I can’t remember what I was going to write about. I wanted to try (again) to get back into the habit of writing more often. I was considering this week what I wanted to do with my blog, what level of detail or audience was appropriate and I am comfortable with. Part of this was prompted by a short little note I wrote to Daniel this week which I was particularly impressed with and felt it a shame that he would be the only one who could appreciate my masterpiece.

Regarding that particular piece of prose, in the end I think I decided that it’s a bit too explicitly personally intimate for me to feel comfortable with a wider audience. (That makes it sound like some kind of hard-core porn but it really wasn’t.) I really don’t know where this train of thought is going.

I have been feeling very lovey and mushy this week. It was just one of those types where there is nothing specific extra cool happening but everything runs smoothly and everyone is (for the most part) nice to everyone else and I felt very happy and appreciative of my family and my life. Then on Thursday it was our wedding anniversary (9 years) and that made me feel good. Daniel wrote me a love letter which I have wished for him to do for so long. I read it standing in the laundry out of the way of everyone else who had just gotten up and wanted drinks or breakfast or whatever else and when he turned around and saw me crying over it he laughed at me.

I also felt a certain amount of pride in our wedding anniversary. As we have been together for longer and become more and more accustomed to each other’s habits and moods and needs I feel more desire to be with him.. not just in the sexual sense but just being together, both doing things together and doing our own things while in each other’s company. He is what gives me comfort and and security and a sense of an anchor or lifeline that I can always return to when everything in the outside world becomes too much. And the pleasure in returning to the inner world of just us is also enhanced by the connections and glimpses I get of the greater universe and realms that I see for but a brief flash when we are joined. It doesn’t get boring after a long time, it just gets more comfortable and easy in the mundane moments and more intense and exhilirating in the moments of pleasure in each other.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, The probability that a marriage will end in divorce has been increasing over time. Based on the nuptiality tables, around 28% of marriages entered into in 1985–1987 could be expected to end in divorce. This proportion increased to 33% for all marriages entered into in 2000–2002. We got married in 1999, so I suppose that excluding all other factors, the general population chance that we could end up divorced is ~32%. I know people who began their relationships after we did and have already ended them and even moved onto others – more than one! How can people think that someone is right for them when they are not? How do you make that error multiple times? And if it’s not an error, if people know that the person they are with isn’t the right one, then why are they wasting time in that relationship or marriage when they could be finding the right person instead? How do people fight with their spouse? Not disagree, or even annoy or anger each other, we do that.. I mean real fighting where people yell and throw things and say the most horrible things to each other. How do people manage to get so caught up doing other things that they forget to “do” (not that kind of “do”, just actually giving time to them) their spouse? For me at least, if I don’t keep coming back to Daniel and cocooning and rejuvenating I start to feel lost and listless and alone and unable to manage the strain that interacting with the world takes on me.

I don’t understand how such a significant portion of the population can get it wrong. And since that 32% is not an insignificant number, are we actually going to be part of that group and are at the moment just deluding ourselves that we are any different? I don’t think we are, but how do you know you won’t when presumably most or all of the people who get married enter into it assuming that they will be part of the 68% rather than the 32%?

So. I feel good and encouraged that we have got this far and are still just as excited about being married to each other as we were when we got married. It is an encouragement that we will stay in the 68% group.