Dating

[Uneunsae]

I know everyone says this, but... I feel like there's such a huge generation gap between myself and people 10 years younger than me. I'm 33 btw.

Maybe we're in the same generation. I don't know the rules as far as that goes.

[Bowyn Aerrow]

Young people have this expectation that 'true love' means no fights.

Quite the contrary. Real true love, long lasting, life long marriages are war-zones where the fighting continues nonstop. Arguments and bickering ARE communication. Sure perhaps not as healthy as the psychologist's tool set for communication, but it is effective communication.

There are also stages to love. One of those stages is the power struggle stage. This is typically the blow up stage where everything is blood sport all out war. It is not a stage that movies, fairy tales and contemporary myth and legend of 'love' deals with - if anything we totally ignore it thus leading to the myth-conception that 'true love' never fights.

Kids (youth) are given a short hand, and a deck stacked against them.

Your 20's are a huge deal. You won't understand just how huge they are until you are about 30. you will look back and see that your conceptions of what being adult is needed important lessons and experience to temper with reality.

There are ton of myths you and nearly everyone your age need to wade through. I don't envy you that. This aspect is but one.

So when? Depends on the individual. It didn't hit me until around age 30. But then I took the hard road to learning - meaning I stuck to being concrete - thoroughly mixed and firmly set in my myth-conceptions. I've known people who got their shit remarkably together by age 22.

This issue is a problem of yours AND a problem of whomever you are dating. You both need to have some idea of reality when it comes to dating/relationships. I fear that experience is the only teacher that gets the points necessary.

So keep swinging that bat, try to take away from each failed attempt at relationship whatever useful lesson you can. Eventually you will click with a guy who has swung as often as you and you both will know that this 'argument' is just a speed bump that doesn't have to slow the relationship down - who needs suspension in a relationship anyways?

[MrMom]

I was only 19 when I met my husband Thank God he was older (28) --- we would argue and I would carry on with all sort of dramatic posturing and announce that I was leaving and he would say "Nah...you're not", simply ignoring my Academy Award level performance.
The posts I found most useful here were Borg and Bowyn Aerrow --- total reality speak. Sometimes I feel like I'm 100 years old when I hear people going on about dating woes. I don't get the giving up if things aren't perfect.
I was telling someone that my husband and I had words the other night and my daughter got upset when I raised my voice and he said that he had NEVER raised his voice to his BF and couldn't imagine doing it and all I could think was, Oh sweetheart, just you wait...

[Jake]

I know everyone says this, but... I feel like there's such a huge generation gap between myself and people 10 years younger than me. I'm 33 btw.

Maybe we're in the same generation. I don't know the rules as far as that goes.

We are in the same generation yes, a generation is 20 years appart, but when you were growing up, there was no facebook, a laptop was very expensive, computers were not as powerful, Internet did exist but not for the masses, we were going outside, there was not as many seasons of many shows giving you an unrealistic and utopic view of the real world. We are in the same generation but 10 years apart nowadays does feels like a whole generation. There are no rules. I look at my son going to school with his laptop, cell phone, and many electronic gadgets and during recess they all meet together to look at each other's score they had on whatever games they played online the night before.

Yes Borg69 is right, they are barely parented, but it's not because, we parents aren't trying, the world wasn't welcome in our houses when we were younger. Parents are very challenged today as well, while my son was growing up I would have loved my wife or I to stay home instead of dumping him at the daycare and let strangers educates him, but as technologies advanced so did society and the economy became more important than parenting. I for once say that I didn't choose that. And I'm certain that many parents didn't either.