It's Hailing Outside

In the beginning, relationships are nothing but fun. Two people that
want to be with each other day and night, want see each other every
chance they get. After awhile, you get used to being with that person.
After awhile longer, you do more and more things together. After awhile
longer, you start doing less and less things together. After awhile
longer, you find yourself doing more and more things alone or with other
people, but still that one person remains your tree trunk, your solid
ground. After awhile longer still, you grow to enjoy the time you get
away from that person. Now that you've been together so long, you know
all the good things about this person and you are beginning to learn
things that are not so good. They may have habits that you don't like.
They may act a certain way in certain situations that you don't
particularly enjoy. Some things they do may even anger you. You might
think they actually do certain things just to get a negative reaction
out of you and maybe they do, just to stir things up. Just to have
interaction with you because they are missing all the closeness that you
used to share. You find yourself having more discussion about things
that are bothering each other rather than things that you both like.

Sound grim? Sounds like this relationship is going downhill? If your
answers to these questions are "yes", then you are doomed to a life of
short, shitty relationships. These times of what are sometimes heated
discussions or arguments are called "building". You love the person so
you don't want to harp on them and you don't want to make them feel bad
by telling them they are doing things that you don't like so you tend to
keep those feelings to yourself. That is understandable, but it is not
the healthiest thing to do in the long run. If you feel like you can
live with what they're doing forever and it doesn't bother you all that
much, then great. If it's something that really irritates you or
progressively bothers you worse, though, then you had better do
something about it. Maybe they won't stop doing what they're doing, but
at least they'll know you don't like it and may make a conscience effort
to bother you less. Maybe they'll do it more on purpose to hurt you.
Get out now. This process works both ways, of course. It's NEVER a one
sided thing no matter how much it appears that way at the time.

This building process is only for the good of the long term
relationship. Some people will tell you that they've been happily
married for years and they never argue. While that's most likely a lie,
the rare case does exist where people think so much alike that they are
nearly one person instead of a couple. In those cases, I don't see a
lot of excitement. Contentment is a good word for it and many people
are content with contentment. Good for them. For the other 6.2 billion
of us, there is a lot of work involved in relationships. While we don't
start a relationship with someone with the plan to make it a full time
job, it quickly becomes one right in front of our eyes and many people
never see it coming.

In this full time job, there are several long time goals and long term
career resolutions. You can stay at this job your entire life until
it's time to "retire". The retirement might be yours or it may be your
spouse. Either way, that part of the job is over. Nobody said it would
be easy. Nobody said you'd like the answers. Someone walks up to you
and punches you in the nose; you aren't going to enjoy it. You can get
fired from your job. Your spouse can decide that the work is too much
and decide to kick you out of the work program. You might have to find
another job or maybe you'll choose to retire. Getting fired is a tricky
situation because in this effect, the person doing the firing loses
their job as well. You could go on hiatus. Maybe a good deal of time
apart will be great for your relationship in the long term. You have to
be away from each other long enough to get over that "I'm use to them
being here" feeling. I say that because when you've build a life with
someone, you count of them for certain things. Many of those things you
simply take for granted until they aren't there anymore. Sometimes
there are things you didn't even take notice of. Things you didn't even
know they did until suddenly you have to do them yourself and you find
it hard to do those things at first. You have to get into the routine
and learn to be by yourself and be able to be happy by yourself before
you can make a clear decision that you actually WANT to be with the
other person and that you do not need to be with them because they help
you out by doing things you don't want to. A good example of this is
with children. One spouse may rely on the parenting and watching of the
kids for while they work or do other activities. Suddenly you don't
have someone else there for you so you have to figure out what to do
with the children. Of course when children are involved it makes things
much harder. A hiatus is hard on the entire family so before utilizing
this option, you really need to think about how it'll affect everyone
else before you decide to act selfishly. Sometimes it's great for the
kids. It just depends on the living situation.

In the building process, you may have to make sacrifices. No. That's
wrong. I can guarantee you will have to make sacrifices. You may have
to change some things that you've always done a certain way. Maybe the
way you fold clothes. Maybe the direction you hang a hanger. Maybe the
direction you put the toilet paper on the roll. Those aren't huge
changes, but they are examples of simple things you might do to ease
things over with your spouse just to make life a little easier for them
and to make you easier to live with.

Nobody is expecting you to change the essence of who you are. If
someone wants to be with you at first and then decides they want to
change who you are to better suit their needs, then that's not going to
be a very smooth relationship. It'll only get harder and harder until
you or both of you go insane. Get out now. You can bend to a certain
extent, but don't allow yourself to break. By the same token, don't
expect to go into a relationship with the intention of breaking anyone
else. Enough.

On to family members. Some are great. Some are not great. Some you
have to deal with. Some you don't. Express to your spouse those people
who you would choose to avoid if at all possible. Work with each other
to iron out problems so that you need not be forced into uncomfortable
situations time and time again. It just ruins the whole day. If you
find yourself with a spouse who is uncompromising in the family visits
position, and you continue to have issues with those family members,
then the problem you are having is with the spouse and not the family
member.