My family and I enjoyed a long drive home from Virginia the other day. When it finally hit the moment when the kids were sleeping and the adults were tired of talking, I started thinking.
Oh no...
Anyway, I don't know why but I started to think about how people adjust for their significant other. This is especially true in those fun and education times of the late teens and early 20s.
It got me thinking about my history of relationships and how I changed. I'll let you be the judge.
The Brazilian Playboy - He was a weightlifter and football player at my high school. I also started lifting weights, eating a diet with more protein, and even started drinking protein shakes. In my defense, he did buy the shakes for me for my birthday. So romantic.
The Mafioso - He was Mexican and classy, accustomed to a higher kind of living. After a couple of years, my flip flops were replaced by heels, my hoodies by brand names, and my hair got dark and short. Crazy how that happens.
The Corn Fed Boy - The backlash from the boyfriend above. Tall, ex-Frat boy. I started watching football and drinking bud on Sundays. Bud many other days of the week as well. Flip flops were reinstated.
And that basically brings me to Mr. Rant. I would classify him as the Mr. Man.
Mr. Man - Flips flops get shit but I still wear them. My hair is however I want. And I only workout when I deem necessary. Cause, none of that really matters.
The beauty about my relationship with him is that it brought me back to me.
As much as we don't like to admit it, we all "adjust" to our lovers. We become more similar to each other, try and do different things. I bet if you stripped your old relationships down raw like I just did, to basic and obvious changes, you'd see it to. Hell, just think of your friends and how they were/are with HIM or HER.
I think the goal in any relationship, is to find someone that you don't have to 'adjust' to or even do it automatically. The ideal is to find someone who adores you for exactly who you are, and yet, gives you that space to grow. That is a life partner.
Hell, Mr. Rant even adores the annoying things about me. For example, I seem get a kick out of writing about him. His sex life prior to marriage, his son's penis, his family, and even his love of breasts. And he is a great sport about it.
How have you changed for someone else? Did you ever become Vegan? Did you take up rollerblading? Do you still have a subscription to Archaeological Digest (only 2 more months left!)?
Reading this has made me realize why none of my previous relationships worked, maybe I was supposed to change some and I didn't. I can honestly say I never altered myself at all, and they probably wanted me to. And now it's great because like how you are with your husband, with mine, I'm just me, and he likes it :-)
ReplyDeleteWow. I wrote a long post in response and Blogger decided to erase it. Hum...
ReplyDeleteOk, I find "currency" to be of importance here. Once, an ex learned one word in Portuguese and told me and my face lit up because I realized she was giving me what she considered to be currency. She knew I love Brazil and Portuguese so she learned a word in Portuguese. Perfect...except that's the only currency she ever gave me, while I gave her loads of it. So I guess it depends on how you measure things of importance in your relationship.
To me, understanding each other's culture is very important and often in my experience in seeing intercultural relationships of others, I see it as important, too.
Adam, that is a very interesting and wonderfully positive way to look at it!
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