This week our subject is love the second time around. I suspect that when most people look at that phrase, they think of a new partner for that second time around. There are other options, though. In a long term relationship, the individuals inevitably change and at one point or another they grow apart. That is life.If they want to salvage that relationship, they will make an effort to find something that will pull them back together again. If married, they start with an advantage right from the beginning. Marriage isn't nearly as easy to walk away from as a less formal relationship. There are joint bank accounts and joint ownership in cars, homes, apartment leases--and that doesn't even address the question of children and pets. So marriage acts like a temporary band aid, holding the relationship together until the couple can work on that second time around.
The house hunk and I have put in our forty years. In that time, we've had a second time around and a third time around and... That's pretty much how most marriages work. Somewhere around the twenty-five to thirty year mark the children start to leave home. Empty nesters look at each other and suddenly discover they don't have a clue about the stranger they're living with.
They have two options. They can continue to drift apart. Or they can start doing things together until they discover a new love and commitment. No, it's not the same as when they first married. The out of control passion isn't there so much, but there's a stronger sense of togetherness and the comfort that comes from a partner that sees you with all the warts and blemishes and love handles and still believes that you're desirable. This new love is confident enough to try new things and adventurous enough to enjoy the offbeat.
What if? What if instead of discarding the old, more of us reinvented it? What if we worked to make a new exciting second time around?
anny
Indeed, relationships are like that, since Life is always in a flux & people keep changing. Therefore no promise can ever be made. Relationships can only be successful if you understand from the beginning that no one is born for the other, no one is here to fulfill the ideal of other as to what he/ she should be & that no one is a slave.
ReplyDeleteMarriage has to be continuously worked upon and it must be understood that no promise can ever be made...because we ourselves do not know how we are going to feel in the future!The best way is to try & discover & rediscover.
Beautiful post Anny. My favorite love stories are those that are decades in the making. In this day and age it is so lovely to hear of people who continue to want to be togther. It gives me so much hope for my own future with my best friend.
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Dakota
As people change, so does the relationship between them. It does take work to make sure that change is for the better, but so very worth it in the end.
ReplyDeleteLove this: They have two options. They can continue to drift apart. Or they can start doing things together until they discover a new love and commitment.
ReplyDeleteSometimes we have to do this daily for a while until things improve and once they do, you never regret the decision.
So true and well said.
ReplyDeleteMy hubby and I broke up before we were ever married and then got back together (obviously). Then of course, being married going on 29 years, we've had our ups and downs, too, even if we're not empty nesters yet.
My book released today, Submissive Dreams from total-e-bound.com, deals with second chances and love the second time around. The hero and heroine are a divorced couple that finds love again.
This is a topic very familiar to me. I'm living it as we speak. Been with hubby for twenty years, no kids. He's semi-retired, I'm writing,writing,writing and conducting Essay Writing seminars for high school seniors. I love my freedom, always have, and when he worked all the time, it was as if we were having an affair and I liked that. This 24/7 together thing isn't something I do well with so we're trying to work things out. I suspect I'm not alone here. An anthology by good writers like ourselves would probably be a bestseller. 'Oprah' magazine did an article on the topic where the writer referred to herself as the 'Mid-Life Wife'. I sometimes half-jokingly refer to myself as suffering from Restless Wife syndrome. I see my divorced friends dating again and I wonder how they do it. All those bikini waxes alone would do me in! I've always believed in reinvention. I'd had several careers myself and have moved all over the country so it makes sense that we need to reinvent the mid-life marriage. Thanks for bringing up this necessary topic. Mary Kennedy Eastham, Author, 'The Shadow of a Dog I Can't Forget' and my first novel (a work-in-progress) called Night Surfing - The Story of Love and Wonder in the Waves of Malibu
ReplyDeleteWonderful blog Anny. I feel like you are describing my own feelings while writing about yours. Yes, we reinvent ourselves, create new common interests, while protecting our own private time. For me it's writing, for my hubby it's tennis. And then we put it all aside and go away together or visit the children.
ReplyDeleteVery good, Anny. So often we just quit instead of "reinventing" love. It can be done, I know.
ReplyDeleteGreat post, Anny. I like the idea of reinvention rather than just throwing away something that at one time clearly made you happy enough to WANT to spend the rest of your life with someone.
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