret sauce: talk it out, don't let it stew, don't go to bed angry, choose your words, send letters, openly appreciate every single day. These are still important of course. But maybe no longer the most important.
When I was young, my cello teacher said I could tell all my secrets and all my unspoken feelings into the cello and play them out, even things he couldn't say to his wife. I retorted that i didn't have any secrets that my husband wouldn't know, blatantly boasting and probably looked darn smug about it too (what a brat!).
For this phase, I think communication is still gold, but I would now rank it below the platinum of kindness. There are days when everything has already been said 100 times and there's no more point reiterating and just making each other sad or burdened. There are recurring dark moods that we know to be temporary internal storms which we must shield each other from (they can get the post hurricane clean up after report later). Sometimes your spouse doesn't need a pep talk or to hear your hot take or get good advice or anything other than your best effort to offer a hug when all you want to do is shout about the world and its hurt. And how does one continue to talk further about a recurring hurt that we've already shared that the other can't do anything more about? Maybe this is a phase where we are learning better non verbal communication.
We're both better people than before. I wonder if that's a pre-requisite for lifelong relationships, that the people be already kind enough to function very well, and have few crazy hardships, and can afford many creature comforts in between hard times.
Thanks for the perspective on how non-verbal support can be more important than communication at times. That is absolutely a skill I am still working on. As a "problem solver," it's important to step back and realize that problem solving can make some situations worse. (I'm a lot better at this than I used to be, but still have to fight against that part of myself at times.)
And to reiterate another thing you said in different words - it's important to expect to change and grow when in a committed relationship (marriage or otherwise). I've seen a lot of couples taken by surprise when the person they've married is doing things differently- wanting to pursue a job instead of being a homemaker (or the other direction), losing interest in a shared hobby, wanting to make a dramatic diet change (vegetarian, vegan, etc), or even just slowly transforming from having one communication style to another. It's normal for people to change. If you expect someone to stay the same as they were when you met, got married, etc, you're going to realize that doesn't match reality as time goes on.
I definitely resonate with this too. One thing that’s helped me has been that I have one close friend in particular who never wants solutions, she only wants to vent. And yet she has the same issue where hearing frustrations makes her want to find solutions!
She’s helped me learn that step one (to helping people find solutions to problems that they’re venting about) is to ask the person early into the conversation “hey, before we go on, are you looking for solutions or wanting to vent?” And from there, I’ve learned that I actually really relish a good bitching session once I can put aside my urge to solve everything!
Well said. Not everything is fixable by talking about it. Communication can't always shift a dark mood and when that's the case all it accomplishes is to splash the darkness into places it doesn't belong.
There are definitely times when nonverbal support and kindness are more important. That and not taking it personally.
This thread is not in any way meant to be a longevity competition. But if it were @winther is currently winning.
I think you probably meant it's important not to hinge the relationship on the special days alone? And that's great advice.
Ahem! I mentioned my Pearl wedding, which in the UK at least is 30 years of marriage, and that was 'a couple' of years back now :-p Not counting the dating years.
My bad! @trim is comfortably in the lead in what is definitely still not a competition.
I did make the time slightly obtuse :) I did resonate with something in @winther 's post though , the second paragraph about routine. I'm not a great wordsmith and wouldn't have come up with that comment on my own, but yeah. That.
I met my wife in a Star Trek role playing community over IRC in the late 90s. I lived in Canada at the time and she was in the southern US. We fell for each other over a shared love for all things nerdy (this was long before it was cool to be a nerd like it is today). Online dating and long distance relationships weren't really a thing back then (the internet itself was just barely a thing back then) so everyone thought we were nuts. I remember I had to write my own software that would take snapshots from our webcams every 10 seconds and automatically upload to and download from each other over FTP, because the only real-time webcam conferencing software back then was insanely expensive (targeted at commercial licensing to businesses). We would mostly chat on IRC with the webcams on, or on rare occasions she'd get her hands on a long distance calling card and we'd talk over the phone. Against all odds at the time, we stuck together--we visited each other a few times and I ended up moving to the states on a fiance visa after I graduated from university. When we got married, she was still three weeks away from being old enough to drink at her own wedding. It hasn't all been smooth sailing, but now we've got a couple of our own kids in high school and this month we celebrated our 22nd anniversary.
