Changes

The moving van finally came yesterday. The contents of my apartment now: my clothes, the dresser my parents gave me when I was 15, most of the kitchen stuff, the kids' bedroom stuff, the toys, the TV, my Ikea chair, and the ratty couch I've been sleeping on for 20 months. (And a couple of other things the movers didn't take but which will leave in the next week or so.)

It feels liberating. And sad for the boys. And like I need a bed, some storage, and a new couch that doesn't poke me when I sit on it.

Which brings me to the Pledge Drive: Thank you! I can now buy a couch and some storage, and a friend who's upgrading is giving me her old bed.

Also, I wanted to share some good news that temporarily for me got overshadowed by all the bad news last week: My younger brother (the one who's a carpenter and looks like Matt Damon) asked his girlfriend to marry him, and she said yes!

I am thrilled for them. They dated in high school, and then broke up when she went to college, and then ran into each other 10 years later and started dating again. I called to tell him I was getting divorced, and he was just starting to date her again, and what he said to me made me cry: "I can't explain it, but being with her is just effortless. Every other relationship I've been in since her has been uphill."

They have the kind of connection and relationship I hope to have with someone someday. I can't wait for them to be married, and for her to be my sister.

Comments

[enu]

It's nice when a relationship seems effortless in the early days, but I think it is unrealistic to hope for/expect a relationship which will always be that way. Maybe the best you can hope for is a relationship which is worth the effort, once it is no longer effortless....

[Ashramama]

I would give a lot for an effortless relationship (I was going to say I'd give my right arm, but that's not true and I seem to have a knack for (bad) wish fulfilment!).

It seems to be that sea change time of year, post-eclipse as well, where things are finally MOVING, but not always in the direction we want them to. And of course, any big change is always accompanied by that apparent backward step, which is actually like a drawn-in breath, or the tide going way out before a tidal wave. Anyone else experiencing any returns to old behaviour patterns?

Moxie, you must be so pleased about your brother, but isn't it bittersweet when contrasted with your own circumstances. I know that, personally, whenever I am confronted with people in love, I have to turn my head away for fear that the jealousy and my own sense of loss will damage their happiness, much as I wish them well...

Much strength and congratulations to you in this new phase of your life. I hope your boys are well.

[Ashramama]

I forgot to add! My relationship was similar to your brother's - ran into an ex and started a relationship again, but it was far from roses even from the word go, even though we were each other's first loves. We hadn't taken into account how much we had changed in the intervening years - he grew massively in terms of confidence and I went the other way. It's the inequality of this as much as anything else which started the rot. I hope your brother and his fiancee are finding that they have grown together (but apart, if you see what I mean!)

[Lee]

Congratulations on the success of your pledge drive! And to your brother and his fiancee!

Wishing everyone happy times ahead!

[caramama]

Good luck with everything, Moxie. I was happy to contribute (although sad there was no place to leave you a comment--I used my husband's paypal account, so you'll have no idea it was me).

Congrats to your brother! That's so great for him.

I feel like being with my husband overall is effortless. The relationship is work, sometimes VERY hard work, but the being together is really easy. It's amazing when you are in a relationship like that, and I wish everyone could find that effortlessness aspect of being with someone.

[Matilda]

Exactly what Caramama said! It's not like my husband and I never disagree or have a bit of a rough patch, but I'd say being with my husband is "effortless" in the sense that I NEVER have to pretend that I'm happier, smarter, wittier, etc. with him--somehow, he just loves me anyway (strangely enough). I too hope that everyone can hit that sweet spot where the relationship just hums along even if everything else in your life is a bit chaotic.

Congratulations to your brother and to you for new beginnings!

[Linda]

I'm interested in the number of people who have contributed so far - and were you surprised? (I'm not interested in the amount of money!) Do you have a sense of how many folks are involved with your site? It's just so helpful....and I'm curious about the numbers, if you know them.....

[rudyinparis]

Wow! Things are really moving forward for you! What a time of change. Does it make you dizzy to think of how different your situation is now than, say, two years ago? It amazes me, how resilient we are. I hope this period is a time you always look back on as being scary and exciting and important.

