Alt-Focus: I've actually been thinking about this a lot lately, because I've been making some bold moves that, if you told me I'd be doing one day even five years ago, I would have never believed I would ever have the balls to do, and while I think I can give myself a lot of the credit here I do think it also has a lot to do with what I learned/how I was shaped from my relationship with the guy I wrote about in the other thread. I'm ambitious naturally, but one of the things I always liked about him and our relationship on any level was that he really supported that drive and wouldn't let me give up and really helped me brush off all of the letdowns that inevitably come from trying to build a creative career and freelancing, and use them to my advantage later. He was much more business-oriented and helped me hone that whole aspect of basically being my own boss, and learning about business and marketing and all that. One of our biggest differences was that I'm much more emotional (especially back then) and he basically didn't have emotions and saw all human interaction like some kind of economics equation, which obviously had a lot of negative consequences but once I started to kind of meet him somewhere in the middle I learned how to use that to my advantage. He had a lot of qualities that are on the fence of positive and negative: calculating, scarily good at strategy, knows how to manipulate a situation to seemingly naturally result in getting what he wants etc (One of those out-of-the-blue presents he got me was a copy of the 33 Strategies of War.) When he used those against me it was awful but twisted in the right way and adding in my softer/more emotional/more intuitive side, I've been able to use those kinds of skills to feel pretty damn powerful. I like being able to feel strong enough to make things happen for myself, or to fuck with people who fuck with me. For better or worse I think I have him to thank for a lot of that.
Forgot my Alt Focus: I've learned to not pile on with people's problems. That girl obviously had a situation of her own and I shouldn't have made it worse. Her passive aggressive calls after we broke-up didn't help, but I tried to be nice and let it go. I've also learned the simplest lesson that "opposites attract" is true and bullshit at the same time. Now I spend some more time trying to figure people out and asking them a lot of questions before making any decisions on who they are. Especially in dating, because I don't want to get caught off guard with a "Grubby". DCC, I have no idea what your post has to do with anything but I will make your question. Marriages have a 50-60% failure rate. Relationships slightly higher. Relationships either work or you don't. If it doesn't, you hop into another one after you're done with the last one. Just because you don't see them working doesn't mean you just avoid them entirely. As you can see from this thread and the last one, there are things to learn and sometimes they can make you a better person.
Uh, I can't really tell if you're cherry picking from a large social circle, or if that is representative of your social circle. If it's the latter, then I'd say you have an exceptionally terrible representation of relationships around you. It's hard to say why that might be, unless maybe you meet everyone through your profession and that's a common thread. You say, "The unbelievable emotional stress, financial hit and lack of control would kill me." There's nothing inherent in a relationship that requires you to undergo extreme emotional stress, bad finances or no control. There are people who enter into bad relationships, just like there are people who choose a bad job or make bad life choices. What you're saying is like asking why you would ever have a friendship, when all friends do is take advantage of you, make you pay for drinks, tease you, and disappear when you need them. Or why would you ever have sex when all it does is give you STDs, get you pregnant, and never give you an orgasm. Bad friends might do that. Bad sexual partners might make you feel that way. Bad spouses or partners subject their significant other to emotional stress, or drain their finances, or demand total control.
With some exceptions, I think a relationship worth staying in is one that first requires you to be in ones that aren't. It's, in large part, a learned skill to find, enter, and remain in a satisfying long term relationship. Prior to my wife, the longest one I was in was about 6-7 months. We've now been together about 7.5 years and married for 4.5 of them. It's been 100% worth it and is a major source of my happiness and life satisfaction. Over the years being broken up with sucked and sucked hard, but as was mentioned before, the joy of being in a relationship with someone is hard to explain to someone who has never been in one. There is a deep comfort, security, and sense of building together towards a common and better joint future. All the more so with my wife where we can talk about plans for next year, next decade, thirty years hence and know that some day we'll be able to chart all the steps we took as a team to get there. Now, some people get into shitty relationships, or with shitty people, or people change and grow apart, etc etc. But as Binary says, the horrible stuff is *not* automatic or required. Picking the right person, being at the right time, and communicating clearly can really prevent these catastrophes. Should you, specifically, ever get into one? Maybe not. 7 billion people are alive, presumably some of them are better off not "settling down" with someone. That might be you. Or, it's just as possible that it's something you've walled off as a possibility specifically because you have a horrible sample around you distorting your outlook.
Agreed with above. The best way to describe my relationship with FutureWife is that she filled a void in my life that I didnt know I had. Gooey cliche. Whatever. Truth.
Not to lay on the cliches here, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. We're better together than we are separately.
Focus: I'm not sure I've ever been the cause of an unhealthy relationship. However, I have definitely been a vindictive asshole after I feel I've been wronged. Maybe this has something to do with the fact that I've never been in a relationship where I didn't get cheated on. With the girl I dated in college, I stayed after she cheated and then did anything I could to make her jealous, short of cheating. Additionally, I definitely told her brothers, who were friends of mine, everything that she did and this made her family life a little uncomfortable for a while. Alt. Focus: This part is going to sound a tad bitter, but I think you'll understand. As I said, I've never been in a relationship where I haven't been cheated on. I'm sure that some part of this has to do with me, as I have been in three long-term relationships and the only common denominator is me. However, this has made me not trust women at all. I'm incredibly guarded at the outset of a relationship and a woman must work really hard to earn my trust. After this last one, (yes, I got rid of her) I don't think I want a relationship for a very long time, if ever. All my experiences have taught me is that women will cheat on nice guys that treat them well. Because of this, I will never let a woman walk all over me again. I would now prefer to have a bunch of FWBs and no serious relationship. That said, I'm terrified of casual sex. I'm scared of STDs, pregnancy, being accused of rape, etc. Therefore, no sex for me.