Relationships

Dave and I have that relationship where you are both doing our own when one of us comes up to the other and is like, "I don't want to disturb you but I just need five minutes to ask you about this."  Then that five minutes suddenly becomes two hours and it's not a bad two hours.  It's not a long winded disagreement but rather a long conversation that rambles from topic to topic until suddenly it's two hours later and we're both like, "what? It's 1:30? How did that happen?"  It's what I've always wanted in a relationship.   I like that we can converse on an intellectual level.

Some time ago, I determined that there are three major components to a relationship.  There are probably a ton of social scientific studies that either reinforce my thoughts or completely contradict them so I really have no actual claim except from my own experience and from the experiences of those around me.  Anyway, there are a three major components: emotional intimacy, intellectual intimacy, and sexual intimacy.  It also appears (again, based solely on my experiences) that you need at you can have two strong and one weak to feel solid within your relationship.  If you only have one form of intimacy, the relationship can suffer to the point where it can actually just fall apart.

Of course. I think that over time the strength of each can wax and wane.  When you first start dating, it might be all about the sex and the emotion.  Later on, you might find that the sexual desire lessens and it's the emotional and intellectual intimacy that propels that sense of connection.  At another point it could be all intellectual and sexual with the emotional being weakest.  What I've learned through my three serious relationships (yes, only three--not exactly a great case study) is that at some point you need them all.  For example, Brian and I never really connected intellectually.  Ever.  I would ponder philosophy or religion or some other topic and ask for his opinion which would usually be, "you think too much."

After a while, I just stopped wanting to discuss things at all.  I'd be in the car driving back to college and think, "oh, I want to talk to Brian about this" only to get there, see him, and decide against it.  For approximately two and a half years our relationship worked just fine without it.  We did things together, we laughed, and we had fun.  However, after during that awful student teaching and just after the other parts of the relationship began to slip.  Maybe I wasn't feeling sexual or I was too over emotional.  We never had the intellectual and all of a sudden the other key pieces of the relationship began to fall apart.

It's so incredibly different with Dave though.  We have all three.  At times, one or more may be the more dominant.  I certainly wasn't feeling all that sexual when I was in the midst of my PTSD.  He was patient and we strengthen the intellectual and emotional sides.  Now I am beginning to feel more comfortable and our sex life is improving too.  Some people might argue that having a sex life isn't really as necessary as people think but I have to disagree.  Sex brings it all together.  I have intellectual/emotional relationships with many people but I don't want to sleep with them.  

Of course, as you get older and kids become the priority and things stop working the way they used to when you were in your twenties you sex life may not be the relationship's main focus.  If anything I think that's common.  Some couples can get that back and others can't.  For those who can't though, the emotional and intellectual still exists.  That and one other major component is added: you have a history together.  You've grown up together perhaps through high school, college, beginnings of careers, children, end of careers, grown children, and so much more.   Maybe a strong history.  That shared connection that can only be a result of spending 30 years or more years together every day or almost every day.  Maybe that history, emotional, and intellectual intimacy are worth more than a substandard sex life.

Dave and I are newly married. Like most newly married couples before children arrive we are embracing all that being young and in love entails.  We both talk about how we're terrified that one day it's going to change.  That one day, we're not going to feel a certain way anymore but we can't worry about that.  Maybe we won't feel that way, grow in different directions for a bit, and then reconnect later.  I don't know.  All I know is that I feel like I made a fabulous choice in a husband and sometimes I do think too much.  Sometimes I try to analyze why this relationship works so much better than the last ones which is really what this whole post is about.  My thoughts as I'm thinking them.  These are the kinds of posts I want to go back and edit.  Give it a thesis and argue it like I used to in college. In the end though, I know I'll look back and enjoy reading my thoughts as they developed before they were steadfast opinions.  I can only hope that those who read this are okay with that too.