LONG RELATIONSHIPS? I’M A FAN

Long relationships that have stood the test of time amaze me.

Call me befuddled, bemused, bewildered.

How can anyone do it, let alone me?

The first thing is finding anyone able to put up with your crap.

It’s works even better when they don’t consider your crap to be crap.

Take my wife, please.

In the history of long relationships, this one is it, the longest, at least longer than my parents lasted if I was a score-keeper.

I have a feeling my married kids will out do me on this one.

Speaking of kids, I’ve known them almost as long as I’ve known their mother, which was a small comfort when they learned what a calendar was.

Maybe not so small when they figured out we were married when they were born and it mattered to them.

 

Kids are the only people we get a chance to see from the start to our finish, if we’re lucky, if they’re lucky.

We see them as babies for a brief time, then as adults for the longest time.

In between we see them pick up our good habits, and their friends’ bad habits, on the way to being middle-aged.

Again, with good luck, you’ll see them blossom into who you hope they’d be.

Good partners, doting parents, thoughtful neighbors.

They may be the kind of people you like spending time with doing nothing.

Instead of drinking beer and tinkering around your garage, you can drink beer and tinker around in their garage together.

Tinkering means organizing between trash and Good Will and, “I’ve been looking for that a long time.”

For me, long relationships are a place to relax and reflect on the ties that bind.

 

What About Those Ties?

I don’t say much about being a long time married guy in real life, not after I learned that bragging about getting married, being married, and staying married in an accomplishment of a life time and never married and remarried people can feel triggered.

Not unusual I guess. When I was an unmarried man listening to some old duffer go on about the joys of being married I figured they were blowing smoke to cover their real feelings.

Same for young people. I got married at thirty-one. My other siblings got married around twenty or younger.

For ten years in the peak of life, or so I thought, I learned how to be a bad boyfriend.

Not a cheating, rats-ass, boyfriend, just non-committal, no parent meeting, kind.

It wasn’t as much a fear of commitment, just a deliberate dodge of the word, the lifestyle, the future.

“He’s nice, but won’t commit,” was my final single guy grade.

Getting married shouldn’t be based on a body count, like ‘if I sleep with two women in my lifetime I need to marry one of them.’

Or, ‘if I sleep with one woman I need to marry her.’

It is based on the commit element. From both people.

 

The golden rule, The Golden Rule of long relationships, is making the commitment and sticking the landing.

Wife: You don’t have any friends.

Me: Yes I do.

Wife: Your kids are not your friends.

Me: But they have friends, so same thing.

Wife: I have friends from second grade.

Me: Me too.

Wife: We call each other.

Me: I troll them on Facebook. Same thing.

Wife: We make plans together.

Me: You make plans with everyone. You even try to make plans with me.

Wife: I do make plans, and you love it.

Me: Not all of it.

Wife: Like what?

Me: Like this friend stuff. I’ve got friends. We saw Mark at the Blues Festival. We see J & J every time in one town or the other.

Wife: My friends and I have real friendships.

Me: And that makes me happy. You guys care about each other and it’s a wonderful thing. I care about my friends, too.

Wife: How would they know.

Me: Because I’m telling you and I don’t need to tell them. My guys have permission to inflict themselves on my free time whenever they want.

Wife: Doesn’t sound very friendly.

Me: We’re not girly friends, honey.

Wife: Don’t sound like friends at all.

Me: They are and you know it, but we’re having a slow-conflict moment so keep trying.

Wife: I’m not trying to . . .

Me: What?

 

The Longest Relationship Is With?

The answer is ‘yourself.’ Your longest relationship is with yourself.

What are we supposed to do about that?

Some people say we ought to talk to ourselves like we talk to dogs:

“Who’s a good boy, you’re a good boy, the best boy, there’s never been a better boy.”

If you read this and get the urge to lick yourself, it might not be the best thing for you.

 

My wife likes to say, “If you steal, you’re a thief; if you lie, you’re a liar.”

These were some of the things we shared as parents.

What the kids have learned on their own: If you do what you say you’re going to do, you gain trust; If you help others who’ve been wronged, you gain honor.

People you’ll never meet admire your trust and honor.

 

If you see yourself as trustworthy and honorable, you’re good to go with long relationships.

Even better if anyone can agree with you. Ask around for consensus and get back to us over here.

Personally, I assign trust and honor on everyone until proven wrong.

The world is a good place with good people doing their best.

Anything wrong with that notion?

That’s how I wake up until proven wrong.

Instead of waking up butt-hurt, put-down, left-behind, canceled, woke or unwoke, I wake up with hope and good will.

Let me ask in the most polite way if you don’t wake up the same way: Why the fuck not?

Get your shit organized, make peace with your mind full of obligations, missed opportunities, and snubs.

Your tale of woe only follows you because you hold onto it.

Let.

It.

Go.

Let it go for better long relationships.

Why step in the same cow pie over and over?

Unless you have a thing about cleaning your shoes, or not cleaning your shoes, step around.

Call it the walk of life.

And after all the violence and double-talk
There’s just a song in all the trouble and the strife
You do the walk, yeah, you do the walk of life
Hmm, you do the walk of life