Well I had a 15 year marriage and a heartbreaking divorce that taught me only to try harder to find a better person. That had mixed results too. I eventually figured out how to let go of / give back my projections and accept that people suck, myself included, and it's sort of okay if you want to put up with it / impose yourself on someone else. But on balance I think I'd be better of flying solo. On the other hand, I couldn't have known that for sure without having been in relationships. Life is weird and absurd that way. You piss most of it away chasing illusions and by the time you wise up it's all over but the shouting.

Well stated.

@Gwendolyn2018 I honestly think that it's most cases.

@ToolGuy I think you have it exactly right. Great insight!

@ToolGuy, @Gwendolyn2018 It is learned, but I think stuff like that we learn young as it's pretty unconscious & internalized. & yes, I came from an abusive home & ended up with some abusive guys. I'd break up with them but "somehow" the next one would turn out to be an abuser too... It was really depressing. Without counseling, who knows how long the cycle would have gone on--what a normal woman would have seen as huge red flags did not raise alarms for me because I figured everyone did that. My counselor actually had to tell me that it wasn't normal for mothers to push their kids down the stairs, smash dishes, humiliate family members & micromanage everyone's daily life. Going from there, I began to see that insults & baseless accusations were NOT part of normal human interaction, & not only that, would eventually lead to physical violence.

I know it sounds dumb, but since all these things happened in private, I assumed all the other families we knew growing up were the same as mine, & all marriages were as unhappy as my parents'. (& incidentally, it was my mom who was the overt abuser in their relationship, although my dad was extremely cold & passive aggressive.)

@ToolGuy I didn't feel shame during childhood because I thought it was just normal, if I even thought of it at all! So basically, I had no role models for what I would later learn were normal healthy relationships.

But yeah, they heap plenty of shame on abused women, & for abused men the shame, if not the physical & financial consequences, is even worse.

The thing about counselors is that they know they need to explain super basic stuff like mine did, whereas strangers or even friends had no idea of the depth of my cluelessness, basically. And even when people had said their mom didn't do stuff like that, or their parents really loved each other, I dismissed that information as an anomaly at best, or figured they were kidding themselves. & you can believe me or not, but I am not a stupid person--I graduated with close to a 4.0 average from college. I only had 2 B's to ruin my GPA.

You are not rude, that is the way it should be.

@Jolanta I really appreciate hearing that.. Never much of a dater, back when I should have been, I never learned the art ..or perhaps acquired the strength to ‘leave.’ It’s probably what keeps me from working a room Feels like ‘it’ will need to be so certain, so obvious that ‘we be together,’ there’d be no need to part.. How foolishly romantic I may be doomed (though LOL).

Self preservation is.... self respect.

@Varn Your not doomed, they right one will come along when you least expect it. Smile and love life and it will love you back.

It shocks me how little is made of that fact.. Perhaps it conflicts with our initial desires to the point nobody wants to acknowledge it. And, society has so convinced anyone not living ‘happily ever after’ that the ‘failure’ is their fault

[edited 'I' to 'It']

@Varn Yup...over half of marriages end in divorce, many of the remaining are of convenience, for "the children", etc. A "happy" marriage seems to be a very rare thing. Therefore, such evidence suggests long-term relationships are likely not the natural state. But...the females especially do not seem to get it. Somehow, they prefer to believe the myth. I suspect that if, as some primitive tribes, the men lived on one house and the women and children in a seperate one, there were be much less dissonance in our culture.

@dahermit I could feel my marriage changing, had remained loyal.. knew I could have made a far better choice than I had at age 22… But I’d have stuck with her, it was ‘the female’ who split..

Having photographed many a friend and relatives weddings ..looking back, all but two ended. I shot one cousin’s second.. On a similar discussion I mentioned the ‘monkey observations,’ where it became evident ..primate behavior was not monogamous or lasting… Surprise Surprise?

But who didn’t/ doesn't think theirs wouldn’t/ won’t last forever? I did 30 years, with friends joking that we’d see our 50th. I can’t say the desire or expectations are more female than male - it fooled me! What’s strange are the r/s’s I note now, with people my age.. They seem co dependent, or marriages of convenience. Not, ‘how deeply are we in love,’ but ‘what can this partnership provide?’

Silly me ...holding out for true love Fu.k

@VictoriaNotes Are you basing your conclusion on an abstract of a study, without seeing the actual study and what conditions were controlled in the study and which were not? How many subjects were involved? My "disorder" saves me from seeing things under the distortion of emotion. And, there is nothing wrong with my "communication skills." It is just that I do not live in what is a socially reinforced myth.

@VictoriaNotes “They transition from passionate love to compassionate love.” I know we can override our instincts, if likely doing so on a daily basis. And maybe we can function beyond the partner-swapping behavior of our lesser primate cousins, too. I’ve not given up… though it may occasionally read that way Your parents did good, obviously..

@Varn No, my parents did horribly. But back in those days, a divorce was not an economic possibiliy.

@Holiday Yes, I agree. A good point.