Oh wow that's like early bird cam level "video" chat. And yes I can see how crazy she sounds to her friends and family: my boyfriend lives in Canada and he also likes all my niche nerd hobbies. Congratulations on your anniversary! (Apparently 22 is "water", 20 is China, and 19 is Bronze)
If I’m understanding that correctly (assuming 21 is drinking age), she’s now been married for longer than she hasn’t? And if you’re a similar age then you’re possibly in the same boat! Even your marriage is old enough to drink on its own now!
We celebrated our Pearl wedding anniversary a couple of years ago, so I might be said to have had a somewhat long and (happy? lol) marriage. We joke about jail time for murder all the time. I'd have been out by now. Sigh.
We're both Gen X as you might expect - we could scarcely be much younger - shared interests in the 70s and 80s music scene helped in the early days. And still today, actually :)
We've done a bit of travelling in our younger days, eventually managed to have a family which turned out to be much more difficult than expected, but a source of endless joy.
Don't know that there is much of a secret other than blind luck through a dating agency, lol. Yes, a paper form one because when we met, there was no world wide web.
Damn! Paper dating, like phone booths and roadmaps, are holy artifacts of the beforetimes.
We both had to fill big forms of tick boxes for likes, dislikes etc., miles radius, and there were no photographs. It was a mystery date for sure.
Wow! Was paper dating considered chic at the time? How did your peers react when you told them you met through paper dating service? Was there a real human being who read your bios and manually decided on the matchmaking?
I don't know that it was chic! I never actually told anyone how we met, until decades later, when the app dating thing was in full swing. I just mentioned /where/ we met, which was in her home town, around 15 miles from where I lived. I had my radius at 30 miles, which is pretty far to go with a box of black magic and a splash 'o Brut 33.
I strongly suspect (being into computers since the '70s), that the tick box responses were manually entered into some bespoke system, then all the profiles were compared for matching ticks, within an overlapping radius with some margin, and then you got the answer.
It's hard to remember at the time but I think it might have been advertised as 'computerised' and I expect that's how it worked. No expert systems or AI here, just matching tick boxes within a radius.
Reference not found? :) kindly share the funny please, I wasn't on this continent yet and miss out on a lot of fun
Dude, you literally found hot singles in your area!
(Putting it into perspective) A radius of 30 miles (48km) is roughly the distance between Hollywood sign and Anaheim Disneyland, or Vancouver to Langley, or Toronto to Pickering: drivable and some people do it as a commute every day. Did the long drive present challenges early in your relationship? Was the timeline towards moving in together slightly accelerated?
Reveal your age without stating your age:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Magic_(chocolates)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brut_(cologne)
The commercials for Brut 33 from back in the day were also basically the precursors to the modern Old Spice commercials with Terry Crews... often a bit bizarre, and full of "manly men" (like Joe Namath) doing manly things, and attracting beautiful ladies.
Oooh!! Thank you
Saw a few commericals. I especially like the 1966 cool black clad lady with a pet cheetah ("because she is"). Chocolates so good it turned her entire vibe white. 1984 lady walking through snow into a castle carrying a ... scythe?! Guess she can't stay mad :D
Brut 1987 - It Smells Like A Man consists of a lingerie clad lady putting on man's clothing and colonge. :) from today's lens: is she thinking about herself as a man?
Brut 1982 - lingerie clad woman plays chess to elevator jazz. 1984 Joe Namath - still has a sexy lady in it! 1994 Brut by Fabergé aftershave "Men Are Back" : first three seconds I'm already rolling laughing because of the softcore porn music and sexy lady straddle-shaving a guy fully lathered up in bed
:) also I'm mentally casting @trim as a tux wearing Footballer and his wife as cool cheetah lady.
My personal favorite of the Brut commercials. :P
O_O I'm uh.....wow. was that...meant to be ironic or was that 80's sincere?
Pretty sure it was entirely ironic and self-deprecating.
It's different in the UK. I boggle at the scale of some other countries, particularly the USA.
We tend to think that distances that other countries would travel to get to a supermarket is much too far to bother with, especially for a trip you'd have to take daily :)
I did have a car, but the route was quite treacherous in the winter, and my car at the time not so secure, some awful Mk. 1 Ford Cortina where the windscreen wiper would sometimes fall off, and the drivers window would fall down if you slammed the door.
As for the references, Black Magic was a stereotypical gift for a lady, a box of chocolates often delivered by a handsome James Bond type figure from teh TV Adverts. Who knows the secret, of the black magic box? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0SvkFfhtJo
And Brut 33 was a stereotypical aftershave cologne for men. Almost as iconic as blue stratos (come on, help me out other UK X ers, there must be some, lol). Often advertised by legendary British boxing icon, Henry Cooper. Splash it all over.