[Moxie]

So far 91 people! Largest amount: $100. Smallest amount: $5.

Ashramama, it actually made me so, so happy that he wasn't going to repeat the bad patterns I did. I'm sad my kids don't have a two-parent family, but at least they'll get to see what a couple that should be together looks like.

[pnuts mama]

best to your brother and i'll agree, effortless is nice but unrealistic. sometimes you have to make the decision to love someone through the crappy times. like when the upper half of your house is still not ready to be lived in and you are experiencing daily anxiety attacks over it. sigh. i guess if you're still happy to be with the person in spite of that, you're good. so i guess i'm good. how did this turn into being about me? augh.

only good things for you as this next phase of the journey begins- love and light and peace, girl. the phoenix rises, indeed.

[hedra]

The effortless thing is interesting to me, because the most effortless relationships I've been in have been the least functional, not the most. But the difference between 'effort and work' and 'painfully hard' is huge. Life with DH is constant and ongoing effort. But it isn't painfully hard most of the time (and when it is, it is generally when we're dealing with a problem that crept up easily and without big flags). There's no internal resistance to doing the essential work of being together, which means that while it is effort, it is fine with both of us.

We also are not a good personality mesh, though we enjoy each other's company. We started out this relationship working on it intentionally, thinking about it, being concrete and doing totally 'unromantic' things like making a list of relationship rules we both agreed on (kind of like the Safe Respectful Kind stuff but a bit more concrete, like 'no mind-reading allowed, if you didn't say it, nobody heard it'), and being up-front about what we each wanted and needed. And THEN we fell in love.

We're driven to be together, feel our future is a common path, respect each other, etc., etc., but easy? Not a chance. And that's entirely okay, because the effort is, as enu suggested, worth it. More than worth it, in fact.

My mom has a lot of relationship rules, one of which I've mentioned before ('the measure of a relationship is in how it affects your other relationships - if every other relationship improves - including making it easier to spot the dysfunctional ones - this is a good relationship'), and one of them was 'good relationships take more work than almost anything else we can do' - yes, the love makes it feel smoother, and a good personality mesh can make things just ease along as we do the work, but there's also always the risk that it being a good mesh will make for laziness and false expectations that everyone remains the same all the time, and does not grow and change.

Use the good mesh, it's lovely, and sometimes I wish DH and I were not so much aliens to each other's way of being. But use it as a way to keep the wheels greased so the effort can carry on with less resistance. But keep up the effort, anyway. We use common goals, love and affection, respect, and mutual values to reduce the friction. Having a good mesh to add to that would be pleasant, even joyful, but I don't find it at all essential. (Though my little brother also has that same ease of fit with his wife, and it is pleasing to see. He had a similar experience with most of his relationships being 'work work work' and life with her just being simple. They have had their rough patches, but they've used that underlying ease as one of the tools or methods to get past the uncomfortable places.)

Oh, and the other relationship that I see working amazingly well is my dad's with my step-mom, and again, effort is key. They started dating AT couple's counseling (at my dad's insistence, since he knew he sucked at being married, and he didn't think he knew how to manage a relationship and if he was going to even bother at all, he was going to start from day one with professional help). I think every date for the first three months was with a couple's counselor (the best he could find, at that). My step-mom stuck with that, and took it seriously, and they've kept the counselor on retainer for 20+ years, I think, and are now down to about once every 3 years they have a problem they haven't the skills to work out and call in for help. That's not 'easy' by any means. But it is wonderful, peaceful, gentle, kind, loving, respectful, generous, and all the other things that I would hope for anyone I cared about.

Congrats to your brother nonetheless. I hope the ease helps carry them through, as it does with my own little brother.

[enu]

@Hedra "We're driven to be together, feel our future is a common path" You said it! Though in our case our personalities are not too disimilar, which is also not necessarily an asset - we seem to plot out in the exact same position on the Myers-Briggs, and it would probably be benefial to us both if we didn't! Well, maybe if/when I'm well again and the kids on their way in life we'll have a spell of effortless - it would be nice!

