Monday, September 26, 2011

A question

My relationship with my husband is easy. It's always been easy. We belong to each other, and we always have, since before we met. I am his - completely, without a doubt. But he is mine too.

We might have misunderstandings once in a while, as humans are wont to do, and our drives for sex do not always match up, but by and large we are perfect together. I can tell him anything, absolutely anything. He can do anything with me and it will not affect his love for me. I wondered for a while if it would; if me submitting to him would somehow affect his opinion of me. It never has. He says all kinds of horrible things to me during sex, but still respects my opinion and my abilities to do most things even above his own. He has his areas of expertise, but I'm better than him at most things, and he's okay with and acknowledges that with wry amusement.

I have familial relationships, and I find them to be not so easy. Like walking on eggshells, some of them. Careful what you say in case it is taken the wrong way, careful how you hold your face or move your eyes in case it's taken a way you didn't mean it, because you know you'll never be able to convince the other person that the way they took it was not the way you meant it. After a while I begin to avert my eyes when answering questions because I'm afraid of eye contact expressing something I didn't mean - and that, too, is taken badly. I'm a grown woman! Why must it be like this?

What I want to know is this: What's normal? What's the majority relationship form factor? Easy, eggshells, or something in between?

8 comments:

  1. Never having had a functional family relationship(i can't count the teenagers, really) i can't answer this one. i have a similar relationship with my Husband and Master; as it says in a really bad movie, " as easy as breathing ".

    Relations with other family...Mother, sisters....more like asthma. During bad smog.

    Forced t guess? i'd say somewhere in-between...at least, i'd hope for a happy medium!

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  2. Same here. Home life is great. Visiting family or having family visit? Almost like walking on burning coals.

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  3. pepper - I love the breathing/asthma analogy. I feel like that with my mom often. Sometimes it's good - sometimes she blows up randomly and I never know when it'll be. And she lives with us.

    maui girl - I remember us feeling like that when my in-laws used to visit. It got better when we had our child, and then even better when we bought a house to work on and we just did that together. Things are a bit different now, and they're coming to visit again of course... we'll see what happens.

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  4. Hi Conina,

    Glad to find your blog. For myself I get along great with my side of the family and quite well with my husband's side of the family, but Daddy is my best friend above all others.

    Kitty

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  5. Kitty - I'm so glad to hear of this! I was beginning to think maybe everyone had stressed relationships with their families. I was hoping not.

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  6. I have easy, close relationships with my mum and sisters, causually fine with my inlaws (i do a fair bit of toungue biting tho) and my husband is my best friend. ever. We occasionally fall out, have some issues, have to work on it, what ever, but he DOES this! (works on it I mean) He WANTS to work on it! He's the best :D

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  7. mamacrow: Awesome! I did a fair bit of tongue-biting with my in-laws for 6 years or so, now it's mostly evened out... but still my mom doesn't get along well with them, and so the seeds of misery are still sown. I think my mom has some bad chemicals in her brain. She takes everything badly first before considering other avenues of possible meaning.

    Isn't it fabulous to have a husband who wants to work on things and is your best friend? I find myself just gazing at mine raptly sometimes... like now, while he sits across the table with his dad and our child, doing some tech support. (thankfully, it's usually me doing tech support for his dad..)

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  8. oh, it's amazing. just - wow! I don't know how it's been for others, but for us the two things- friendship and love/sex - were together from the start, we weren't friends for ages and then lovers, as it happens (I belive) for some people.

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Thank you for reading. I hope you'll let me know you were here - I like friends!