From: his@the-temple.East.Sun.COM (Howard Solomon - SunExpress Support Engineer)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: Re: long-term relationships...success sto
Date: 29 Dec 1992 21:16:24 GMT
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Distribution: world
Reply-To: his@the-temple.East.Sun.COM
NNTP-Posting-Host: the-temple.east.sun.com

In article 105749@bu.edu, kane@buast7.bu.edu (Hot Young Star) writes:
> At first I hesitated to respond to this, since my partner and I have been
> together only for a third of a decade. But then I heard that of all couples
> who legally married during 1989 (the year Mark and I met), 49% of them were
> now divorced. I guess that gives me a bit of privilege, having outlasted
> the near majority of our heterosexual peers.

Length of relationship is a state of mind, I find.  When people used to ask, I
would say:

x years, but it feels like 2x or 3x!

Now, the time together is more pleasant, more confortable, and does not feel
like an eternity.  For the record, Mark and I (a different Mark, I supect :-))
celebrated 8 years in October.  AND, for the first time, we got an anniversary
(belated) present from Mark's parents!  Even though everything has been fine
for years with the folks, this has always bugged me.  Now that my parents are
back together (after a 14 or so year separation, HALF my life!) I will bug them
next year.

> Well, to make a long, VERY long, story short, we just celebrated 3 1/3
> years together earlier this month with another total lunar eclipse. The
> inter-eclipse period, as we now like to refer to our growing relationship,
> has had basically three phases. The first year was the romance, the
> gleeful abandoning of independence for the sake of love. The second also
> lasted a year and began with our moving in together; it was a year of
> adjustment and compromise. Little habits we hadn't noticed suddenly became
> either extremely endearing or horribly annoying. We had some rough spots,
> but we treated ourselves to a three-week Hawaiian vacation at the end of
> two years together. The most recent year, the most recent phase, began with
> the realization that (perhaps prompted by our vacation) that the passion had
> indeed faded. This has had positive effects and negative effects on our
> relationship. At first, we felt a little lost. What now? We would have liked
> to have another couple for a role model, but our schedules had been so busy
> as to leave little time for socializing; most of our friends were either
> single or, if coupled, had not reached the stage where we found each other.
> On the other hand, we took our parents and relatives as an example and
> made the assumption that since they were presumably not sexually passionate
> about each other anymore, they might perhaps accept Mark and me as a couple,
> too. So this past year has been principally about coming out as a couple to
> our families, and about keeping the relationship fresh.

Our romance period was very brief for reasons I will not get into on such a
public forum (many of you who know me already know, not a big thing, actually, but...)
The irritating little habits don't go away, you just get used to some of them.
We had only one 'role model' longterm couple, but they just weren't "right" as such.
Like everyone, we learned as we went.  For the record, both sides of the family
accept us and have for some time now.  

> 
> On the latter note, we've had some success through reasserting our independence
> in making our own, new platonic friendships. Setting a routine night of
> the week where we "do our own thing" has been helpful. Personally, I need
> this space, since Mark is a gregarious person with a desire for constant
> audiovisual stimulation, and I'm more a bookworm and gym-freak. Sometimes it
> hasn't been easy letting go of each other so as we can assert some mutual
> independence, but we both recognize the need.

I agree with the importance of some "space".  We don't get out as much as we
used too and get out alone even less.  It is nice to have times to socialize alone,
though.  (Business trips are a nice example)

> Brian

Howard (back again after an absence.  How do some of you keep up with the volume?!?)


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Howard I. Solomon			|
Software Support Engineer, SunExpress	|
his@east.sun.com			|
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