[Shannon]

I only have brothers. I have always wanted a sister, and really wanted one of them to marry a person who could be a sister-figure to me. So far, I have liked everybody they have dated/married, but nobody is like a sister. (I have a feeling my expectations are too high.) So that's awesome for you, Moxie!

I think there are people who can have effortless relationships, but I'm just not one of them. I'm just too much of an over-thinker to just go with the flow.

[Bobbi]

I'd been in a lot of relationships prior to meeting my husband, including a failed marriage. All I can say is that "effortless" is a perfect way to describe the relationship I now have. But don't think that means we don't work at it. It just doesn't seem like work. It's like breathing - it's something you do as if you are compelled to by some force inside. We truly are better together, and are extremely blessed to have found each other (even through the normal fights and short nerves and 4 kids). I wish this for your brother (and for you too). Congratulations to him on his engagement!

[Shelley]

10 years in (15, if you count the years we were living together but not yet married), and there's no one I'd rather spend time with, no one I trust more, and whenever I'm somewhere with him I'm so proud to be with him. Neither of us is perfect, but we are really, really well-matched. We've been through some crap together, as all couples have, and I'm sure we'll experience even tougher times someday. But I feel so good about where we've been and where we are that I trust we'll be able to get through those times.

Moxie, I wish the same for you, more than I can say.

[peaceinyourcrib]

moxie- want to comment on how you called her your *sister* vs. SIL.
that made me tear up.
i doubt if that was even intentional; i think it came out of true love and joy in your heart.
think of the riches she gets to be in a family of yours!

[Joy]

Yeah, what Caramama and Bobbi both said apply to me. About that DH and I are a really good fit, like breathing, but that it's definitely work (after 10 yrs. married, 14 together). The roughest patches for us have always been when I haven't been very happy with myself, or him with himself, not being unhappy with each other. Also, it so helps that we give each other room to be ourselves, to do the things that nourish our individual souls, even if it's not together. Yes, we have many similiar interests and do things together, but we relish time apart, and that's okay, too.

[Charisse]

Wow, interesting comments! I personally think at least as many people get suckered by the idea that relationships must always be terribly hard work as by the idea that they can be truly effortless. I'm not sure there's an easy way to express what a healthy, working-on-it-and-loving-it-while-living-in-it relationship feels like, but boy do I know a lot of people who've stuck with miserable relationships because they've been told to expect hard work and no nirvana. To me, the work in the relationship I stayed in felt qualitatively *better*, deeper and smoother at the same time than others I'd had. I might have called it effortless, certainly at the beginning. Congrats to your brother, Moxie! That's wonderful news.

(Maybe more noodling later after I get us off to our Monday!)

[hedra]

@Charisse, it is the 'worth it' part that is hard to describe, sometimes. It FEELS worth it. But if you don't describe what exactly is the worth it part (happiness, satisfaction, respect, comfort, etc.), then it can seem like the 'worth it' is somehow a payoff later, 'work is its own reward', or 'reward in heaven but not on earth' type system.

It's funny, I never thought of the second side of that being a trap, too - but yes, I agree, there are people I know who stick with the work, waiting for a reward to come along later but having no way to measure whether they should be staying NOW. Sometimes the staying has seemed a stupid thing in the near-term but has turned out to be not so stupid long term. And sometimes the staying has been a bad plan all along. How does one know the difference? I've asked men to go do their work somewhere else because I cannot cope with it, and two of them have done so, and both have ended up being reasonable humans in good relationships, with someone else. I don't regret those, at all, though. I think that if I can see myself being happy for them being whole and happy people later with someone else, that's good. But when is the desire to be the one with whom this person succeeds a good thing, and when is it just a form of self-torture, a continuation of dysfunction alread present, a way to keep oneself from happiness, an excess of insecurity or a negative self-fulfilling prophecy or a symptom of shattering insecurity? I asked my mom something like that once, and she said that I'd know when I found it. Um, NOT the most helpful thing I've ever heard from her, since I pretty much was absolutely certain I found it each time I fell in love! Oy. And yet, I knew when I found it, anyway - and part of it was the sense of mutuality, respect, and one-path-before-us. There was ONLY one way we could go, both and each, and that was together.

