Dear D:

I wanted to reply without additional information. You wrote yesterday: “Worrisome what repressed boredom can create. Looking forward to your input“-  you referred to boredom in the context of your 11-year-long relationship.

In your original post, you wrote: “I am a mother and a partner to a man of incredible patience and love. we have been together for 11 years and obviously, like most relationships, it hasn’t been easy… Where he is easygoing and has a stable base level, I have pretty intense and deep emotions…I also feel my partner deserves someone who has the same amount of love for him as he does for me”-

–what is love? I think of it (in the context of romantic love) as 2 people being incredibly patient and easy going with each other, focusing on creating and maintaining a trustworthy,  stable relationship. But I am older than you and far removed from fairytales and raging hormones: I am okay with being content, I don’t want an exciting roller coaster ride.

But I understand, and I remember the Promise Of Youth (POY, I’ll call it): that happiness-ever-after promise at the end of fairy tale books. Similar to the biblical promise of the return to Paradise Earth aka heaven where there is no pain, no boredom, nothing but… happiness ever after. I am visualizing a child running in an open field of green grass, under the warm, pleasant sun and clear, blue skies… running because there is a promise at the end of the run: how intoxicating it feels to run toward it. Do you relate?

That intoxication has biological objectives in humans and in other animals: to motivate us to hunt and gather food and mate so to survive as individuals and as species. This intoxication is not meant to be permanent or a forever-state of mind and body. But because humans, unlike other animals, can imagine a forever, we also imagine a forever-after happiness and excitement.

Maybe your partner is okay with life being content (?) Maybe, for him, love is different than what it means to you.

anita