Do we expect too much from romantic relationships

[AreWeThereYet69]

Just that!
I've been with someone for the last 18 months. We get on great, have fun dates, sex is good, he's respectful, dependable. Basically he meets a lot of my needs but sometimes I think he's not that deep. Sometimes when I've brought up up a topic, maybe something like this, I suppose I feel he doesn't really engage.
Also I feel I check in with him if he's got something going on more than he will with me.
It got me thinking about Esther Perel's TED talk from a few years back about desire in relationships. Her take is
our expectations for relationships are higher than ever. "We still want what the traditional family was meant to provide—security, children, property, and respectability—but now we also want our partner to love us, to desire us, to be interested in us. We should be best friends, trusted confidants, and passionate lovers"

Am I unrealistic to expect so many of my needs to be met in one person?

Do you?

i definitely don’t expect to get everything from DH. I need the relationships I have with friends and family, in all different ways. No one is perfect, there will always be some compromise

Are you sure you aren't looking for problems that aren't they ? You said you get on great and have good sex

Not me.
All I want from relationship is a good friend, who also want to share and build a life with me.
And respects me as an individual person, and I them.
I’m not asking for kids, sex, money or house.

Romantic relationships are probability the least reliable relationships around, so yes!

there is not way for another person to be always engaged in everything you have to say - or for you to be engaged in everything they do

people also have different expectations of "checking in" - some prefer the approach of being there but not actively asking their friends / partners what goes on

Most women who are of childbearing age and do want children are asking for children (as well as cohabiting/marriage?), in the long run or eventually, aren't they?

My DP isn't what the OP would call a deep thinker either. She's not interested in breaking the world down into pieces and examining it. You won't catch her talking about the meaning of life, or politics or reading a non-fiction book about the history of humanity. She's informed enough that she knows who she's going to vote for, what their policies are, whats going on in the world etc, she's just not interested in talking about it or dissecting it.

On the flip side, I couldn't tell you what a Kardashian was, or what Drakes new album was called, or who won Strictly last year.

Neither is better, or more important, and it hasn't really impacted our relationship. We still have fun, find plenty to talk about, make each other laugh, have good sex, coparent effectively.

Yes, sometimes I'll delightedly start talking about Liz Truss and a Lettuce and she'll glaze over, and some times she'll start banging on about a Kardashian and I'll lose the will to live, but that's just a sign that I need to go down the pub with my mate and she needs to spend some time with her sister.

Many may do, but not all.
That’s why I said : ”not me”.
I, as a woman of chilbearing (horrible term) age, do not want kids, or sex.
I got my own money and house.
And all I ask is a kind, patient person to share and build a life with (doesn’t include the stuff I listed).

I was answering to op’s question.
Were not all the same 😊

@fdgdfgdfgdfg
Are either of you interested in talking about women’s rights?
Maybe a strange question, but (I assume, sorry if I’m wrong) all the couples I know it’s often the man not interested having deep talks and I was just wondering if you are?

I think it friends in your age too and dating history.

as a divorced mum, I am trying frame my needs for a relationship….. and in one breath I want, dates, sex, companionship love but I don’t need them to look after me, provide for me. BUT the kind of man I will be attracted to will be capable of doings these things.

I guess what I am saying is I say I have realistic expectations and don’t looks for too much from a man but contradict myself in them needing the potential to providr that! Hence them falling short and me having to constantly remind myself and reframe what my relationship provided me.

it is an in the moment thing, but as a person I can’t help but look to the future too… and this is where I stumble with satisfaction and exoectations!

I don't understand what other need it is you have to be met?

@Grenola I am in a similar situation too. We're both divorced and have no desire to remarry or even move in together, so it's great we're on the same page there.
I guess it's about being able to compromise but not wanting to settle either, if that makes sense?
I'm pretty sure I'd be very regretful if I finished with him as we do get on so well and really enjoy ourselves and at this age where I live there wouldn't be a huge pool of people to choose from.
I'm also very perimenopauseal so my moods are swinging which makes it difficult to keep perspective sometimes 😬

We're both fairly TERFy, hanging around Mumsnet turned me on to it a few years ago so I'm probably more aware of it than the average man. She is too, but it's not something we have long conversations about. For instance, I mentioned the male Canadian weight lifter who competed in the women's event to prove a point a while back, and she replied that it "was fucking brilliant" and we discussed the story for a minute or two. However, talking about the same thing with my Dad down the pub, it was a leaping off point to talk about what was going on it various sports, what should be done about it etc for half an hour.

She has however had long conversations with our daughter about it, as she started accusing me of being a "massive transphobe". DD was quite surprised to find out her Mum had pretty much the same views.

On women's rights more widely, we've had a couple of convos over the last year about what's happening in America with abortions, that sort of thing, but again it's surface level. We'll talk about a particular news story, and then move onto something else, whereas with a friend it'd carry on, meander through US politics etc.

I suppose we talk about this stuff enough to know whether we're broadly on the same page or not, but don't really get into it much deeper than that. For instance, I knew she wasn't going to watch the coronation because she felt the display of wealth was disgusting during a cost of living crisis, but it was an off hand comment, rather than a conversation.