Brute 33: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmytTJprSQI
Aren't you thinking of Milk Tray? I remember the Milk Tray ads as a UK mid-late millenial featuring a James Bond-esque character delivering chocolates to a sexy lady.
While I'm aware of Brut, I think it's a bit before my time, think it had been relegated to dad aftershave by the time I was a teen/young man I afraid. Versace Blue Jeans was a favourite of teen me in the early-mid 00's and Issey Miyake as a younger man in the late 00's (which is still a fantastic aftershave).
Well now yes. All because the lady loves milk tray. They were similar to the black magic ones, but I had them mixed up! (though, I did indeed take her Black Magic on our first date)
I mean, all my relationships were good relationships for a while. A relationship does not need to be a lifelong partnership in order to be good or successful.
You write very eloquently about relationships. I am not as poetic. But I will tell you this: for most of my life, whenever I got home or woke up every day, I hoped for everyone to be out. I require many hours of solitude every day for my mental well-being. At one point, I was even diagnosed with something which reinforces that need. Nevertheless, since I moved in with my now wife, in the same circumstances, I always hoped intensely for her to be home. That, my friend, is love.
I'm glad you mentioned this, I thought about talking about it in my OP. I agree, sometimes a relationship is exactly right for some period of time, and not beyond, and it ending isn't any sort of failure.
Amen.
My (now) wife and I have just this week celebrated our eighth anniversary since we started dating, and I would consider us to be in a good relationship. For me, I think a lot of it comes down to talking to each other and spending time with each other. Some of that talking is practical stuff (how are you feeling, is there stuff stressing you, etc etc), but a lot of it is just that, when we spend quality time together, the relationship grows and gets stronger. Even after some years together, it's amazing how much a weekend spent doing something just the two of us can really rejuvenate our relationship.
We're about to add a new member to the family in the form of a baby, and I've heard a lot about how that can get easily take away from the quality time one has in a relationship - I'm worried about that, because I think we're both people who get tired easily, and will probably want to just snuggle together in front of a television in our free time instead of more meaningfully interacting with each other. But we also talk a lot with each other, especially about the things we're finding difficult, and we're both aware of the potential problem, so I think we'll be okay. And we have friends and family who will hopefully be able to support us a bit in that.
Cheers to your 8 years and your new little one!
'Communication is everything' has become a cliche, but it's definitely among those that exist for a reason. It's a simple concept that becomes challenging in practice as unprocessed baggage and the time constraints of life start to add up. Not to mention the difficulty of great communication without self awareness which is itself a perpetual challenge.
I think you're right, if you can keep communicating you can navigate almost anything.
I knew a woman who was convinced that romantic love can't survive raising kids. I disagree with her, I've seen examples of it surviving, but she also wasn't wrong in that I've seen a lot more examples of it failing to survive.
Kids are a lot, it comes hard and fast and it doesn't let up for years. At which point it comes hard and fast in new and improved ways.
But of course it's a beautiful sort of hard and it can absolutely make relationships stronger. Here's to you two being in the latter group.
Congrats!! We're 8 years also - almost 7 years married and have 2 kids (3.5y and 1y). We want 3.. we're crazy. We've come to understand it'll be a crazy few years when our kids are young.
But I'd say it's definitely harder to find that 1:1 time together; we also enjoy just relaxing on the couch while I read and he plays video games. But for us we've realized that we have to be intentional about going out. i.e. - find a babysitter to watch kids at night so we can go out, each taking a day off work to just spend time together, going out of town together while family watches the kids etc. Family/friend support is huge help for us - I've realized just how valuable having family to help.
The second kid was a big adjustment for us cus now it's more challenging for one of us to step out randomly for a hang out with a friend.
This coming weekend, husband is going out of town for a marathon while i stay home. We both took friday off to spend time together before he flies out, and my younger son will be at family for the weekend while I spend some quality time with my older son.
My husband and I will have been together for ten years in July, though we only got married in 2022.
It's not the stuff of movies and books, but being in his presence has always just felt so comfortable. To the point that on our first date where I was a bundle of nerves and hadn't been sleeping well, he made me so relaxed I literally fell asleep on his shoulder. As someone with lifelong anxiety, it was the first time I had ever felt like that.
