love or not?
I’ve been with him for about two years now. In the beginning it was perfect, he treated me like he wanted to be in a relationship. me on the other hand, i pushed him away quite a lot because of family and religion stuff i didn’t even agree with in the first place. we broke up several times because of me on that issue. he fought for me over and over again and after a couple months i finally had the courage to stand up for myself towards my family and told them i’m going to stay with him regardless of the backlash i faced even being held against my own will due to their disagreement being a eastern family.
i love him so much and i love spending time with him. our relationship is no longer like it used to be in the beginning with the breakups, but something didn’t quite change…we have arguments every single day. if not every single day then for sure the day after that. it’s like we have two good days and five bad ones. he’s so different. there’s so many differences between us. there’s no longer the love i once felt from him. there’s so much more to our story and arguments but here’s part 210 of my fingers giving up on me.
@reliableplace5629
The truth is, we never know completely who anyone is. Sometimes, we don't even completely know who we are, let alone others ~ ! We sometimes do things we never thought we would do, we sometimes surprise ourselves with our own thoughts and feelings and behaviour. So it's even more true for other people, that we know even less.
When we first meet people, they are always presenting their best selves for the first impression, even moreso when they are romantically interested in us. Almost always therefore, we are unravelling a person slowly, learning about them all the time, seeing different aspects of who they are. And over time, as circumstances change, and feelings change, as challenges arise (Religion, family and friends approval, arguments, maybe romantic feeling declines etc) we see how they respond to these new circumstances, we see their darker personality traits, their flaws. We compare them to that person we first met and we can't help but conclude.. "They've changed, our relationship has changed!". But they didn't change - You just discovered more about who they really were. Your relationship with a person is only ever a glimpse, a snapshot of the whole of that person at any given time. Within 1-2 years you only have so many small glimpses, and most of them are misleading (because they are the filtered snapshots, the best selfies for first impressions 😂). Then when you live with them, or spend more time with them, you see more of them, you come to understand how they treat responsibility, how your chemistry changes when you're constantly exposed to each other, how they actually deal with long term commitment, how they deal with conflict and stress. I personally think you don't know a person at all until you've fought with them bitterly about anything and brought out their most vicious self.
That's why love is complex like this. Often when we say we love someone, we usually have a premature understanding of who that someone is that we believe we love. We love prematurely based on who we think they are at the time, and realize we love them less (or perhaps it wasn't love at all in most cases) when we see increasingly the whole of who that person is. It doesn't mean we are fickle and foolish, or that they are unlovable, or that we should only love flawless people and only date perfect partners. Rather, we should just be more realistic about the conclusions we form when we decide we love/are in love with someone. We should constantly re-evaluate our feelings to match our reality and understanding of who that person really is, rather than trying to force the relationship to conform to our feelings and desire for a perfect relationship.
Hope you receive some clarity on everything ~ !
CatzInTheCradle
@reliableplace5629
Hi--that sounds like it was a pretty special relationship for a while, with what you've described of him helping you confront your family and giving you the courage to stand up for what you wanted. But more recently you've been arguing a lot and things don't feel the same as they used to.
Feel free to share more here about what's changed in the relationship, if you'd like. Otherwise, if you want to talk to someone by PM, HERE is a list of experienced listeners who accept chats on relationship stress.