Unbalanced One at a Time

There was a huge discussion at my workplace the other day. Me, another girl and a third colleague of mine sat in a hushed circle around the computer system gossiping about the facts of Life, and countering the mis-facts the sly little minx throws at us.

Is it possible that physical relationships run out their course in a marriage? Yes, in a marriage, love, understanding and trust are very important. But then, so is romance and touching each other. You love your partner, but do they know it? It always feels nice to be told you’re loved early in the morning, doesn’t it?

But if your child sleeps between you and your partner, and the two of you have terrible work shifts, and you live with your extended family so that little touches of affection become difficult, the marriage turns into a very platonic one. And that’s not what it’s supposed to be, is it?

But there’s a very close and good friend of mine who has a marriage exactly like that. And it works for her.

And finding this out scared the bejesus out of me! So the round table discussion at work that day had me, a newly married person; another colleague who’s been married for five years; a third girl who’s been married for almost an year now.

Now, you have to understand that the third girl belongs to the glamorous range of people. The kind of person who’s always a Settler (HIMYM theory). And the guy who’s married her has to know it. Whilst the five-year-old marriage colleague can identify with a lot of my posts here, the third girl cannot. Because she’s a Settler. And the other colleague and I have balanced marriages with neither partner Settling or Reaching out.

So in this whole discussion, we discussed how often who did what. The five-years marriage said things would settle to weekends-only as time went by, and other responsibilities grew. The one-year-marriage Settler said things still went on at a nightly basis for her. And as for me, at that time of three months into my wedding, I was on an every-day or at-least-once-in-two-days point. A weekends-only as suggested by the five-year-marriage didn’t sound so bad. And then she brings up a point.

‘If it’s weekend only now, a few more years from now, and it’ll turn to ‘once a month’, and then ‘why bother’ soon enough!’

And if I wasn’t disturbed enough already, this made me sit up and cringe right down to my eyeballs!

The Hub-man wondered what was wrong with me when I tried to climb all over him that evening. And when I told him, he started laughing.

I still made him promise that that wouldn’t be us. We’d go out on date nights, I told him, and make sure we stayed connected physically every once a week at least. Yes, we’ll have other things which matter in a marriage too, like respect for each other, understanding and love, but this is important too. A platonic relationship, to me at least, is no marriage at all. It’s what I have with my sister and my marriage has to have that special spark, that difference where I can cuddle the Hub-man at night, and kiss him and hold his hand and feel the love he has for me in the rawest form of love…

Is it only the Settlers who have beautiful love lives all their lives? Do the ordinary Balanced folk turn to platonic relationships as time goes by? Is that how it is in every relationship? Or is it only in some rare cases that such things happen?

And to think I’ve reached that seven-year-phase of marriage (which is how old my friend’s marriage is) within seven months of getting married makes me cry today...