We're also both homebodies who want to hang out together, which is very different to both my parents' and my sibling's relationships. We've just had a baby and have taken six months off work together, so things are currently the most strained they have ever been, but we both still try to care for each other while the baby drives us to madness. As long as we're not falling apart at the same time we muddle through.
That's beautiful. I disagree though, I think that's exactly the stuff of movies and books... Finding someone that makes you feel safe and at home and lets you put a little of the weight down. It's the sort of thing that tempts people to use mythic terms like soulmate :)
Good luck with the baby insanity. Sleep deprivation is no joke.
37 years of marriage. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your outlook, thats the total with two different wives. 22 years with the first and 15 years (after 5 years of dating) so far with the second with many more to come. Welcome to my dichotomous love life.
I would proffer that not much teaches one so much about love as getting it desperately wrong. My first wife and I shared the same values in our very similar upbringing and religious beliefs, but we were failures in a primary area - communication. We mostly corresponded by letters and phone calls but spent little time together before we married after only knowing each other a year. After marrying we discovered that there were issues that we were unable to tackle without deeper communication and those conversations were constantly blocked and didn't happen. We went from a euphoric young couple to a pinned down middle age couple with three kids whose main happiness was solely the children.
Its not like we didn't try to change that sorry state - we saw several counselors, read self help books, went on marriage retreats, talked to clergy, confided in wise friends, did frequent date nights... and then one day she handed me a divorce and it was over. Very very painfully over.
I can't say that we never loved each other. It was there in the beginning, and there were sparks of it in the ensuing years, but love needs to be fed and nurtured to exist and if the struggles are greater and more constant than the nurturing, it can die a sorry, withering death.
It took some time to get over the depression and deep feelings of failure and rejection, especially when coupled with leaving a job and ending many friendships out of more self shame and rejection at the same time.
Being fairly analytical, when it was time to start dating, I made a list of the attributes and values I was looking for in a spouse. I actually had a spreadsheet with a scoring system for each, which sounds silly now but I had a plan in mind and I wasnt about to make the same mistake twice. I proceeded to 'coffee date' my way through a fairly extensive list of ladies I met online.
And then came love, part deux. And the difference was so stark that I was quite astounded. I had been on so many coffee dates that it became pretty easy to figure out if there was going to be a spark within a few minutes and there were a few short lived sparks but nothing that burst into flames.
But then I met my wife. Not only did she astound me with her beauty but the most amazing thing was that the moment we sat down and started talking I felt like I was "home", there's no other word for it. There was no awkwardness, no pauses, nothing that stopped us from sharing like we'd already known each other for decades. We felt 100% comfortable from the first moment. It really did hit me hard and I knew right away that she was the one I had been looking for. She felt the same. I closed the spreadsheet for good.
We dated carefully and deliberately for five years to make sure we got it right the second time. And in that time I discovered the kindest, most gracious woman I have ever met. I have never heard her criticize anyone, she openly offers love and support to everyone, especially those who are hurting. She's in a public facing job and her reviews consistently mention how much care she puts into relationships and how much she is loved and respected for it. Her sense of humor is a great match and we spend a lot of time laughing and kidding each other. She never complains even when facing some chronic physical issues. She holds her values strongly but is never pushy about them, letting her actions speak rather than words. She is indeed my best friend, partner and lover and I feel grateful to be her husband.
Life keeps changing. We are now the senior parents of six adult children/stepchildren and the very happy grandparents of eight littles. I had no idea that this grandparent thing would be so much fun, but like the saying goes, "if I'd known grandkids were this much fun, I'd have had them first" We are dealing with different issues at this age - pending retirement, moderate health challenges, menopause, parent deaths and the objective realization that there are far fewer days ahead of us than behind us.
But our relationship is good, very good. We really don't have 'bad days', we might have some that are a bit more stressful because of outside circumstances, but this love is peaceful, consistent, kind and affectionate. We sometimes say to each other that we appreciate each other much more than 'average' after surviving failed marriages. It's easy to love her and I am indeed a lucky man.
Many more wives or years?
Seriously though, thanks for posting your story. It has a lot of those quiet bits that are bigger than they sound if you're not in them.
Like this one. Finding home. Suspecting that life will be forever different even if you have no business feeling that way just yet. It foreshadows an even more profound moment in the future when, if you're lucky, you find that you were absolutely right.
It's a underrated miracle, finding someone who's easy to love. Congratulations to you both.
Wife count is now complete. Achievement unlocked :)
That's an excellent way to describe it. An underrated miracle indeed.
