Great article - I have recently been talking to and spending time my "ex" again, although I really hate using this term.(It holds such a negative connotation.)Even after 2 years of being apart, I never stopped loving him,but for practical purposes only, we will say "ex". Anwyay, while us being apartmay have been goodin some ways,I feel we broke up for less than reasonable reasons and for reasons stated in this article.
Our biggest problem was that he didn't want to spend as much time with me as I wantedor do a lot of the things I wanted to do.Really, it's nota terrible problem to have though... someone loving another person so much that they want to spend as much time with them as possible. And, on the other end, I could have been more creative and patient. It was more about him than it was me, and I shouldn't have taken it so personally. In retrospect, the fact that I love, trust and respect him more than anyone else I've ever known (and I'm 30 now) is much more important that a relatively small issue that could have been worked though had we communicated a bit more effectively.
It is too soon to tell if we will enter back into a committed relationship or "end up together", but I have every hope we could, and I'm simplygratefulto be givena second chance.
Thanks for writing this article. I hope it will help someone else not make the samemistake that I made and had to learn the hard way.
Good luck to you and your "ex" possibly repairing your relationship. Different expectations re: how much time to spend together is an issue that I'm dealing with myself a bit. Many of my friends who are married share that they and their spouses have quite varied interests and spend more time apart than I find appealing. I was married for almost 20 yrs and recognize despite different interests a marriage can exist. I'd like to believe they can exist with better results than my own!
In whatever experience I've gained since my divorce, I have yet to meet a man with mostof my same interests (dancing, hiking, conservative politics,gardening, cooking, reading) whichwould make spending more time together more probable.I have dated men with some of those interests, but not most of them. According to Willard Harley who wrote His Needs/Her Needs ( a book recommended to me by a gentleman I met on eHarmony), Harley says couples need to spend 15 hrs/wk together to have a strong healthy relationship. None of the younger married couples (or even couples my age) thatI talked to thought they spent that much time together every week. Children and workinterfere with much of that time, plus varied interests... golf, different TV show interests, etc.Harley believes couples should make an effort to find mutually satisfying activities that they can share togetherand not have any hobby/interest that your spouse/significant other doesn't condone. He has a more extreme view than many couples probably think necessary.
For me, I'm still unsure how much time I need to spend with my partner/week for me to feel loved. I know that mybeau's and my varied work schedules and distance apart makesseeing each other a bit of a challenge. So time spent together hasn't been that big of an issue. The amount of time he spends or doesn't spend communicating with me when we're not together, has been an issue. Communication is one of my top five emotional needs that I need to have met in a relationship.
This was a bit of a lengthy response to your post, Irishdancer Jen, but I hope it was helpful in some way. Best wishes to you.
luv2dance123, thank you so muchfor the well wishes. (wow, everyone is so nice on here!)
and thank you for taking time torespond...good food for thought!my expectation to spend more time with the "ex" was probably not completely unreasonable. time together and communication is also something I need in a relationship. but, in the end when things were beginning to sour, we took extremely opposite approaches to dealing with the problem, me wanting to discuss it everytime it came up (a mistake), which caused him to want to avoid the issue as much as possible (also a mistake).
for now, weseem to begravitating towards each other again.. takingsmaller steps but making a great deal of progress. we havesome common interest but some that are also separate. i think that is probably healthy. we both run, so have been running together lately (we never did this before) and enjoy amusement parks/coasters so we are both taking next Friday off to go to Busch Gardens together. of course, we have our separate things as well.. i love to dance (much like you) and he is not a dancer nor does he have any interest in it whatsoever, but i am okay with that now. so he may not want to go to my competitions or to the club occassionally, but that's what friends are for. so, it would be like pulling teeth to get him to go to a rom-com (heaven forbid haha) but be both enjoy comedies and i can tolerate zombie movies.in the end, apparentlyneither of us were willing to compromise, were stubborn, hurt and angry. now that time has passed and the heart has forgotten these things, it feels like when we first started dating... only with a bit more wisdom now.since i was the one that broke things off, iwas prepared togive a lot of patience, which is not fun, but has definately paid off.
i wish you luck finding someone youin which you have a goodamount of common interests so thatyouare able spendtogether easily. 15 hours may sound like a lot, but really when you thinkg about it, it's reasonable.Most people give 40-60 hours a weekto an employer... and while having a career and eaning a living is necessary for survival,I think 2 hours a day is very do-able if having a relationship is important to you. No one wants to feel like it is work though, so you are right, common interests help a lot! again, good luck!