What about very long-term relationships? Wouldn't there be a different set of rules for marriages that have lasted decades, produced children, and in general were healthy?

My parents told me they were getting divorced a year ago. It was a bit of a shell shock, but probably less so than had I and my siblings been younger. I imagine the circumstances of a 40 year couple splitting up are radically different than a couple of say 2 or 3 years. I wonder if there is an equation that quantifies the amount of baggage that piles up over the course of a relationship. On a graph I think you would see a sharp increase at the earlier years and than it will level out to slow and steady.

How should a relationship just entering the longterm prepare for the very long term? It's impossible, I think, to predict how attitudes and emotions will shift over such a period. As to your question about guidelines, I don't think there really can be any. I mean you've outlined a few good considerations but I imagine it's more a culmination of every little tiny facet in a relationship that will determine the path of a split or a continuation. I'd be more interested in knowing how to repair the cracks of a relationship as they appear. The danger being that if left unmended years down the line the cracks will turn into fissures that can't be closed.

Do people really change? It seems so. It's a lucky marriage where both partners change together rather than apart. The danger of long term relationships I think is stagnancy. There should never be a point where the relationship is exactly the same as it was a year ago. That would be the identifiable crack in my opinion. And if it's fixable than great, if not then "cya." Since people change, the relationships between people must change as well.

Relationships should never just be one thing or mean one thing, they need to grow or be in danger of crumbling into memory.

The problem is all inside your head
She said to me
The answer is easy if you
Take it logically
I'd like to help you in your struggle
To be free
There must be fifty ways
To leave your lover


You Just slip out the back, Jack
Make a new plan, Stan
You don't need to be coy, Roy
Just get yourself free
Hop on the bus, Gus
You don't need to discuss much
Just drop off the key, Lee
And get yourself free

Maybe Paul Simon can help you out.... or not
with 50 Ways to Leave your Lover

Actually, I think most people grow tired and bored with each other and the idea has to at least pop in once or twice about ditching your mate, climbing back on the bus and lookin for somebody else better/more exciting somewhere else.

I think there are some good marriages, long term ones, that survive even flourish despite the boredom and sameness because they are committed, they don't take it lightly and so they ride through the times when it seems like there must be more.  i can't say what they are thinking, I can only surmise.

Some marriages stay together that probably shouldn't, imo (but then who am I to have an opinion about other's relationships?  Well, for one, i say if he's abusive physically or emotionally, or mentally then you probably be doing yourself a favor to get out because mostly if someone is this way its not going to change.  you can wish it to change, dream it will, hope it will, devise schemes to do something better, be something else to help him/her see the way and change but mostly they don't.

Anyway, if that's going on, for my two cents I say get out and I speak from personal experience as well as what I've learned from others.

But I think maybe that's what love is, caring enough about someone to stay through the highs and lows, work out your problems, talk to each other, try to remember what you saw in them in the beginning.

If he/she gets on yo noives big time, is this something new or has he/she always grated on you?  Because it seems like if you llike the other person they get some get out of jail free cards on "noive gettin" but then eventually after the new wears off, people just get to us sometimes.  I GET TO ME SOMETIMES, sometimes I think if I sing that song, say that stupid thing when for example the phone rings or I drop something or whatever, if I make that dumb face when I'm thinking about this or that, I'd like to leave me and try something new coz I get on my noives.  But I can't, or at least there's no trading, its me or nothing.  I can try to change and read self-help books or turn on a stereo so the song leaves my head or whatever.

It is possible to stick with someone, we stick on ourselves coz we are stuck with ourselves.  But I think its unrealistic to expect to always always feel that love thing.  But think about, if you knew you had a year to live and then you'd be gone, would you find comfort in him/her, would they be there for you or do they leave you in the lurch when you really need them.  Coz that's what motivated me, finally, that and the inability to not wander.  But one day I just realized that the relationship was empty and that I could feel really lonely with him  sitting next to me.

I could've chosen to stay because financially I would've had no worries, not that we were rich, but it was reliable income.  And now I face uncertainty so I ask myself why didn't I stay for that reason?  I guess I'm glad I didn't because I wasn't very happy back then, I was immature partly because he didnt want me to be a grown-up with a head on my shoulders that could think, he liked me when I was weak and dependent even though outloud he'd b!tch about it.  Truth is, its been a rough ride on my own but I don't think I ever would have grown as much as I have, I mean grown inside.  i think I had an unrealistic view of how it was going to be on my own.  But I made it and its done so it is what it is, why go over and over it, just c'est la vie.

Did you know what you were doing when you got married or was it just a "well nothin else happening kind of thing?"  I'm not sure if I ever loved my exhusband.  I think I did, but the emotional differences were way too far off.  I'm somebody who likes to talk and discuss and figure out whatever.  He was the silent type and lots of times he just wanted me to shut up I think.

The marriage was empty and cold and if we had something ever we blew it somewhere along the line, both of us.  Although (he always hated me keeping score) he was unfaithful as a rule whereas mine was an aberration.  But unfaithful is unfaithful.

I guess I would ask like I said, if you were gonna die in 6 months or a year would you be happy you had them there with you emotionally, WOULD they be there emotionally with you?  That's the biggest part of it to me at least from where I stand now.

Thats my three cents or so.