Ask me about breaking my engagement (and why maybe you should too)

[VoraciousReader]

I also think that people are being a bit hard on OP on the "why did you propose thing". There comes a point at which marriage starts to seem like the thing to do. That's a tipping point for a lot of relationships.

[KotOD]

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when it came time to think about spending their life together, which generally involved serious consideration of marriage and kids and such, they realized that they weren't all that in love, it was just easy and comfortable to stay together.

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Isn't "easy and comfortable" a reason *to* stay together? Although our natural inclination might be to get bored and run away for a new adrenaline rush, that doesn't mean it's a good thing. The signals our brain send us don't always have our best interests in mind. Put another way, maybe seeking out "love" (in the passionate lusting sense) is a huge pitfall that only leads to unhappiness (and lots of children if you aren't careful [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] ) If we were castrated would life be 100 times easier?

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Interesting that he mentions kids, then says "easy" to stay together. This is what happens to sexless, passionless marriages - people either cheat on each other or, like I said before find reasons to stay together that make no sense. Eventually, that reason isn't a good one, and they cheat or end up splitting anyway.

There are the rare cases like my wife's grandparents where they just hate each other and have for the last forty years, but don't get divorced because they'd be bad catholics.

If you're no longer in love, you're no longer intimate and you know this, there is no relationship. End it and move on to something engaging. Life's too short to be placid and flaccid.

[KotOD]

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Sex, quite frankly, smooths over a lot of rough edges. There is nothing like getting sweaty and physical with someone and making each other feel good to help you feel reconnected. It dissolves a lot of tension. When you only have it with one person, it's akin to having a shared secret. It reinforces the bond.

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Dead on. More people should operate like this:

"You forgot to take the garbage out again"
"Oh, sorry."
"You always forget to take the garbage out!"
"No I don't, I forgot once last month and last night."
"And the month before that!"
"Whatever, this is a stupid argument, let's go [censored]"
"OK!"

[DrewDevil]

Marrying the wrong person is the worst life decision you can make. I did it once and I have never been so miserable. I married the right person the second time around and I have never been happier.

OP, you did the right thing, no matter what other people's expectations might be.

Also, I think sex/passion has to be very important as an ongoing concern, even if you don't [censored] like bunnies every day.

[tpir]

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Edit: Also, you say that you love her but when you were away for a week, you didn't miss her. I think this might be a case of using "love" too lightly. Did you "care for" her?

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I have a problem with this too. Separation anxiety from your spouse is not a sign of "love" to me. (Granted this is a little bit stronger than "missing" someone, but it's all rooted in the same emotion). Seems more like a sign that either the person is flawed or the relationship is.

Shouldn't we be comfortable enough in a perfect relationship that we don't need constant, or even regular, contact?

[tpir]

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If you're no longer in love, you're no longer intimate and you know this, there is no relationship. End it and move on to something engaging. Life's too short to be placid and flaccid.

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Hmmm. So, say I marry someone, we are in love and intimacy is A++. Then she gets disfigured in an accident and I am no longer attracted to her at all. Break it off? There was a thread about this not long ago.

Clearly sex is of some importance, but I feel like you are coming up with reasons to justify your own (hyper?)sexuality.

[VoraciousReader]

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Shouldn't we be comfortable enough in a perfect relationship that we don't need constant, or even regular, contact?

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1. Who says you should "need" it? If my partner is my best friend, which I certainly hope he is, I miss him when he's not around. I want to tell him about my day. I want to know how he's doing.

2. There is no perfect relationship.

3. If you are having relationships with people where you're just as happy when they're not around, why go to the bother of being in them? If I'm sacrificing sole custody of the remote control, I'd better strongly prefer his presence to his absence.

[Aloysius]

tpir - hm, I think you're swinging too far into the "relationships are not about passion" view. I was in an 8-year relationship, and when I didn't see her for a week, I definitely missed her. I mean it's obviously individual, but that's not an awful metric imo.

I largely agree with you and think that (for your average person, guess not Kotod haha) passion is a largely Western trope and not all that critical in making a marriage work, from a purely practical, survival standpoint.

But it's really about what you want (I like VR's point about preferences vs. needs) and what works for you. I'm pretty sure for myself, if the romantic love completely faded, I'd be dissatisfied.

I don't think it's particularly naive or foolish to think you can have a strong romantic component in a marriage for many years. But expecting perfection, or that the relationship will not require alot of work or occasional pain, is incredibly naive.

-Al

[otnemem]

tpir,

I think the underlying thread is that a relationship builds on intimacy, commonalities, etc, into something more. You don't necessarily need sexual intimacy to continue a relationship, but you do need it in order to validate the relationship at some point. Never feeling sexually passionate toward someone is a lot different than losing that passion when you've already established your commitment and love to someone.

[otnemem]

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otnemem,

Interesting thread. I'm curious how you broke the news to your family. I've had a very difficult time in the past explaining to my family why X isn't right for me.

Edit: Also, you say that you love her but when you were away for a week, you didn't miss her. I think this might be a case of using "love" too lightly. Did you "care for" her?

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I told certain members of my family what I was going through as I was going through it. They were very supportive of any decision I had to make, but cautioned me to give it serious thought before saying anything, because if I shared how I was feeling with her, she might not recover when I realize that i was just getting cold feet or something.

Also, I'm not really sure how I feel about the love thing. I mean, I miss her, but I don't. We were like best friends, and I love a lot of things about her. If she got in an accident or something, it would make me sad and sympathetic. But I don't really feel the loss in a way I feel I should. It could be because I'm spending time with someone else. If that ends badly, I'll probably be forced to feel the loss more.