OP, you do wax rather eloquently in your post and replies. I'm wondering if you write professionally? And whether you had any particular reason to post on this subject? Just curious.
Thus far I only write for fun. I didn't really have a particular reason, I saw a post somewhere about being really into your partner even after years together and it got me thinking about how we should talk about that more. Plus I wanted to hear love stories :)
My wife and I have seen a lot of ups and downs (some I've written about here) in our ten years together.
We both have ADHD, me C and her A. I was recently diagnosed ASD. This can be, at times, explosive.
We deeply love each other. The one constant in our relationship has been the deeply carried love we have for each other. We've put in and keep putting in the work to make the relationship last. I've had a decade of therapy. She has her own therapy. We see a couples counselor.
We're finally in a mostly boring and good place. Stable is boring but also good!
Life throws enough instability at us (like my recent ASD diagnosis) for us to appreciate the reliable. Yet, as we grow together, and learn more about ourselves and each other, we find our compassion for one another grows and our connection deepens.
Congrats on a decade!
I love this. Being able to trust that you'll both fight hard for it is huge when things get challenging.
Which helps you get to the ever growing compassion and empathy you mentioned. I'm genuinely happy for you two.
If you feel inspired: What is your brightest memory with your wife? Or memories if you can't pick just one.
I'll call this "Top 5, roughly in order":
Hard to choose! Visiting these memories evokes others causing second guessing of the above!
Second one: dude what a power move! I can hear the collective Awwwww from the congregation! My altar moment was him handing me a tissue for snot coming out of my nose because I was trying too hard not to cry.
Dang right best moments are the censored ones :)
Oh, yeah. Those in attendance reacted audibly, though I can only barely remember because I was too tickled by the moment itself.
My wife would kill me if I shared either 4 or 5. I know this, having shared 4 once before with some close friends. (She is decidedly more private than I am).
Condolences on your death, and may your relationship continue unabated by your loss of life
This was the best thing I've ever woken up to on anything resembling social media of any sort! Thank you!
I've been together with my wife 13 years, married 9 of them. I think the biggest things have been, mostly about aligning priorities, keeping each other informed of what's going on. And the most important one to me is honestly just .... apologizing. I don't think any couple can get away with not fighting or getting mad at each other, or doing the wrong thing every now and then. Especially with kids, it's been more stressful and sometimes we can be at each other's throat, but it's just stress. That we apologize to one another and that we don't let our anger bleed into how we feel about the other person is a level of resiliency that I feel confident will keep us together however many more decades.
I think the best advice I got from my parents was to never go to bed angry with each other. Even if it means staying up half the night talking stuff out, it's important to not shut each other out and stew over whatever the argument du jour happens to be. My wife and I always follow that rule, which led to a fair number of long, frustrating nights during the early days of our marriage. Over time it's less and less necessary because it becomes clear that the things you fight over are almost always misunderstandings or miscommunications, and you get a better feeling for where your partner might be coming from and start to give them the benefit of the doubt when those kinds of things come up.
Oh I understand it as well, but honestly "sleeping it off" can work wonders. The sleep deprivation from having an infant can already be brutal sometimes you're mad because you're tired, you've just gotta sleep, and talk it out when you aren't running on fumes. Honestly sometimes it takes a few days to really mull over something, I don't think emotions are always so amenable to time tables, it's really that you eventually understand the cause of the argument and have a resolution, that seems to matter to me.
The "loophole" we found was agree that we're angry, but agree that we love each other, and go to bed holding hands or nuzzling angry and we'll talk about it in the morning. Make an emergency withdrawal from the Bank of Safety and Mutual Kindness Fund, and just trust that we're about about a thing instead of angry at each other.
My father in law included that in his speech at our wedding over thirty years ago. Great advice.
What a great place to arrive for a relationship: both the maturity to grant grace, and the security that it isn't for granted.
Alright, time to share my tale. My wife and I started dating almost 18 years ago now. To ease writing this narrative, I will adopt our in-joke pseudonyms Frank and Ethel. Anyhow, here's the general plot to the movie of our life.
In the Fall of 2007, Frank gets a bit high, then strolls out of his 2002 Saturn ION towards one of his college classes. Frank was a 23 year old World of Warcraft addict, a virgin hovering dangerously close to incel (complete with a fedora), and a recovering bigot still in his libertarian "Ron Paul" phase. He had just gotten out of a lovely inpatient stay for a bipolar manic episode. Good judgement was still not his forte. Probably why he had dropped out of a prestigious engineering program in favor of an IT program at a local college branch. Frank had basically given up on love and would be happy to have more friends, given most had moved on with their lives.
