Do you sometimes have those moments where you look at the person you’ve been dating for a while and wonder ‘is this ever going to work out?’ I bet you do, and it’s probably for such a wide range of reasons. Nothing is ever the same as before – the things you stress about, fight about, feel hurt about with one person might be completely different from those things you feel the same emotions about with someone else.
Here’s a really big secret…
They are probably viewing you and your relationship together very differently too. That’s if they are wise, mature emotionally, and willing to enter into this one with a fresh perspective.
This brings me quickly to the main point I want to make. If you are not viewing things differently, and your new beau is also not treating your relationship as fresh new thing, then you’re potentially headed for disaster. Because wanting to find all the similarities in each other based on past loves – the good and the bad ones – will leave you always questioning if it’s ‘the same enough’, instead of pondering the more necessary questions of ‘is this good enough?’
Perfection just does not exist in a relationship. You can get close to it maybe. Where you know you’re the other half of each other – one starts, the other stops, the poets all wrote about your love, the music all started to play just for you – all that kind of love really does exist and near perfect matches do happen. But, real ‘perfection’ does not exist and being together and thinking you’re going to find it, won’t make it happen.
What you can expect instead, is to find someone you click with. Maybe that person is amazing, wonderful, brilliantly funny, makes you laugh, makes you feel deep beautiful feelings. But there will always be little things that you have to decide on whether to accept or not.
Deciding to Accept, or not, things such as:
Facial hair, tidy habits, bathroom habits, humor, body shape, eating preferences, movies and shows to enjoy, energy levels, drinking attitudes, children, parents, parental styles, travel desires…
These can become exhaustive lists. And some things you have to say – well I’m OK with this, but I draw the line at X, Y or Z.
And that’s OK.
Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff!
By the time we hit our mid years, we’re able to consider our own wants and needs ahead of a partner in most instances. But compromising our values and those things most important to us are where trouble can strike. Ask yourself if you can see yourself turning on your new love and snarling over something as silly as how they sing in the shower, slurp their coffee, leave the lights on, or whatever else might seem mundane and of no consequence now. Then compare those bigger things and ponder your ability to measure out the difference between the big stuff and the small stuff. If you don’t think you can, then you’re going to struggle with the really big stuff. Like each other’s children, money matters, ambitions, direction in life, legal attitudes, sex.
If you have to suppress everything about yourself, or you expect your new boyfriend or girlfriend to do that, then your relationship is not a relationship at all, you’re simply caught up in trying to replace someone else.
PS: It’s ALL Small Stuff!
If you have a genuine desire and ability to see someone as an entirely new, fresh, and beautiful adventure, that’s a relationship. Now it’s a matter of working out how to keep that going.
Don’t sweat the small stuff. And really it is all small stuff – except when it’s really not. But you’re a grown up. ‘Adulting’, regardless of how frustrating it can be, is what we do and part of ‘adulting is making choices’. You have the power to decide your attitude – so choose. 😉