Relationships

As a single professional woman, many of my friends are also single. I am quite happy being single, though I suppose I need to reclassify my self as in a relationship. I live with my boyfriend "Sweetie". We have been living together for a year, and after 20 years of living alone it is a hard adjustment. I love him and am happy that we live together. I can not imagine my life without him, yet being in a relationship is hard, and if one is an independent woman it is often ever harder.

My married and coupled friends say the same thing, but until I lived with someone I really did not understand what they meant. So to decipher the code, I am going to explain what I mean about it being hard. When you are used to being alone first you have to get used to share space with someone. Someone who may not share your same life style habits, like the level of how you like to clean, or really how you like to keep the house. I tend to be neater than Sweetie, not that I am hyper about it, but I now fully understand what my mother meant when she said she hated to come home after a long day into a mess.

Another issue is life rhythms. I am more of a morning person than Sweetie. I am also far less patient than he is, and I tend to like to do things when I think about them rather than taking some time to do further research, or think more about it. Sweetie likes to ponder, research and move once he is sure he is getting the best deal on the best product for what ever you are looking for. This makes sense, and makes him less impulsive, but in combination for how I tend to act we drive each other a bit crazy. I dont want to make a hasty move that he is not comfortable with, but once he starts in with his research I tend to loose my momentum, as such things that we both want to do often don't end up happening, because we loose interest or momentum.

Neither of these issues is insurmountable, but it does tend to get in the way of gazing into each others eyes, and in some certain situations we may wait to long and end up not getting something we want or need. Oh well, I think this is what people mean about learning about your self in a relationship in a way that you can not discover alone.