Please share: Relationships, Engagement and Marriage

[Irulan]

The physical part of a relationship, I think, gets overrated and after 10 years, we are in a comfortable, low key kinda rhythm that suits me. Physical closeness is much more important.

mmm beg to disagree. Sure I think intimacy changes over the years, but at least for us, the sex has gotten better and better and better over the years. We make a point of keeping that part of our relationship on track and part of our focus. We couldn't have what we have without the other parts of our marriage really working well. We are 29 years into this thing, and I just can't imagine "it" being any better.

I.

[Brandi]

mmm beg to disagree. Sure I think intimacy changes over the years, but at least for us, the sex has gotten better and better and better over the years. We make a point of keeping that part of our relationship on track and part of our focus. We couldn't have what we have without the other parts of our marriage really working well. We are 29 years into this thing, and I just can't imagine "it" being any better.

I.

Right on! Sometimes I am in aww over our's. You would think after alomost 22 years you would be bored or something. But it never get's dull for either of us. Sure we have had a few bad spells. He was taking a medication once that really hurt that part of our relationship. We fixed that once we figured it out. He is so attractive to me. And I to him. Even though I am not that cute tight bodied 19 year old he first met. But I look pretty good for a 40 year old. And my dh who is 50 can ride like the wind and looks really good for his age. People think he is my age!

[ikkin]

Right on! Sometimes I am in aww over our's. You would think after alomost 22 years you would be bored or something. But it never get's dull for either of us. Sure we have had a few bad spells. He was taking a medication once that really hurt that part of our relationship. We fixed that once we figured it out. He is so attractive to me. And I to him. Even though I am not that cute tight bodied 19 year old he first met. But I look pretty good for a 40 year old. And my dh who is 50 can ride like the wind and looks really good for his age. People think he is my age!

oh, and more more thing related to the story above. i'm 29. the first time my hubby and i had sex i was 26 and it was literally AWFUL! the worst sex ever! awkward, embarrassing, etc. and it came on the tail of this totally romantic night with a fire and candles and all that cheese! it took a decent amount of time for us to find, ahem, our "stride" physically. but we never made an issue of it. never focused on what was wrong. and now, three years later, we're WAY better together. we laugh about that first time now. and we just keep improving, it just keeps getting more and more toe curling and fun.

for what its worth...

[newfsmith]

Start with the upshot: next March Dan & I will celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary. We love and treasure each other, both of us having had the experience of waiting for the other to come out of major surgery, and realizing that the most important person in our world was in that bed with all those tubes. We have gone through our personal rough spots and rough patches in our marriage, but we have never considered that we wanted to separate. It is hard to say why our bond has stayed firm, all logic says we should not have gotten married at all. We did just about everything "wrong" according to the marriage counselers.

Dan's father was a best-selling author, mine was a hog-farmer. Dan's mother was also an author and an artist, mine was a farmer's wife and Avon representative. Commonality: our parents were self-employed.

Dan grew up in Scarsdale, NY; I grew up on a farm 7 miles from a town of 3,700. Commonality: good elementary education, Dan in one of the best school systems in the country, me in the intensely personal 1 room school house with a caring teacher.

Dan was raised as an agnostic Jew. I was raised a Methodist.

Dan went to MIT at 16, with advanced placement. I went to the U. of Wisconsin with deficiencies in foreign language, English and Math.

We met in a lab, had one date then Dan left the country for 3 months. We wrote daily about everything we thought about. Dan called on Christmas day to propose. The connection was so bad that neither of us was sure of what we had heard. He returned in Jan., we were married in March. To everyone's astonishment, we didn't have our first child for 5 years.

I sometimes think we thought more about our lives and dreams in those months Dan was away than we would have if he had stayed on campus. At any rate, we had written about a lot of issues that don't get mentioned in ordinary dating. When you write something, then wait 7 or 8 days to hear the response, it tends to make you more honest. You can't just say "Oh yeah, I love kids too" as casually as you say "Wasn't that a great movie?". There is greater intention in the written word.

How did we know we were ready? I've no idea. We had both been watching each other before our first date, and both had avoided sitting down at the post-course party until we were the only ones standing and could sit next to each other. Without having even talked, we both had keyed on each other. I'm fairly practical, but I guess I do believe in love at first sight.