I'm tired today. Not physically tired(Well, that too, but that's not the point). I'm sick and tired of being told we are odd in some way. I mean, exactly who isn't? Anyone know a long-term married couple that are ecstatically happy to be together? Because I know exactly one.
Granted, we live in a consensual triad, and that's unusual. On the other hand, there's the "Couple" (I guess that's still the correct terminology since they cohabitate) near us (All to near honestly)who have been divorced 25 years, but still live in the same house. They still argue, he still drinks and pretty much everyone around here thinks she's a bitch, although most of them humor her antics, I suppose because they think that's easier. They still argue a whole damned lot, quite often outside where the neighbors have to hear it. As far as I can tell the house has been effectively divided into individual territory, and he has a small apartment in one corner, though he's usually in the garage. He get's home after work and walks straight5 to the garage, and doesn't enter the house until midnight or 1 a.m. after she's gone to bed. His friends come to visit him out in the garage. Isn't that weird?
There's the woman down the street who I thought was single all these years. I was told by someone that would know recently that she's married, but the husband is rarely home. Hey, I can promise you he's only been home maybe three hours in the last three or four years, because from where I live I could tell if he was. Having met the wife, I can't blame the husband for always finding somewhere else to be other than home, but it still seems weird to me.
There's the guy I work with that speaks as if he despises the person on the phone with him, and wants that prson to know it from his tone and demeanor. He only speaks that way to one person as far as I can tell, normally he's pretty polite. I asked one day who it was on the phone. "My wife" he says. I just said "Oh", and moved on, but later I asked another co-worker if it was his ex after a bad divorced. "No, they're still married, why?" was the reply.
Oh, no reason.
Weird.
There's the guy I knew who wouldn't keep a girlfriend for 7 years, because that makes her a common law wife. I found this out when he mentioned one day he needed to break up with his current, whom prior to this he had seemed extremely happy to be with. They were one of the most happy and contented couples I knew from what I could see. Certainly she was attentive and very flirty with him, and she was smart and good looking to boot. I'd thought he was kidding, but three weeks later she was gone, moved out. Turns out he actually does have this personal rule that after 6 years he has six months to end a relationship, so that he doesn't end up "Married". According to his sister, the girl I met was the third to suffer this fate. Three perfectly happy relationships tossed away. Weird I tell you.
When I was in the military I knew a couple who had a rule that said if one spouse was more than 200 miles from home, they were allowed to "act single". The oddest part of this relationship to me was that the partner at home was never to know what the partner away had done. It was never to be discussed. I would want to know. Not because I'd be jealous or forbid it, but just in case that fling ever happened back into our lives. Life is funny and people happen to bump into you 30 years later more often than one would think. That could get really weird!
And of course there are the more typical relationships. Married but playing on the side, lying about it to the spouse and giggling over that fact with friends. Guys on the "Down Low", women with friends they "Are comfortable" with. Friends in both cases that the spouse doesn't know about. All that lying and sneaking seems weird to me.
In fact, it strikes me as ironic that I personally know of exactly one stereotypically "Good" marriage, one relationship where the man and woman never married but were dedicated and loving for 35 years until death parted them, one marriage in which the couple screams, yells, throws things, kicks holes in the walls and then makes up, one couple who divorced but never separated. I know two gay couples (One m/m, and one f/f) that are several years old and seem to be working well still, and I know of one situation where the woman and her first husband divorced, she remarried, and she lives now quite happily and peacefully with her ex and her current in their home. I don't know the sexual dynamics there, and shouldn't since who sleeps with who is none of my business in any relationship not my own, but look! A consensual triad that isn't ours! That makes two!! That means we are part of a larger whole. That means that in my experience the relationships that are most common are gay relationships and consensual triads like mine.
I know, right!? That is so weird!
