Couplehood

My head is swimming with all the stuff going on, internal and external. This is probably going to be the only time this week I get to meditate on some things I've heard and seen this week.

So the past week's new House episode focused on the whole idea of relationships, touched off by a patient's open marriage. One couple managed to split (again) and come back together, while the other couple's fate remains up in the air.

In The Lovely Bones, mom leaves to find herself, because she has gotten lost in being wife and mom. I was equal parts empathetic and exasperated with her. I get getting pulled by parental and spousal obligations. Truly, I do.

But this is what I think. If you come into a relationship being any less than who you are just to make the other person happy, you've already doomed your relationship. Because you will never be able to smother who you really are forever. And if you do, then you, or parts of you die, and then you have to ask yourself whether it was really worth it.

Part of the reason I've lasted now more than half my life with hubby is that my two previous (abusive) relationships stripped me of any will to be anything but who I was. And if he couldn't deal with who I was, then he shouldn't be with me.

As his first serious relationship, he just followed my cues. The end result is that we have grown up together. We have not always agreed with one another, but we have always been able to approach our disagreements like adults, with open minds, and always the agreement to agree to disagree whenever the twain shan't meet.

I have never had to hide anything for him, nor he me.

I would never want to leave this earth with he or my kids wondering who I really was. I want them to know EXACTLY who I am.

I'm proud of the people my kids and my husband are becoming. And I am pleased at how their lives have shaped and informed mine.

It's all good.