I'm in a long term committed relationship. I thought it was 15 years, but was informed a week ago that nope its only been 14 years. Great - this comes from the guy who wasn't even aware it was our anniversary that he not only marked on the paper calendar but supposedly set on his Facebook Events calendar and his email calendar and still didn't know what day it was until I handed over the minor wrapped gift on 'The Day'.
But he knows we have been together 14 years. How? Because Sirius, our Black Lab/Rott mix is 13 and we got her the year after he moved in with me.
We measure the length of our relationship by a dog's life and her birthdays (which ironically he
never forgets and insists we have a minor party on each of their birthdays (two dogs now - it was real fun when we had two dogs and two cats
).
Perfect couple - yeah sure, in public, in the eyes of the world. We are by no means perfect - as a couple or as individuals.
Perfect relationship? Nope. There have been years where I laid there in the wee hours of the morning next to him in bed listening to him doing that annoying thing - you know -
breathing and thinking up fantastic ways to commit the perfect murder. He has a double indemnity clause on his life insurance polices (yes plural) so If I could make it look like an accident - well not only would I be freed from that annoying breathing he does but be rolling in money for a while.
We are comfortable with each other and content. We have our years of passion and our long cold snaps. There have been a couple real doozies of fights - screaming, shouting flying crockery... you get the idea. But there are many more long quiet nights were we just sit there in silence and enjoy that mutual silence. No need to fill the air with mindless chatter, we are comfortable with the silences.
We have our moments of joy, our moments of grief. Our moments of war, our moments of peace. We take separate vacations and do our own things - I hunt and camp, he goes off flying to exotic places like Portland Oregon - He's planning a trip to the UK - I frankly wouldn't travel to a place that doesn't speak understandable English - I do hope he has fun.
By and large we are content. Not 'happy' - but then being happy all the time is as bad if not worse than being sad all the time.
Before this long haul, working relationship, I tried the 'perfect' relationship with other men. These relationships mostly failed because we had set our standards way too frakking high on what to achieve and how we should feel. We failed to understand that that first passionate, hard core over sexed flush of love is not the only part of love. We didn't know that love mellows out and that love goes from overtly romantic and hot passion to a more cool sensible thing that allows both people to breath and actually function in society as well as as a couple.
No I am not living happily ever after - I am living 'mostly contended for a very long time'....
Set your goals for the realistic, attainable - contentment, comfort, commitment, companionship - not for that hard passionate drippy love that only lasts a minute or two and gets in the way of living life. All knights in shining armor have tarnished armor - a lot of them had deep deposits of corrosion and rust in that armor. Here and there are sparkle of shine - that is being human, that is being real.