Part 1 here.
As someone who didn’t know how to be in the ‘normal’ moments of a relationship, it’s no surprise why I kept creating drama after drama.
It’s no surprise why when the relationship became ‘boring’, I looked for ways out.
Fast forward to me now, at thirty years of age. I’m happily married and I realize the key to that happiness isn’t at all in the grand romantic gestures. Sure, those gestures warm my heart. But what matters are the moments in between. The everyday ‘normal’ moments that I used to think were ‘boring’.
It’s thanking your partner when they bring the bins out.
It’s kissing them good morning and greeting them hello with a hug.
It’s having a laugh when one of us farts.
It’s them bringing you a Krispy Kreme on their way home.
It’s cuddling in bed while talking about each person’s day.
It’s sitting next to each other — you reading and them playing golf on their phone.
It’s playing poker and betting on household chores.
As Mark Manson puts it:
“I think, if you look at a relationship, I actually think it should be as boring as possible. And that sounds really weird to people but if you think about it, a really happy 80-year-old couple that’s been together for 60 years, the reason that they’ve been together for 60 years, it isn’t because they took all these private jets and they had these crazy vacations and “Oh my God, look at their pictures.”
It’s because that they were able to be boring together. They are able to spend year after year, sitting around the house, talking about the same boring stuff, watching TV, watching movies, cooking dinner, and it went fine. There was nothing exciting, there’s nothing blowing up, there’s no huge drama, and dishes flying.”
When I look back, most of my relationships failed because of the unrealistic expectations I had. Of how the relationship should be. Of how my ex partner should be. All of it based on my notion of ‘romance’.
And it’s not just expectations of grand romantic gestures and words, I realised I had subconscious expectations about how things should be based on ‘gender roles’.
I’ll get into that in the next post.
In the meantime, what are some of your expectations in a relationship and a partner?
(To be continued)
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