AIBU to ask if your DH/DP is the love of your life?

[KittyFane]

That's all! :o

Jacaqueen, It is possible to have passion and adventure AND love and security...if the right person comes along at the right time.

So, although you feel you might have had a life half lived, and all that, the alternative might have been no DCs, no family...and still not met Mr Right. For me, I would have no issue at all with not having a partner, but I wouldn't like to have got to [insert age] without having had my DCs, so 'settling' would be preferable. I know I am very, very lucky to have both. It wasn't a straight or easy path, but it ended up in a very beautiful place :)

And if truly only 10% of us meet Mr/Mrs Right, then the norm is to settle for what suits at the time...

I hope you are happy. happy enough, if not ecstatic.

Yes - without a doubt, and I'm his

I feel very very lucky to have him even though he does occasionally drive me mad.

Yes.

Don't believe in soulmates/the "one" and consider I could have made a relationship with someone else work.

In truth there was a time after we got together where I wondered whether I was settling. But the longer we are together the more I love him. And I know that he is the one person who knows me truly, flaws and all, and still loves me. I feel very lucky. But he does my head in quite a lot!

This thread is so bitterweet.

Yep. Wasn't particularly interested in getting married and certainly not in having kids till I met him.

No, and until I read this thread I honestly didn't think that this soul-mate stuff existed outside of Hollywood films.

Or are you all in the first year of a relationship or something? :)

OH dh IS the love of my life, he's fabulous, no one else would put up with me, and he still makes me laugh and he's a top dad I can almost forgive the farting.

I don't believe in the "one". If dp died tomorrow or vice versa I would hope she/or me would eventually fall in love again. Equally so if we split up.

I can say though I sincerely hope that neither of these things happen(ESP the first thing).

As it stands right now she gets my every thought without speaking. She knows my dreams and I know hers. We differ in many ways but are always on the same page. We share our lives, fears, hopes and desires. We laugh so much everyday.

Threads like this always make me feel wretched and gutted.

Not because I'm not happy for all of you who are in such great relationships, I am, and wish you all much continued happiness.

I don't know if I believe in "the one", I see things more in the same way as The Armadillo I guess - if I was in a relationship like that, I'd be ecstatic.

My husband feels like my housemate with shared childcaring duties. Things aren't awful enough to split up, but it's not a marriage. I can't knock how hard he works, and that he is useful to have around - and I'm not exactly the ideal woman for many reasons - but we never have sex, we're not really friends, we'd never take an opportunity to spend time alone together.

I always feel like he has no respect for me, finds me physically repulsive, generally looks down on me. Now and again he will say that he's in love with me - but I don't believe him.

He often says that I expect too much from the relationship - that we are like most people - but if I am to take this thread as an example (and what my friends tell me about their relationships), it looks like most people are extremely happy in their relationships and we're in the minority.

Servalan,

I don't think most people are "extremely happy in their relationships" (of course, who really knows?). I suspect that a minority are truly with their absolute soulmate and best friend, who they fancy the pants off as well, another minority are actually unhappy (you sound actually unhappy :( ), and a majority are happy enough.

FWIW I also think everyone should be able to expect any relationship that they are part of (romantic or friendship) to make them at least happy enough.

Servalan, forgive my post, it now feels inappropriate in the light of yours.
Empathy to you, there is so much luck involved in who we end up with, or that's what it seems to me.
My parents split up when I was 5 and it had such a very negative effect on me that I think I spent my adult life looking for someone who would not be the bag of shi**e that my father was to us! So it became my raison d'etre to have a happy relationship to the detriment of any possible career I might have had!

I wish you well for the future, no one knows what's going to happen and maybe things will change for the better for you in ways you can't yet imagine. All the best.

Please don't apologise mrszimmerman - I am truly glad for your happiness and that of others :) Thanks to you and fourkids for your kind words. I probably shouldn't have come on this thread with all my self-indulgent and possibly pmt-induced nonsense. Just because it makes me sad doesn't mean that it's not good for me to see what healthy relationships look like

ditto Servalan, and have to say most of my friends in RL would say similar so have kind of assumed it's the norm once you've had kids and been together a bit, so am now depressed that so many of you are so happy with your DH. My DH and I co-parent (which we do pretty well) our two DS but that's about it!

a skewed percentage of the MN population answered though, joben, because the title attracted a lot of 'yes's, whereas a lot of 'no's probably though 'blah, no', or actually thought, 'what a load of twaddle - I can't even be bothered to open that thread,' which, to be honest is what I would have thought ten years ago.

Good point fourkids! No one likes ot boast about being in a merely 'practical' relationship! I am genuinely happy for those who are still in love with their DP/DH and hope that this continues to be the case. I love my DH because he is a great person and a fab dad, but he's not my soulmate or 'the one'. Like another poster, I left the love of my life cos I knew I wanted kids and he was too immature/irresponsible to be dad material.

No YANBU it's interesting to see if others are still living with the thunderbolt. I knew within weeks of meeting my Dh that we would get married as it just seemed right. If you'd asked me 2 years ago, I would have said I made a mistake: 2 young children PND and a feeling that he didn't understand me at all and there was no passion (not just anymore, there never really had been - he's not that kind of guy). But now, we're closer than ever and very happily on the same wavelength. Although I would still say he isn't a 'soulmate' .

Also it's always easy to look back at old relationships that were full of spark It doesn't mean they would have stayed that way :o

Hell yeah, coat buying obsession and inability to find ANYTHING aside, he is completely the love of my life. I felt like everything before was a practise run, and this is where I am meant to be when we got together. That said, it wasn't instant love, more a feeling I had found the other half of me, my best friend. I fell in love with him slow and deep rather than fast like with my ex. But I have learned that this way it has enough fuel to last a lifetime, rather than burning out when the excitement fades. This feels like my "proper" relationship, out of the two long term ones I've had.

Oh yes, abso-fuckin-lutely.

Totally agree with fourkids we have the passion and the best friend two piece of the jigsaw thing. I totally beieve in the one. Knowing that being without your husband you miss each other so much and constantly want him there when he is at work and you think how much he would love to be doing what your doing that dday.

I think you know its the one when they are your best friend in the whole iworld and things just arent as fun without them and they are also the most fuckable indvidual you have ever seen.

Oh yes.

He saved me.

Absolutely. No question.

Yes, my one and only.
Married almost 27 years and come March will have been together for 30 years, since we were 16.

We've just spent the week in Cornwall, if it wasn't for him, encouraging me and holding my hand, I wouldn't have climbed up to St. Michaels mount or up 150 feet into the roof of the Eden project dome or stood by the edge at Lands end. (I'm very scared of heights).