Brilliant, thoughtful, disturbing, urgently needed and painfully honest. I can feel this has been brewing in your head (and loins ?) for decades. I also wonder how age-appropriate children would feel about these paradigm shifts or potential upheavals?
At 67 years old and by no means a rigid traditionalist when it comes to relationships or marriage- as evidenced by my own partnership based in companionship and to be honest, reality-based need… I nonetheless found myself feeling some anxiety upon reading this. And that’s a good thing. It means you plucked the right chords; you rattled nerves.
You’re a fearless thinker: You toss up BIG questions then tackle them to the ground with analysis and genuinely open curiosity- two of your power tools. 👏👏.
The honest questions and answers you suggest in "Step Three" sound great, but (as I think you would probably agree) even answers given with full honesty and conviction prior to getting engaged have a tendency to shift or even reverse over time. That could be true for almost any conversation you listed, but the ones that struck me as least likely to stay accurate over time were any pertaining to sex. I think it's essentially impossible for two people to anticipate the long-term impact of hormones, aging, kids, stress, and other factors on sex drive and frequency until it's happening.
Yes, the section on change is for sure as important as the honest questions! The questions are mostly designed to get people thinking about the likely conflicts to identify core value mismatches rather than make accurate plans.
If this were Medium I'd give you fifty claps.
This reminds me of this writer: https://medium.com/@Tullia/there-is-a-way-to-discourage-affairs-ab74e4cbc122
Thank you!!
Brilliant, thoughtful, disturbing, urgently needed and painfully honest. I can feel this has been brewing in your head (and loins ?) for decades. I also wonder how age-appropriate children would feel about these paradigm shifts or potential upheavals?
At 67 years old and by no means a rigid traditionalist when it comes to relationships or marriage- as evidenced by my own partnership based in companionship and to be honest, reality-based need… I nonetheless found myself feeling some anxiety upon reading this. And that’s a good thing. It means you plucked the right chords; you rattled nerves.
You’re a fearless thinker: You toss up BIG questions then tackle them to the ground with analysis and genuinely open curiosity- two of your power tools. 👏👏.
The honest questions and answers you suggest in "Step Three" sound great, but (as I think you would probably agree) even answers given with full honesty and conviction prior to getting engaged have a tendency to shift or even reverse over time. That could be true for almost any conversation you listed, but the ones that struck me as least likely to stay accurate over time were any pertaining to sex. I think it's essentially impossible for two people to anticipate the long-term impact of hormones, aging, kids, stress, and other factors on sex drive and frequency until it's happening.
Yes, the section on change is for sure as important as the honest questions! The questions are mostly designed to get people thinking about the likely conflicts to identify core value mismatches rather than make accurate plans.