Halfway to class, a girl runs up to Frank and yells "OMG you need to come over here, it's Fedora Friday." She drags him over to her friend and begins to explain to Frank how she had just decided somewhat arbitrarily that today was Fedora Friday. Frank bums a cig off of her friend, who introduces herself as Ethel.
Ethel was out for a cigarette break with her non-smoker friend Margret. She had just started as a freshman, but was already having regrets. When choosing schools, she had arbitrarily chose this college branch because she didn't want to be near home, and she liked the letter the town started with. However, Ethel soon discovered that not having a drivers license in this town was a minor hell. Growing up in Philadelphia gave a false sense of functional public transportation. Her job prospects were bleak, and tuition bills were piling up. She was charmed by Frank (which is still baffling to Frank to this day), and the three of them had ended up skipping their next class and shooting the shit in the dining hall instead.
Over the next few weeks, Ethel and Frank had many more chance meetings around campus. Often smoking, he would bum her cigs off her (Camel Silvers) and she off him (Newport 100s). Unbeknownst to the other, both of them had been mildly stalking the other. She would linger outside the IT building, he would walk circles around the sidewalk where they met and the stairs between the main classrooms and dining hall. Eventually they got around to exchanging contact information and hung out a bit. (snipping the story about ditching her date to go to diner with Frank and a few other hangouts Ethel claims were dates but Frank thought were just friends hanging out).
At some point after , Ethel had said "hey come over anytime." Frank, being an idiot, took this literally and showed up randomly without so much a phone call. Ethel's roommate was rightly freaked out, but Ethel invited him in anyway and they all got high and watched Interstella 5555. This lead to an eventual consummation of the relationship after a later movie night watching The Producers (2005 musical version). After that, it was a blur of irresponsible sex, financial instability (mania not good for Frank, school too expensive for Ethel), and the developing co-dependence off of each others' (unspoken at this point) trauma. They both declared their love for each other, and the relationship blossomed for about a year.
Ethel drops out because she's broke and goes to community college back home. Frank drives out on the weekends, maintaining a long distance relationship as he shortly graduates and starts working. One weekend, Ethel tries to push Frank away "You'll leave me, they always leave me," and Frank consoling, promising not to leave, and then irresponsibly proposing. She drops out and moves in with Frank, as she was borderline suicidal living at home.
Fast forward to 2010, they've moved in together in their second (incredibly terrible) apartment, and Ethel needs her wisdom teeth removed. This was the driving factor to get married, so they go to Vegas. Their bachelor/bachelorette party was at Little Darlings (tallest poles in Vegas), where Katie the Stripper (as she'll be forever known) sat down with us and chit-chatted and drank, as she had already made her money for the night from a few of her whales and didn't feel like working anymore. In the morning, they were married by Elvis (actually by some priest in a back room afterwards, which was immensely disappointing to the both of them).
Fast forward to 2025, they have two beautiful children: Nathaniel and Superfly. The youngest is now older than 4, and despite the world falling apart, the relationship is stronger than ever....partially because for the first time since 2017 they're consistently getting more than 4 hours of sleep in a stretch, but also because they've finally begun getting out of their agoraphobic introverted trauma shells and are hanging out with other grownups again.
What makes Frank and Ethel work? Beats us.
Directed by Wes Anderson. Narrated by Ed Norton. Frank played by a digitally de-aged Bill Murray, and Ethel by Margot Robbie. ★★★★☆
Yes to Wes and Ed. However, Frank is played by Sam Reid and Ethel is played by de-aged Maggie Gyllenhaal.
Her father is played by John Goodman, and her Grandmother (who loves me) is played by Danny Devito in drag.
★★★★★ A Masterpiece. Timeless Classic. 5 Minute standing ovation :)
Holy shit someone got laid because of the fedora rather than in spite of it.
Congratulations both on Frank and Ethels epic love story and on avoiding incellation.
I've written here before about my "relatively" healthy marriage, specifically about the importance of good communication, and am not interested in rehashing that. It also just feels like a minimum requirement and something that is likely common for any good relationship to last.
Reading some of these responses is a great way to be reminded that healthy relationships take many forms and what works for you might not for us. It reminds me a bit of my thoughts on parenting where there's no real "right" way to do it, there are many factors involved including the personalities of your spouse and kid(s), your support network, values, spare time and even spare funds.
