on relationships

I want everyone to know that there is a lot about being married that I really enjoy. I love my husband in a thousand different goofy ways. I know that he loves me for many different reasons too -- although he's not always great about showing it.

But what I want to talk about right now is my friendships with women. It really seems as though they are something that has slipped. It seems as though because I have gone into this relationship, this marriage that I am somehow now a different person who doesn't have friendships with women that are as deep and as bonded as they were when I was single.

There are a couple of different reasons for that. For one thing, for many single women "The Relationship" is the ultimate goal of life. I'm not going to lie, I have been (and may still be) one of those women who gets consumed by the relationship. It's very hard not to do this. The focus of many of your get-togethers when you're single is going out where single boys are and flirting with them and whatnot. Perhaps hoping that whatnot can lead to a little something more substantial -- knowing all the while that it never could. So, when you finally find yourself "accidentally in love", you tend to fall into the zone. Doing whatever your male half wants to do, making your plans around his whims and desires. Trying to do things that include both him and your single friends. Trying to create a scenario where your single friends who are also dating can "double" with you and your beloved. Never quite being able to shake the feeling that you are just setting up a "play date" between your boy and her boy.

But another reason is that your friend's also cross you off of a list of available friends. You're not available 24/7 and they don't want you to talk candidly about their failed lives in front of your beloved. They don't want HIM to know all about your warts and pimples. Even if they think he's great, they don't want him to know their flaws. It's not his business. They don't want to be fit in around your Relationship Events, so they make new single friends or put more emphasis on other single friends they have. They throw themselves into the dating scene as well and perhaps pull too hard towards a relationship that is not the right fit for them, just to have things in common with you again.

Then there's the relationship as a cult problem. Once you are in a relationship, some things are so sacred and private and easily misunderstood that you simply don't share them with the outside world for fear of judgment and ridicule. Some of the things are major, some of them are minor and some are just down-right silly. But the bottom line is -- there's some things you just don't share. Some things I don't share just because I have a hard time STOPPING the sharing once it starts and I don't want to give up too much. It's bad for the team which is ultimately bad for the relationship. It does sound cult-like, but there you go. Some things you have to keep in and believe that your beloved holds some of these same things sacred. You don't even talk about it with him.

You can't talk about the things you don't talk about with your friends because he would want to know WHY you would even want to talk about those things in the first place. That's a confusing run-on sentence, I know. But, it's the truth.

I find that my blogging slips as my relationship grows deeper. It used to be that I didn't write in my journal because I was blogging. Now, I'm not blogging because I jot little notes down on a notepad I keep ever-present with me. Little notes that are how I photograph moments for my mind.

I'm not sure how much more I even want or need to blog. But, it's kind of like the diary. I don't want to just flat give it up, but I just can't seem to get myself into a regular habit again. Just seems hard to believe there would be any time in my life in which extemporaneous writing wouldn't have SOME part. Especially since the only time that I never had that in my life I associate with some of the darkest times in my life...

Anyways -- rambled quite a bit.

Now, off to bed.

H.