I had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine this morning about love and marraige and growing up, etc.\u00a0 We got into an interesting debate about whether or not true love lasts or if people just find enough love to happily settle into a life.\u00a0 And she asked me do I know anyone that has the lasting true love followed by do I know anyone that has just happily settled.\u00a0 Who’s a better example than family members, since I have so many of them?\u00a0 So here goes:<\/p>\n
I have a set of grandparents that have been together since they were 13.\u00a0 (Seriously) They are coming up on their fiftieth wedding anniversary this year.\u00a0 They built a life through high school, got married shortly after, and had four children.\u00a0 They actually went through all the trials and tribulations of high school and stuck by each others sides.\u00a0 They dealt with raising four children and all of their issues in growing up.\u00a0 Lost jobs, cancer, alcohol addictions, teenage pregnancy (me), etc.\u00a0 And although life may not have gone as planned for the two of them if you look at them now they’re still in love with each other.\u00a0 I watch how hard it is on my grandma seeing my grandpa start to give up on life because of health issues.\u00a0 And it’s not just the hurt because she cares it’s more than that.\u00a0 Everything that hurts him\u00a0 you can tell hurts her as well in a way I don’t understand.<\/p>\n
Then you go to another set of grandparents who I think they found personalities that go to go together and grew to love each other.\u00a0 They have dealt with a lot of the same issues, obviously with some others as well.\u00a0 They adopted two children and made a really decent life for themselves and their children.\u00a0 I have never seen them drink or smoke (although apparently my grandpa used to) and they have always been very content and happy to me.\u00a0 It seems like they just found someone they fit with and settled into it.\u00a0 The main difference I see between the two is that with this set is that they never seem to be “together.”\u00a0 Almost like they co-exist within each other.\u00a0 My grandma drives my grandpa nuts and even though this grandpa is dealing with health issues as well, my grandma won’t move to an assisted living with him.\u00a0 Instead she wants to stay at the house and let him go to a nursing home.\u00a0 She’s not ready to give up the life and my grandpa’s body isn’t giving him the choice.\u00a0 I don’t see that same pain or yearning between the two of them.<\/p>\n
So my friend asked me which one I would want.\u00a0 I mean, almost every woman as a girl dreams of that fairy tale prince that will come in the white horse and sweep them away to their fantasy life.\u00a0 But I’m a little more realistic than that.\u00a0 And in all honesty, I could see myself being happy either way.\u00a0 I think that the “settling” relationship is a little more realistic than finding that magical true love that outlasts the tribulations of time.\u00a0 Both of my examples have their pluses and minuses, and oddly both are still relatively happy.\u00a0 They both have children that\u00a0 have failed and succeeded in many different ways and they both economically have failed and succeeded.\u00a0 So is there really a difference?\u00a0 I think there is but I can’t figure out which one is right for me.\u00a0 Which is what it’s really all about anyway right?\u00a0 This is why I talk to my mother…\u00a0 \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine this morning about love and marraige and growing up, etc.\u00a0 We got into an interesting debate about whether or not true love lasts or if people just find enough love to happily settle into a life.\u00a0 And she asked me do I know anyone that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[144,145,237,227],"class_list":["post-376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-cancer","tag-fiftieth-wedding-anniversary","tag-pain","tag-smoke"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocbenji.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocbenji.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocbenji.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocbenji.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocbenji.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocbenji.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocbenji.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocbenji.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocbenji.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}