National Blog Posting Month

Not that you asked me....

Long, long ago (well, sometime in mid-summer) Meno had gotten to pondering and wondered if anyone at all knew the secret to a lasting relationship. I was still raw from ending a non-lasting relationship, which poked at the scar from the end of the supposedly lasting relationship, and at first I made some off-hand comment (not a joke, mind you, because at the time, I wondered, too, and it was no laughing matter).

Then, because the shower is a place that incites deep thinking because there's not much else to do than lather/rinse/repeat, I started thinking about my experiences and those of friends, of marriages that lasted and those that failed, of the stuff that seems to go wrong and maybe what might keep it from going wrong. (Though the raw materials also matter; if two people aren't mean to be, then they ought to part ways honorably and get on with life.) Underneath the actions and awareness about the relationship is a foundation made up of pre-existing damage, training/experience, and willingness to bother with any of it in order to actually have/keep a lasting relationship. (There is a commercial on tv now that laments our disposable society, from noses to relationships.)

Since divorce, I ponder words like "committed" and "lasting." I wonder what they mean, really. In the face of evidence from some who are devoted and committed and adore their spouses and families I cannot make any sweeping claim that such relationships are impossible – because there they are lasting! (In my mind, I somehow link them to a beautiful teacup someone gave me – the gold is worn off it from a lot of wear, but it is lovely to look at, special to use and because it is delicate, I take great care in protecting it.)

But here I sit, in the strange world of not really single but certainly not half of a set, and I speak with others who wear the same label (though once your kids move out, maybe you reclaim the mantle of "singlehood") and we wonder: What's around that bend? What's in the crystal ball for years from now?

I watched my grandparents remind each other to take their pills and my grandmother bend over to give big smoochie kisses to her husband of silver and golden anniversaries. Even in her dementia, she wondered where he was and it must have broken his heart when she didn't seem to know who he was and that he was right there next to her.

If you break the bond you started out with, is it ever possible to form another long-lasting one? Are we too afraid? Are we fundamentally flawed? Are too many of us lacking the skills? Is it, in fact, just not a natural state of being for humans and those lasting relationships are the exception rather than the rule? Is a series of monogamous committals (or, for those long dateless periods, solo hobbies of interest…) a more natural mode of existence?

Oh, don't listen to me. This is just the grown-up version of the Dangerous B00k "Advice on Girls" post (see previous) coming to you live from Splitsville. It's me wondering, because I wonder. And perhaps I wonder especially at Thanksgiving when everyone else seems delighted to dive into their dysfunctional family brouhahas and – while I choose it for myself – I too often am attacked by at least a few hours of gee, why am I all alone.

Back to Meno's question then. Lasting relationships. If you've got one, how do you keep it going? If you wish for one, what do you need to be prepared to do? In the shower that day, my brain went into women's magazine advice column mode and this is what I came up with:

Be concerned with someone's happiness other than your own
For there to be communication, you have to communicate
There must be balance of some sort [I'm not saying it has to be even, just variety]; you cannot make one person, one job, one thing, your entire focus
Be prepared to work through crappy times; we don't expect to like our family all the time even though we love them, why do we doubt so monstrously when we find we don't like our Other for a time?
Stay connected; I suspect sitting next to each other watching tv every night doesn't really count
I observe people who compartmentalize the negative aspects of their lives – they shove the bad stuff somewhere else and figure it's gone. It's not. Old stuff, new stuff – doesn't matter. Deal with it and get rid of it once and for all. Compartmentalizing may be effective for getting through life, but it's only skimming and no way to live.
In the same vein, yet different: Feel. Be aware of what is within – otherwise, the matter grows and grows and grows – and then explodes. The explosion comes and no one may understand why because at that point there is just disaster splattered all over the wall. (If you don't allow yourself to feel, you won't even know where the explosion came from – and who wants to go through life like that?)
If you are thinking it, your Other is wondering if you are thinking it, and maybe elaborating it into something even worse. It will create friction. Talk about it. If you don't know how to talk about it, go see a therapist who will teach you how to talk about it. The greatest gift of therapy for me has been how to communicate, how to acknowledge anger (mine, others'), etc.
Kids will suck you dry; realize this and be prepared to cope by taking turns freaking out, laughing, counseling, taking escape-one-person-at-a-time-for-decompression-vacations, whatever inventive, creative thing can be devised. (I adore the scene in "Ya-Ya Sisterh00d" when A. Judd's character loses it with the kids, leaves them with the housekeeper, jumps in the big ol' P0ntiac convertible and heads to the beach, where she wakes in the morning to a ticking clock, the sound of gulls and waves, and a tidy, sparsely furnished room far removed from home and its convolutions.)
Try and see things from the other person's point of view. Appreciate the other person. (To my mind, it sucks making every meal every day of every year and I don't think my mom ever really got the credit she deserved for slogging through that chore for decades because it's so day-to-day , so background to the Big Events in life, that it is the sort of thing that slips notice and valuation).
Insecurities are fine, to a point. I used to think the great thing about a relationship was that you could let it all out: the fears, insecurities, dark secrets. You'd each support the other in those scary places. Now I suspect that after awhile, those fears you have begin to take on a life of their own and the Other may start believing them all and seeing you quite differently from how you want to be seen. Don't fake it; don't put up a front. But shine a light on them for yourself alone. Figure out which are real problems you want to share with the Other and which are insecurities they won't be able to help with that you'd best work on yourself. Take those to friends or a therapist if you need help.
Trust. Keep working on trust always and forever. Never betray the trust. Once it is gone, it is gone forever. Forever.

That's me in my advice columnist guise. Anyone else want to take a crack at it? We've got time before Valentine's Day. If we really manage to nail them all down, we can make them into a deck of cards, add sex positions and make it a party game for two!