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My anchor

Trydaen is my anchor partner.  In a few short days we will have been together four years.  Considering I’ve never made it past three before, this leads me to pondering what is different with this one?

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I call him my anchor because that’s the term that fits best for me – he has been who I can go back to and cry to when times are rough with my other relationships, who keeps me from becoming unhinged, who challenges me to be a better and kinder person.  This is not to say he is without faults, because that is, like with everyone, not true.  He can make me so mad when he tries to out-stubborn me or raises his voice at me.
Our relationship started out, like most do, with a period of great passion and chemistry.  For me that lasted a long time.  But what happened then is what I think matters more to the big question.  We figured out how to live with each other’s faults and how to negotiate with each other.  And this has been an ongoing process.
Of the many times I’ve asked why he loves me, I’ve never gotten an answer.  He says he doesn’t know why, just that he does.  Recently the question has become “I’ve been/am a depressed mess.  Why are you still with me?”  The answer is always something along the lines of: Because you make me happy far more often than not.  The one that truly touched me was that he said he misses me when I do not stay with him.  After four years, I think that might mean more to me than “I love you”. 

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Trydaen

Relationship: Boyfriend/partner (my preferred term)

How long:  Have known him since August 2009, have been dating since February 2011.

How we met originally:  Through Butterfly.  I met her on OkCupid and she invited me to their house.  He was her partner at the time.

What I like:  His sense of humor, cute butt, honesty, and intelligence.

What I don’t like: Snoring, issues with expressing attraction/desire, occasionally the only person I can hear from a floor away when I’m trying to sleep.

What our relationship is like:  There’s a phrase I’ve heard about romantic relationships that tends to be fairly true: first year forming, second year storming, third year norming.  We are definitely in our second year, but we are alway still learning new things about each other and discovering the depth of our love.  I am still as desirous of him as I was the first year we were together, but I think there’s more depth to it now.  We have sex fairly regularly, a little less often than I would like, but nothing worth a fuss.  I am definitely the higher libido partner, which is quite a change for me.

What I have learned from this relationship:  Attraction can be sustained through more than just NRE.  How to express specifically what I want, when I want it, instead of just expecting someone to know what I want (still working on this).  How to listen well.  That sometimes love just cannot be explained using words – still don’t know why, just that it can.  That humor is endearing to me.  How drunk someone can get and still not seem like it.  How to be more understanding of people whose brains work differently from mine.

Random tidbits: We were born about eight years and ten months apart (he is older).  He is an aspie.  When I first met him he had hair that was past his shoulders.  He is divorced, as of 2012 – I never met his wife (even though we started dating before the divorce was finalized), but I have seen her in an old video.  He has pretty blue eyes.  He gets into obsessions with video games for months on end.  Our first date was to a conveyor belt sushi place and I was so nervous, even though I had known him for a couple years, and we had been getting cuddly and friendly for a couple months before.