I think sometimes giving up on “us” is absolutely the wisest decision (there will always be others!) but in hindsight you don’t want such advice.
Absolutely. But there were a couple of reasons (which I reluctantly repeated to myself at the time, when I really wanted to give up. (One) If I gave up this time, there probably wouldn’t be another time. The initial stages (i.e. first 5 months) of the relationship were disruptive enough to my routines that I found it exhausting. I wasn’t emotionally bothered by the thought of being the 40-year-old virgin, but I also didn’t want that to become the outcome by default. I think my thought was “if I can make it work once, I’ll have the confidence to make it happen again if I have to.” (Two) Various people told me, and I had to admit, that Billy was approximately the best guy I would find for this, in terms of agreeing with lots of my values (thriftiness, physical fitness, etc) so that there was less to fight about, and also in terms of sheer patience and willingness to talk about and work on my problems. I think a lot of guys have been socialized NOT to talk about these things openly, which would have made it nearly impossible to solve the problems that we did.
Absolutely. But there were a couple of reasons (which I reluctantly repeated to myself at the time, when I really wanted to give up. (One) If I gave up this time, there probably wouldn’t be another time. The initial stages (i.e. first 5 months) of the relationship were disruptive enough to my routines that I found it exhausting. I wasn’t emotionally bothered by the thought of being the 40-year-old virgin, but I also didn’t want that to become the outcome by default. I think my thought was “if I can make it work once, I’ll have the confidence to make it happen again if I have to.” (Two) Various people told me, and I had to admit, that Billy was approximately the best guy I would find for this, in terms of agreeing with lots of my values (thriftiness, physical fitness, etc) so that there was less to fight about, and also in terms of sheer patience and willingness to talk about and work on my problems. I think a lot of guys have been socialized NOT to talk about these things openly, which would have made it nearly impossible to solve the problems that we did.