But that still could show up in a totally catastrophic relationship, and it would be hard to tell the difference from the surface details.

So, how DO we know? Really. (Okay, so if I go back and apply Safe Respectful Kind and my other 'filters' this relationship makes it through all the filters 90% of the time, and the other 10% it could be either of us not fitting, and then we work out how to make it through... Not one of the others would have fit more than 50% of the time, and most not even 20%, and the other guy to whom I was engaged for a while... well, that one wouldn't make it through Respectful, period, forget about getting to Kind.) But that's my filter set. No idea if the Safe Respectful Kind/Effective Prudent True/Acceptant Loving Faithful set works for others.

[MLB]

@Charisse - I totally agree. My feeling on this is that the things that are "work" are generally the things in life that would be hard anyway, and are not as result of the relationship being hard. For example, major house renovations are hard and "work" but not because of something having to do with the relationship. An effortless relationship does not mean that everything will be easy, but more that it is the good foundation beneath everything and a safe place to go. I think fundamentally it comes down to trust - trust that each person is doing the best they can in every area and trust that the other person will support them when necessary. My husband and I fight and are going through lots of stressors (i.e. changes in job and financial effects with 3 small kids), but if asked I would describe the relationship as effortless because the "bones" of the relationship make it possible to talk to each other constructively about these changes 90% of the time.

[pnuts mama]

oooh, what joy said...about the not being happy w/ self causing issues when there are issues...i know i've been immensely blessed to have married my best friend and i don't take the ease of our being with each other for granted, but i suppose what it is for us is a deep and abiding sense of permanence. but that doesn't mean we don't have to make an effort sometimes.

also, definitely what hedra said- it's the love that we have for each other that inspires the effort when you hit the part of the cycle that is downward. it's not rainbows and unicorns all the time, but the memory of them is what inspires us to work through the crud with the promise that more good stuff is coming again. so i guess for us, it's effortless in the sense of the commitment to keep going even when it does get difficult.

[ACJ]

Moxie, all my best wishes to you. I hope you know that by giving so much (as you always do) and sharing your story you're helping some of us to feel like we're not so alone.

[caramama]

After reading what Charisse and hedra said, I thought about something else. Every person and every couple rubs along best at different levels of effort and work in the relationship. Very much like every child is different and your relationship with one child might require different parenting than the relationship with another child.

IMO, one of these things (effort and effortless and work and easy) does not always make for a perfect relationship. There is no one size fits all for adult relationships just as there isn't for the parent-child relationship. It should probably come down to the "worth it" that hedra was talking about.

I think it's great to hear all these sides from everyone!

[JB]

I've been married for 14 years, together for 18. We didn't live together before we got married, and I think I didn't understand what "work" meant in a marriage. I agreed nominally that I had to work at it, yes yes, I would work at my relationship, but at the age of 21 I don't think I had the faintest notion what that involved: not just talking, not just listening, but thinking, carefully, about who I am and who my husband is; thinking about whether my behavior should change in a given instance, and not just his; loving him not just for who he is, but for who he is as he inevitably changes over decades of life together (and loving myself as I change, too.)

That kind of work took a lot of on-the-job training, and I almost didn't understand in time. I made some huge, irreparable mistakes. Of course, I continue to make mistakes, but I think more now, so it's hard to make really fundamental mistakes. Yes, it's effort. It's work. But it's work I'm passionate about (going back to a discussion from a few weeks ago!)

[Katie B.]