I love reading about the highschool sweethearts with similar interests and shared activities. Both because of the synergy of passion and repudiation of the idea that opposites attract, but also as a reminder that having that doesn't automatically mean it's perfect or even easy, that all relationships are work and good ones are worth the effort.
My wife and I are about as opposite as it gets. Short and tall. Fiery and calm. Introverted and extroverted. Panic stations and cool under pressure. Instinctual and overanalyzing. Selfless and selfish. Well put together and rough around the edges. Worried about appearances and tactless.
Our interests also vary significantly. We come from very different cultural and parenting backgrounds. It feels at times that we are just two different people and not right for eachother.
We're always learning from eachother. We help each other consider what we would otherwise dismiss, or reconsider when it's appropriate to have empathy, or think logically. We've rubbed off on each other in mostly positive ways while pushing back on the negative ones.
We also share commonalities. We share similar values. We both love family and friends, hosting parties, imparting a feeling of community. We host international students in our home. We try to help in our communities and support those around us.
This post got away from me. My quick advice is to avoid feelings of resentment at all costs. Lay your cards out on the table and play it thru. Dont let things fester, resentment can kill the strongest bonds.
Beyond that, I'll offer what I believe is the key to our relationship...
Spontaneity. We are consistently told by others that we are the busiest family they know. Parties, outings, playdates, activities... We're usually busy and it can be exhausting, but also deeply rewarding. It makes vacations feel more deserved, makes friendships feel important while fleeting, makes you appreciate the big and the small. It makes downtime feel rewarding.
Maintaining a healthy relationship is alot of work but worth it. It models positive behavior to our kid and community, with the amazing benefit of attracting other positive people to our lives. It becomes contagious, addictive. Spread the love!
I think it's often true that opposites attract, and less often true that they can make it work long term. It's a testament to love, emotional intelligence and commitment when they manage it. Thanks for posting.
Indeed. I'm hoping for even more varied responses.
There are basics that mostly apply to all relationships (communication, patience, etc..) but really no absolutes.
This is so true. Relationships can afford some amount of unaddressed bitterness but there's a threshold when it starts to make everything harder, and eventually impossible.
I finally lost my virginity over a week ago to my current partner. We met on Okcupid over a month ago and after a really successful first date, I booked a hotel in Cardiff and spent Valentine's Day with her.
Not sure if it was down to nerves, a possible case of whisky dick, work stress (I'm being laid off in a few weeks), or even the type of condoms we tried, but I had a lot of performance issues. At first it was me struggling to even get an erection, and then later in the night when we tried to sleep, couldn't and ended up spooning, I was able to get it up but maintaining it was a different story.
All this time, she's been an absolute saint and like a rock to me. She kept assuring me everything is fine and that if I'm not comfortable with anything I can always say no. There's a lot I wish I could have done/tried with her, but it's a bummer that my soldier wasn't really cooperating.
If it helps, that's happened to me too. Only ever at the very beginning, after which there are never issues again.
It hasn't happened every time but after it happened a couple times (with different people) I started saying something up front "this might happen, if it does it isn't you" sort of thing.
I don't completely understand it but I assume it has something to do with the intimacy of sex in contrast to the reality that the person is still mostly a stranger. Whatever the cause it's never been a problem since it never recurrs after the first time... Or maybe it extended to the second time once, it's a bit hazy. Hopefully it'll be the same for you.
You could try avoiding masturbation leading up to the next time.
By the way congrats, it's great that she's been understanding and supportive, that's way more important than the first time being perfect. It almost never is anyway.
I have had a rather Goldilocks experience: my first relationship was too intense (abusive), my second relationship was not intense enough (passionless), and my third relationship is just right.
I consider my first relationship (five years) to be a failure. We had a close emotional bond, but our day-to-day existence was marred by his mood disorder, which became increasingly chaotic and hostile as time went on. He would not let me break up with him (I tried many times), and I ultimately had to go into hiding to get away. Those were dark times.
My second relationship was shorter (less than a year), but I consider it a success. After my first and only relationship turned abusive, I was scared that I was a bad girlfriend or that I'd never be able to have a normal relationship. My second relationship proved to me that I am actually human and capable of finding and functioning in a healthy relationship. While we never developed the closeness that I had in my first relationship, it was so relaxed and comfortable; even our breakup was delightfully serene! I entered the relationship terrified and came out of it confident — without which I wouldn't have had the courage to overcome the obstacles blocking my third relationship.