@AreWeThereYet69 yeah exactly….. I mean getting a genuine connection and attraction feels precious to me. And one that doesn’t expect and demand too much from me. I would be silly to dismiss it based on a criteria or set of expectations out in my head by mumsnet threads which are very polarising and black and white.

im taking it while I can get it ;-)

yes I think we do. if we dont have every perfect quality were so easy on ourselves 'nobody's perfect' etc. but you hear of women going on first dates and if the date isn't high earning, no exes or kids, well educated, perfect body, dead parents its all 'red flag red flag'!

This Esther character sounds a bit dim tbh - since when did people not care whether they were in love? Yes many were forced to settle but love was still the ideal.

It's important to have a life outside your spouse yes but the main thing is they are your ride or die. When all else fails, they are the first (and last) people responsible for you, and the other way around. There's no other adult relationship like that.

That's my take anyway.

Esther Perel and those like her would be the last person I'd be listening to. They're making a profit from their schtick.

Do we expect too much from romantic relationships?

Absolutely!

I think society would be much happier and healthier if women led families and people focused on multigenerational families all collectively raising the children of the family (although not necessarily living in the same house). Probably far more reflective of the "natural" state of affairs that we lived with before modern society.

Children would be part of the family of the mother. And romantic relationships were seen as just that: no particular rules, no expectation to co-habit it you do not wish to or share finances. That way people wouldn't get tangled up confusing romantic love with expecting someone to be your "soul mate" for life, and best friend, confidant, know you inside out but still feel desire for you, do all the drudgery together yet feel sexual desire which is created by space, it's all so contradictory. The situation we have is that romantic relationship are elevated above all else and expected to fulfil every single emotional, sexual, financial and practical need we have, and exclusively, for life. That's just not realistic. Marriage was never designed to be any of those things and except for a tiny proportion of very lucky people, it won't be.

This is an interesting article:

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/apr/01/the-kingdom-of-women-the-tibetan-tribe-where-a-man-is-never-the-boss

This is also interesting:

https://www.ted.com/talks/estherperellthesecretttodesireeinaalongtermm_relationship/c

Ahhh sorry @AreWeThereYet69 I see you mentioned Esther Perel in your OP already.

Not saying btw that the system in the article is the answer: clearly that also has its flaws! Many men want to be heavily involved in their children's upbringing and should be able to. But I think a move away from this assumption that the nuclear family is the ideal would be good. It has so many drawbacks: much more strain in raising children as all down to one or two adults, much more unstable, people being busiest with child rearing also at their busiest time in work life, confusing romantic relationships with what family is/ is for, loneliness for old/ some single people, as well as too much pressure on romantic relationships to be the be all and end all of everything, often ironically with the consequence that it kills them dead and then disrupts children's lives also. I think it's interesting to acknowledge that just because this is how we have structured our society doesn't mean it is the only or best way to go about it.

"In the absence of marriage as a goal, the only reason for men and women to have anything resembling a relationship is for love, or enjoyment of each other’s company. If it runs its course, the usual reasons for staying together – for the children, societal or financial reasons – don’t apply"

This ^^ would save so much misery! For women and children.

Yet in their society, it doesn't preclude a life-long partnership if people desire that:

"These range from one-night stands to regular encounters that deepen into exclusive, life-long partnerships – and may or may not end in pregnancy. But couples never live together, and no one says, “I do”."

The difference would be that the moment it is miserable people can end it, without disrupting their or their children's lives in any other respect. So instead of becoming about obligation or finances or housework, romantic relationships would be simply about fun or desire or sex or love or some combination of those depending on the person.

That's only because we've conditioned people to believe that this is what romantic relationships should be, and that anything less is not ideal. And because we have also designed a society in which the role of wider family is minimised, hence you get grandparents saying "why should I want to spend time with my grandchildren?" etc. None of these things are innate, they are socially learned attitudes where people accept the structure of the society they grow up in as the norm and in some way the best/ only way things can be, but that's not the case: it is a choice to have a society that is structured this way and define roles in this way. Any way of doing it would have certain benefits and other drawbacks but it's not some innate or inevitable property of human relationships so is worth questioning.

My point wasn't about wider family. It was about settling. She made out that people want 'everything', but why is that silly? For a person you're 'supposed' to spend the rest of your life with, and whom you can't palm off on somebody else.

Even in 'wider family' societies you help out, you can for example share care of your parents or kids between family but you can't really 'farm out' or be apart from your spouse if you don't like them. Of course, people have high standards!

I suppose it depends on how much importance you place on what you think is ‘missing’.

personally I have a lot of ‘interests’ ( some are verging on special interests, I do wonder sometimes) which DH doesn’t share, but then I really don’t want to know about xxx’s batting average last season, either. I also have some deep beliefs which he doesn’t share , although we are on the same page politically and socially.

At the risk of being cut to pieces by other posters , I do think that many men don’t have the same interests in discussing the ‘softer’ things like emotions and character as women do. I honestly can’t remember the last time I had such a discussion with DH, but I had one with a woman I met recently at the first proper chat.

So I don’t think it’s wise to expect that every need is met by one person, especially of the opposite sex.. ( and I’ve been with the same man for 43 years, so something works…..)