I was reading my stories yesterday (Ask A Manager weekend thread), and there was someone asking for some outside perspective on her relationship and whether she should leave. The issue was that her common-law husband would never admit he was wrong, and it came to a head when she was out of town for a wedding, and he went out with friends. That wasn’t the issue. What was the issue was that he had a flirty friend (FF) he’s known forever, and she and another friend spent the night with hubby. FF wore his boxers and slept in the spare room. Hubby didn’t tell his wife, and she found out from someone else.
The OP (original poster) kept stressing that she wasn’t the jealous type and how fine she would have been if he had just told her–though maybe not about the boxers part. It was interesting to see the responses. Some took her at face value at her not being the jealous type, some questioned her on that. Some didn’t see the boxers as a big deal, but most did. Some gently told her she didn’t need to have a reason to get out, and others mused that by focusing so much on how the message was delivered (by a third party), she might be not owning her hurt feelings. Still others pointed out how her husband brushing away her feelings is the real issue and how he probably won’t change. One person suggested he might be trying to push her to leave (because the behaviors have been escalating, and they’d already tried couples counseling for a few sessions until he quit).
By the time I finished reading the post, I was exhausted, and I was on the side of leave him. Not because of the incident itself, necessarily (though I am on the side of wearing someone’s boxers being too intimate. You couldn’t give her shorts or sweats? And not telling your wife isn’t good either), but because the OP sounded done with the relationship, but not sure she had a good enough reason to walk away.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from reading advice columns, it’s that you can end a relationship at any time. You don’t need what other people would consider a good reason–but because our society is so invested in the narrative of coupledom and that you’re not a complete person without someone attached to your hip (especially as a het woman, even in 2019), and you still hear how a bird in the hand, etc., etc., etc., it’s no wonder that people hold onto relationships for way past their expiration date. Not to mention sunken cost fallacy, and it’s understandable.
To swerve dramatically to the point of this post: Everyone has deal breakers, and it doesn’t matter if they make sense to other people. You’re the one who has to live with the person you’re dating, so you get to dictate the ‘rules’ as it were. Besides, the little things that you try to tell yourself should not bother you will grow and grow until you can’t take it any longer and you scream at your beloved for leaving the cap off the toothpaste tube one too many times.
First of all, it’s important to know yourself and what you really want from a relationship. Not what you think you should want or what other people tell you to want, but what you really want. For me, I realized in my early twenties that I did not want children. I am a very indecisive person, but once I realized I didn’t have to have children (despite what life and my two different cultures tried to indoctrinate me when I was a child), I felt a weight that I didn’t even know I was carrying tumble off my shoulder. I have never regretted it, and I regret getting out of bed (off the couch) every morning (afternoon, usually).
I had so many people telling me that I would change my mind, that I would feel differently when I had my own, that I was too young to really know, that I must think they were stupid for wanting/having children, and a dozen other things that just made no sense to me. My favorite response (in my head) to, “You’ll change your mind” was, “I can, but you can’t” if they already had children.
I didn’t get the anger for a long time, but I finally realized that it had to do with the status quo. Many people get married and have children without thinking about it (especially twenty years ago), and the fact that not only did I not follow the status quo, I ignored it completely. I didn’t apologize or grovel or say, “I love kids” before prefacing my decision not to have them. I was gleefully and jubilantly anti-having-of-the-children (for me), and that’s what made them angry. Me bucking ‘the system’ without a second thought stirred up their own doubts about wanting to be parents, but they couldn’t voice that. It was, “I did what I was supposed to do, so why should you be able to do something different?”
Marriage went down the shitter when I was in my early/mid-thirties. I already knew I didn’t want to live with anyone, which made marriage a bad option in general. Whenever I thought of yoking myself to one person for the rest of my days, well, let’s just say my reaction wasn’t one of joy and/or glee. I denied it for a long time because did I really need another way in which I was a weirdo? Yes, apparently, I did.
Then, in my late thirties, I started questioning if I wanted a monogamous for-life-relationship at all. I decided after much thought that I did not. I thought that maybe I wanted a situation where I had one primary relationship and other sex buddies, but that didn’t really appeal to me, either. I went through all the configurations in my mind, and I realized that I wasn’t sure I wanted any relationship at all. There are many reasons for it, and the more I thought about it, the more it felt true to me.
I like being alone most of the time. Me and Shadow, of course. The only time I ever feel like I want someone around is when I’m sick, and that’s only so they will bring me gluten-free/dairy-free chicken soup. Otherwise, I am perfectly happy to be tooling on my own, doing whatever I want, whenever I want all day long. I miss sex, but companionship? Not so much. I also hate the idea that it’s childish to want to be single. When people talk about being in a relationship (or having children, come to think of it), it’s often in terms of, “Yes, I had to give up a lot to be in this relationship, but that’s what relationships are about–sacrifice.” I know there are trade-offs, but it doesn’t seem worth it to me, especially dating men. Het relationships just seem like so much fucking work for the women.
I also know that a big part of my anti-relationship attitude is because of what I’ve seen from my parents and my own issues with codependency/BPD issues/attachment issues and more. The conventional wisdom is to work on those issues so I can be in a healthy relationship, but…what if I just don’t? I mean, working on my own issues is a good thing, but what if I don’t have an end goal of being in a relationship? Revolutionary!
If I were to date, though, there are a few deal breakers for me. One, the person has to have a passion for something. Ideally, it’d be something creative, such as art or writing, but I’m willing to consider other passions as well. The person has to show that they are eager and inquisitive, and a thirst for learning is highly appreciated as well. To tie into that, the person has to be roughly as intelligent as I am, both in smartness and in emotional intelligence. I think really fast, and I need someone who can keep up. I know myself too well that I’ll be frustrated otherwise. As for EQ–well, I feel alone much of the time because of it, so again, I need someone in the general vicinity of where I am.
Number two, someone who doesn’t drink. At all. Preferably someone who is not ‘on the wagon’, but someone who doesn’t like to drink. All the people I’ve dated have drank a lot/had issues with drinking/were alcoholics. My theory is because my dad has a lot of the traits without actually being a drinker. Anyway, I hate drunk behavior. I loathe it, actually. I hate being the only sober person (newsflash: you are not as funny/creative/witty as you think you are when you’re smashed), and I have a very low tolerance for dealing with drunk behavior.
I don’t drink, as is probably obvious by now, and I have known way too many people who think they can handle their drinking and can’t in my life. It’s woven into the fabric of our society, actually. So much focus on drinking and getting drunk. I read/hear people’s rationalizations for their drinking, and the denial is strong. I acknowledge that my repulsion for drinking is an outlier, but it’s not something that is going to change anytime soon. I have tried to tell myself that I would be ok with someone drinking occasionally, but that’s a ‘should’ I’m trying to make myself believe.
Here are some quick hits. No Republicans (especially now), enthusiastic and open about sex, not want to live together/get married/have kids, someone comfortable being together and not talking, and someone who will not get on my case about my Dark Souls obsession and love for 80s hair metal power ballads.
It’s all moot because I don’t really want to date at this point. I do want sex, but that is in theory easier to find. In theory.