Expectations...

So, I've been wanting to read the book, "Eat, Pray, Love" for a couple of months.  I actually purchased it in the airport on my way to Reno.  I've been reading it in between some personal issues that I've been dealing with and I've found it pretty interesting.

To catch up those that haven't read it, it's about a woman in her 30s that visits three countries - Italy, Indonesia, and India.  She does this because things become so clearly unmanageable in her life in the US and because things fell into place that allowed her to go.  For a year she is going to live in these three countries.  I'm still on Italy - where she learns to eat.  Well, she's known how to eat for some time - it's not like she's been fed via IVs up until now, but you get the gist.

In this part of the book, she's writing about how she decided to cut things off completely with this guy that she was dating before she went to Italy for four months.  The funny thing (funny strange, not funny haha) is that I started reading that chapter (Chapter 28 for those that are reading along) on Monday night - when I was working on drawing my own boundaries.  

Anyway, one of the things that she writes about is how she looked at her parents' marriage and how she realized that her mom was consistently neglected and forgotten about...but that her mom seemed relatively happy and content anyway.  She makes the point that she just figured that she needed something different than her mom and that apparently she just wasn't as strong and independent as her mom.  She explains this to her mom and the mom said, " All those things that you want from your relationship?  I have always wanted those things too."  She then goes on to say, "You have to understand how little I was raised to expect that I deserved in life, honey.  Remember - I come from a different time and place than you do."

And honestly, that still floors me.  

I am forced to examine what my expectations are for relationships and the possibility of marriage.  Do the people that decide to bail do so because they expect different things?  Because they feel like they're entitled to a wonderful, perfect, movie-type relationship?    I know - there are probably different reasons for every relationship that ends or continues.  But what keeps people together?

Like I read blogs and see people and hear about marriages that seem like they'd be a lot of fun.  Is that really how it is?  Or is it just that people get used to each other so it's better than being alone?  

I think about why I'm not married.  And it's easy to joke about, but the most logical reason I'm not is because no one ever asked me to marry them.  Really.  I probably would've said yes to two of them had they asked within the first 6 months of us dating.  I'd like to think that one I wouldn't have followed through with it because I was MISERABLE during most of the time I dated him.  And the truth is, I've made better choices each time - or at least haven't repeated the same mistakes.  

But when you've never SEEN a successful relationship, how can you model after it?  How do you know what to wait for?  And likewise, how do you know when you THINK that you're entitled to more...and that you expect more?  How do you know if your expectations are too high?

My grandparents were married for 58 years until my grandfather died.  Did they stay together that long because society was against divorce, because they loved each other so much, or because their expectations of what a marriage should be was the same? Honestly, I think it was probably the latter.  He was a Colonel in the ARMY and she was the ever dutiful military wife.

I want a marriage that is fun.  I want a marriage that has passionate moments, one where he is just as committed as I am, and one where we are teammates...in every sense of the word.   I want to have fun doing whatever it is that we find fun.  I want to laugh, I want to joke around, I want to have an engaged husband who wants to do stuff with his kids - be it practicing soccer in the backyard or have tea parties with her dressed as a princess.  I want to enjoy him just as much after the kids are gone as when I married him... maybe in different ways, but just as much.  I don't think that things will be easy all the time.  And I'm not fooling myself into thinking that he will be so absolutely enthralled with me that he could hardly stand it.  But I would like to think that we'd be happy - more times than not.  And that when I just couldn't pick up the pieces and fight once more against whatever it is, that he'd shoulder the burden and carry me through the battle grounds at least until I was strong enough to fight again.  If he knew me, he'd know I'd gladly do the same.  Are my expectations too high?  IS this type of relationship and marriage possible to find?

I know... you probably don't have the answers for all of this.  But because almost every reader of my blog is or has been married, I'd love your take on at least some of it.