Long-ly-ness

It’s been a while but all of a sudden I remembered that when you’re in a relationship for a long time, and by long time I mean more than a few years or so. Some things change. The spark isn’t quite the spark it used to be, even though the level of mutual comfort has grown tremendously. You no longer feel the need to look or act your best, assuming that your partner knows you by now, and accepts your preference for walking around in your sweat pants (the word sounds sloppy and smelly, yet we don’t seem bothered by the connotation).

The funny thing about being together for so long is that arousement occurs at the most awkward times. I’m sure many women will agree that the moment they start cooking and stirring in the pots and pans, their hubby will feel the irresistible need to grope her. Now this is exactly the time you shouldn’t try to get attention from your wife, as she will most certainly push you away and tell you to keep your hands to yourself because she’s busy and by no means does she see herself going into a full blown sexual frenzy.

The other side of this coin however is that hubby will feel utterly rejected at his most ‘vulnerable’ moment, you see, often men express themselves easier by touch than by talk. If you dismiss his attempts often enough, something happens; his ego and love for you slowly start to break down.

Another longevity oddity, is that there is never quite the right time to make love anymore, it’s usually left for the evenings when both partners find themselves exhausted in front of the TV playing couch potato. Often one of them retires to bed before the other making it slightly impossible to sleep together…in the full sense of the word. So the sexual act is left for Sunday mornings, and all of a sudden the one thing you could never get enough of has become a once-a-week-activity or in some cases even a weekly chore, if practiced at all. No one seems to blame but the lack of time and energy. It is a shame we ‘forget’ how good it feels to get some affection and how energizing it can be, let alone how little time actually matters when you’re having fun.

The thing is ….the less you’re intimate with your partner, the more you lose that crucial intimacy, and the bigger the ‘I-may-fall-in-love-with-someone-else’ gap grows. Only to result in painful struggles and separations caused by a mere taking for granted of the bond you both thought you had. Something that seems so obviously easily corrected, all of a sudden turns into the other person feeling understood, pampered, taken notice of and aknowledged, but all of this by someone else. Someone new, someone who doesn’t mind stopping the stirring for a passionate kiss or grope, because the newness of it all is so exciting and exhilarating.

By no means should this send you into a panic of quick and steamy kitchen sex in front of hungry children, but it serves to remind us all that it is in the littlest things we need to keep finding each other, and if we neglect those, we neglect each other and it’s possible we may have clustered a great problem for ourselves then, one so huge it may not untangle back into the small bits.

So treasure the quickest of moments for they may fly by and leave you with the longest of times, alone.