Need some advice-Love & Marriage

My husband and I met through a mutual while I was in college (Jan. 1998). At the time we met we were dating other people and (for the most part) were happy with them. We started talking and getting to know each other some. Sometime between Oct. and Dec. 1999 I realized things weren’t working out with the guy I was seeing, so I broke things off. Hubby had previously broken up with his girlfriend (but I didn’t know it or my ex would have been gone sooner).

He found out I was single again and asked mutual friend’s fiancée (now ex-wife 😆 ) for my email address/AIM name. She passed them along and we started talking even more. By time the Dec. 31, 1999, rolled around we decided we wanted to start dating (all of this is long distance by the way!).

We only get to see each other one or two weekends a month when we get together at our mutual friend’s house for role playing games, but we talked nearly every night either on the phone or via AIM/email.

We got engaged (to my parent’s shock) Dec. 31, 2000, not long after hubby entered the army (he was on leave in between basic and AIT). Once that happened the phone calls were more infrequent, so we started writing actual letters. After AIT he got stationed to Germany for 2 years so it meant we couldn’t get married until June 2003.

I can’t say when exactly (other than late August 2000) that I knew he was the one for me. Our relationship has always been on the slow, warm happiness side. How did I know he was the one for me? I know it sounds corny but, I felt like I had found my other half. We got along on almost everything, but could respect each others differences when we didn’t agree.

I have lousy taste in men so I’m not much help. But the one person who I felt I was suppose to be with didn’t work out. There were things he wanted that I didn’t and vice versa. We’re still good friends, but our lives do match up at all.

However, I think you have to work a relationship. There is no happily ever after and there will be fights. My aunt had one of those relationships that seemed perfect. He loved her and she loved him, but she said it wasn’t always good and sometimes you have to work at it to make it work. My uncle died in December, they were married for over 40 years. He carried a picture of her in his wallet from when she was in High School. It was the first picture she had given him, and he knew the first time he saw her that he wanted to marry her. Apparently he showed it to anybody to who would look.

I’m 37, you think you feel old…Fiance and I have been together 12 years now, and we’re getting married next year. We met through my ex-boyfriend in fact, though fiance is not a rebound, there was someone between the two of them that I was with for a year. So, we knew each other as friends for 5 years, we dated for 1 year before we moved in together…and here we are 12 years later (we got engaged last December on my birthday). It doesn’t seem that long but when I count the years, it’s like “OMG, have we really been together that long??” 😮 There have been up’s and down’s, just like every relationship I think, you have to learn to compromise (and to communicate) if you want it to last. Communication is the hard part for me, when I get upset, I get quiet, I don’t want to talk, I don’t want to listen, just leave me alone.

Honey, you’re still young. At 23, I had no idea where my life was headed but I did know that I wasn’t ready to commit to one person for the rest of my life. Think about that, one person for the rest of your LIFE. Even now it gives me the freaks sometimes but we’re so comfortable with one another that I don’t really think about it very often anymore. I think that we were lucky, we were friends before we dated so we knew that we had common interests, common likes and dislikes. Maybe he isn’t quite the fanatic I am about my Windstones and my books but he tolerates them, as long as we don’t go broke buying all this stuff. 😉 But we’re the same personality-wise, pretty much. We’ve found common ground that we can share and then we have things that belong just to each of us. He watches sports all year, I swear when hockey, baseball and basketball are all on a the same time, I don’t see him for days. But it works for us.

I think a combination of logic and heart are needed in any relationship. The falling in love, deep passionate feelings are wonderful to start. But there has to be something else there that will keep you together when you step out of the bedroom and deal with the real world. My last relationship was all passion and romance, but passion and endorphins only last so long, and we didn’t have enough outside of that to keep us going. Luckily we both realized that and ended in a way that we could still be friends.

So I guess that’s my two cents worth. Passion is great, but there had better be something else in the relationship to hold you together when that first rush fades. And again, your still really young in the grand scheme of things. Just because your friends are getting married and such doesn’t mean that you have to. Don’t rush in to anything that you may regret (or need a court order for).

I have only been married for a little over a year, but when I agreed to marry my first husband just so I could stay by my current husband (even though we had NEVER dated or talked about a relationship) I should have realized something was up. All I can say is that whenever I think of him, see him, smell him, I smile and am content and just feel like I did something right. I love being with him. We have not even lived together yet, but we knew each other for 4 years before we married, and dated for 2 of them. I will say that my current husband is not my typical man. I used to have a requirment about my man being over 6ft tall…kinda like your blue or green eyes requirment… but my husband is only 5’10. When it comes down to it, it will not matter if your man has blue eyes or no eyes… when you really love him, that is just not note worthy.

As for your friends and all… most marriages end in divorce, over half. Statistically, the younger you marry, the more likely you are to get divorced. Before everyone who is 21 and married to their soul mate gets all irate, I am just stating statistics… YOU may be perfectly happy and stay together forever, but the MAJORITY of you will not. Why? Because people at this age are not done maturing and changing… the people you and your mate are now may not be as compatable as the people you will be in 8 years.

Dont be in a rush to get to the altar and learn to trust your head and your heart. I think common values and goals are what makes a relationship last… along with many other things, of course… but if your values and goals are not similar, there is no point even starting a relationship.

My husband and I were friends for eons before we ‘dated’ and finally married. Does anyone care about this stuff? Oh well– here I go telling it anyhow! Back in 1998 an online friend of mine introduced me to her online friend, and thus we became friends. Back then, almost all of my friends were online, since I live in a small town and didn’t really have many friends in school. Some years later he flew out a few times to visit me, and it was purely good friends fun time, we used to joke that we were long lost siblings. Eventually we were talking on the phone one time, as we tended to do nearly daily, and he slipped up accidentally that he loved me. He was so shy and worried that it’d wreck our friendship, but really it just made things fall into place. It was a slow, warm type of happiness, it sounds so corny but it was like a puzzle that came together, soul-mates kind of feeling.
We moved in together out of circumstance and lived with his parents for a while, then mine, since some bad times had fallen upon me and I didn’t have a penny to my name back then. The best part is that our friendship didn’t change at all, it only got closer. We are still all noogies and fart jokes and running around throwing stuff at each other to this day. We got married in 2007, mostly to make it official and keep taxes a bit less complicated and such, but it was only to make it official since in our hearts we were already bound/married/whatever.
Time has not decreased that feeling– it’s only made it stronger. People might laugh and think I’m a liar, but I am totally honest when I say that we don’t fight… when we are both feeling stressed/frustrated/whatever emotions that usually gets people into trouble and fight, then we fight in a different way. We play-fight, wrestle (in a completely G-rated way, you guys! I see your dirty minds working), wedgies, yes… act like 3rd graders fighting, and that gets all of it out of our systems then we just lay there, laughing… it’s great.

So, we have known each other 11 years, were friends for all those years. We became romantically involved for 5 of those years, lived together for 3.5 of those years, and have been married for 2.5 of those years. XD I hope that helps…! Oh, and I’m 27.

No. And if you do, to me, then it’s the wrong relationship.

I dont feel like I am compomising a dream. My husband knows what I would like to do, and while he does not really share my passion (animals) he is ready and willing to support it and listen to me talk about it. Same for him… he wants to be a pilot and maybe one day go work for NASA and go up in space. He is a pilot now, and while I dont share his desires, I can certainly share his interests. And Medley is Mos Def right.