My third relationship (coming up on our fifteenth anniversary this year) is just plain good. It has the best aspects of both of my previous relationships, but honestly better: our emotional bond is stronger than I ever had with my hyper-passionate first ex, and our daily existence is more harmonious than I ever had with my super-easygoing second ex. It's better than I ever thought a relationship would be. We really had to fight for it, though: we are from opposite sides of the planet, and I could write long essays about the BS we had to go through to be together. It was a trial by fire — as it would be for anyone, but especially for us (we are both very risk averse by nature and we are both very practical, not romantic) — but it revealed depths of dedication and compatibility that we never knew we had.
I think it takes a fair amount of romance to get two people on opposite sides of the world together against their natures. Or it's a romantic story anyway. Thanks for posting!
The journey of becoming capable to show up for the right thing is often overlooked (especially early on in life). Finding the right person isn't enough if you're not the right person yet.
Mr. Tired and I have been together for 15 years and are still going strong. Of course, there are disagreements, upsets, annoyances on both sides, but what we've learned is to just be open about it, and to let yourself feel how you feel, even if the other partner is the one upsetting you or disagreeing with you. We never raise our voices at each other, unless it's to call one another over to do/look at something.
I think most of all, we're friends first, and our partnership is stronger for it. We get along, have similar moral compasses and views on the world (even if mine are much more left of his, and he's religious where I am not at all), and we have hobbies that we enjoy together, even if they're different hobbies that we can just do next to one another. We like spending time together and we like each other. We're also comfortable having different hobbies and going out without one another. He likes to go play board games at our local café, and I like to go out and get brunch with friends, and that's okay! We trust one another to have fun where they are, even without us. No one feels the need to snoop through the other's phone to make sure they are where they say they are.
Something I've learned over the years is that if there is something that's bothering me about Mr. Tired and I don't know how to bring it up to him, I talk to my best friends about the issue and get advice and insight on how to bring it up in a compassionate manner before I ever say something I will regret to him. He does the same to his best friend group. It helps that all of our best friends are friends with each other too, and several are partnered up with one another. I will never share his deepest, darkest secrets, but if I have a bone to pick, I don't want to come out swinging, because he's a sensitive person, as am I, so it's helpful to have a confidant who can help us figure out what we want to say.
I grew up in a home where screaming was the standard, and my parents didn't like each other, and couldn't even be in the same room as one another in the end of their marriage. I was often caught in the middle and had to figure out how to console both parents at the same time, while my older brother just recessed into his bedroom and hid instead. I was a "save the marriage" child, and that just made my relationship with one parent worse than the other. My parents never talked things out, they just let issues fester until one or the other (and sometimes both) snapped. It was a very clear education on what not to do with your partner.
We try to be the antithesis of how I grew up, and it's honestly not hard at all. Mr. Tired was witness to some of the yelling and arguments at my house, and I think at his house growing up, his parents never argued or disagreed in front of the kids, so I don't know if he ever saw his parents fighting (which is fine with me, arguments and yelling are stressful situations, and no one needs to deal with that).
Most of all, I think, at least in our case, actually liking one another is just as important as loving one another. We like spending time together, and we are just as happy hanging out at home together, doing nothing, playing games together, or doing separate activities in the same room as one another, as we are going out or traveling. (oh! Protip: if you can travel together with extended family, you can make it through anything).
Anyway, I guess what I'm trying to say can be boiled down to "trust one another, and talk to each other. Don't let issues fester, and don't be jealous."
I love how intentional it sounds like the two of you are about the relationship.
This is wise. It's easy to fall into the trap of not acknowledging negative feelings toward you partner because it doesn't fit some arbitrary idea of what love is supposed to look like.
When the reality is that, without meaning to, you're going to hurt and annoy and frustrate each other sometimes. It would be a red flag if you didn't.
Girlfriend and I met on the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV which has a free trial, and includes the entirety of A Realm Reborn, the award-winning Heavensward, and its second major expansion Stormblood. Play up to level 70 with no restrictions on playtime! Er... ahem. So we met doing roleplaying, bonded over dumb puns, and I had been dungeon mastering for a long time, and she loved the campaigns. After a few years and a few meetups, we moved her across the country into my house and have been living together ever since. Pretty sure she's the one, though- it's so crazy how well we mesh together. We've been going steady for maybe 3-4 years now. I got the ring- just a matter of when.