For Better or For Worse

It isn't easy to impart perspective on things as they are happening.  Often, it is only in time passing and looking back that one has the ability to see things for what they are--without the desperation, emotion and intensity that immediacy brings.  Teri and I joke about wondering whether we'll still like or even know each other when we get to the other side--the other side of this big, exhausting recession and the other side of menopause--as we have been plodding through both of these life-altering realities since we met each other!

As we like to say, we are so going to rock for better...

Of course, this just may be the way things stay for a while.  I was in a meeting a couple months ago and someone said something about my being at my peak earning years.  Oh my, I thought, that would suck. I suppose that while I make less now then I did just 6 or 7 years ago, this may just be true; this is the world we live in now and I know I am not at all alone in my experiences of the economic side of things.

While I may have doubts about where things might be headed on the worldly scale, I have no doubts that the world finally led me in the path of the right partner for me. As I have told many people, there have been no red flags--only negotiations and speed bumps.  This is not to say that we are always ooey gooey and in complete agreement.  For every day that we are finishing each other's thoughts (as Teri likes to call it), there are as many days where I'm not even sure we're communicating in the same language. There are other days when we can manage to delight and annoy each other all at the same time!

In the time since we have been together, we have seen several other couples come together--all awash in gooey glow--and split apart in either great adolescent drama or an unsavory thud. We also know couples who have been unhappily and stubbornly together for decades (being around them is like having to watch a reality road show of bickering couples' therapy.) Honestly, we don't want any of it.  We'd rather just be two committed friends who genuinely, openly, and realistically adore each other.

This cold, cranky week in January is the anniversary of the day Teri and I met and it has us trying to define and describe the ease and challenge that keeps us together.  To tell the truth, we don't really know; there are days when I just know I love her and I have no idea or explanation why.  All I really know is that my life changed for the better when she walked across that funky coffee shop and introduced herself--despite the times and trials we happen to be living through.