Hmm. In absolute terms, DH and I are a poor fit, being opposites on so many levels that most people feel you need to be at the very least similar on - politics, religion, general philosophies... but one major reason our relationship works is that our fundamental values - like, the basic feeling that human life is sacred - are the same, we just take the conclusions that brings us in different directions. DH doesn't agree with this assessment, btw, but we've been together 4 years now (and our second wedding anniversary is tomorrow!), and I haven't seen anything to change my opinion. We may disagree on those issues, and it gets frustrating, not being able to talk about them with each other, but while we do have to stop and consciously work through things at times (which we knew we'd have to, going into this relationship), day-to-day it's "effortless". A corner of my mind is always highly aware that our differences could very well drive us apart some day, and I try to keep that corner content by letting it make contingency plans, but for the most part I approach my marriage with the attitude that the work involved with it is "worth it", because it makes both of us better people. Thinking about hedra's filter, I think our relationship passes it pretty well most of the time, even if we don't have those ideas consciously present (although I think those are fab ones to present to our kids).

To sum up, yes, my relationship is "work"... but it only sometimes feels like it, and it's very much worth it to us both.

[Cloud]

Moxie- please leave that donate post up for awhile! I want to contribute, because this site is so valuable to me. But your post came at a busy time, so I haven't gotten to do it yet. Maybe today at lunch??? We'll see. I'm not one of those people who waits until the last day of the NPR pledge drive, so I won't procrastinate on it, I promise!

About the relationships- I would say that a little bit of effort is fine, as long as both parties are making the effort. Hubby and I are very happy together, but we still have things that we need to work out from time to time. The key thing for me is that we work them out together- neither of us expects the other to just change and solve it.

And even though we work at it sometimes, there are other times when being together really does feel effortless. There is a Christy Moore song called "The Voyage" that really captures how I think about our relationship:

--------------
I am a sailor, you're my first mate
We signed on together, we coupled our fate
Hauled up our anchor, determined not to fail
For the hearts treasure, together we set sail

With no maps to guide us we steered our own course
Rode out the storms when the winds were gale force
Sat out the doldrums in patience and hope
Working together we learned how to cope

Chorus:
Life is an ocean and love is a boat
In troubled water that keeps us afloat
When we started the voyage, there was just me and you
Now gathered round us, we have our own crew

Together we're in this relationship
We built it with care to last the whole trip
Our true destination's not marked on any charts
We're navigating to the shores of the heart
------------
There, now you've all had your daily dose of sap.

Anyway, Moxie, good luck with all the changes that are happening now, and I hope you find your true first mate when the time is right.

[wendy]

I'm so glad that you can see your move in such a realistic and hopeful light. I'm sure that with a new couch comes new adventures for you and the little folks in your life. I wish you the absolute best!!

And my hubby looks quite a bit like Matt Damon...wanna have a contest to see who has the best look-alike?

*I just pressed the little orange button!! Thanks for leaving it up for another day. Please don't let it go away. I give to far less worthy causes all the time!! C'mon, if I just gave you the $ I've spent on candybars that some kid is peddling outside the grocery store you'd have a new love seat to go with your couch!!

[Piggy Toes]

That sounds so beautiful. I barely get along with my son's father. He is a good man but is very selfish. I am on the verge of leaving and it hurts my heart to no end. I just can't give up the hope that there is someone out there that would make me so happy and would feel effortless... That just sounds calming just saying it. Right now there is way too much effort and way too little happiness.

Good luck to your brother and new sister :)

[zenjen]

I remember that feeling of being in a place after much of the furniture had been moved out after my first marriage ended in divorce. It's a weird, lonely, disorienting and liberating feeling all at once. I am sure you will get some comfortable, lovely furniture and it will start feeling like your own space very soon.

Yes, my first marriage was always, always hard work and it never felt it "worked"...I was a hamster spinning on a wheel. Now, my current husband and I certainly have had to work at some aspects of our relationship especially before we were actually married but it has become more and more effortless as time goes on even with a spirited toddler throw into the mix. But there is this sense that we are in this together, and we truly are in it and engaged to the same extent in our marriage and in raising our son. I don't have that lone hamster feeling at all. Totally weird analogy, I know.

[Andrea]

Congratulations to you and your brother.

It was just about a year ago (17th) that I moved into my own apartment and started the single parent journey. It's been both better and harder than I imagined. Good luck to you and to your children.

[ugg store]

Good artilce!!! You and I have common interests! You are my part of the story!

[coach factory outlet]

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