The Luck of the Draw

Choosing your life long partner can obviously be fraught with obstacles.

But if you get it right you are in luck and I’m sure that’s something we all agree with.

I met Georgie in 1996, I had just turned 44 and she was 33. I was fit and healthy at this point in my life so I didn’t think twice about the age difference. We were both into searching for answers about life, we were both vegetarians. Georgie had a wonderfully broad knowledge of history, geography, an interest in current affairs and an innate ability to talk about the bigger things in life.

For me this was too good to be true.

I fell deeply in love and got loads of love back in return.

At the time I had 2 teenage kids living with me which in itself was a huge responsibility. I had separated from my first wife exactly one year before I met Georgie.

Our journey over the past 23 years has been full of challenges. We made good decisions and we made bad ones and that is a story unto itself.

The point is that it is now late 2019 and we are still happily together.

Not only that but we still spend nearly all of our time together and I never get bored with her.

I think that we were both very lucky.

We haven’t morphed into “one entity”, we both still have our own distinct personality traits, we can both be very opinionated and strong minded and I know that I can be an asshole at times as can Georgie BUT most of the time we get along fantastically, we never run out of things to talk about and we are still pretty much aligned in our viewpoints about philosophy, health, lifestyle, aesthetics, politics, social justice and just about everything.

So, the question is “Are we just lucky or have we and do we actively create our relationship?”

I think that it’s a bit of both of these two factors. They both go hand in hand to contribute to a very rewarding relationship.

Do we argue? Shit yeah! But we get over it almost instantaneously and move forward without trying to work out why we argued. That’s not to say we don’t both try to improve the way we interact, it’s just that it’s by tacit agreement. We both seem to be 100% aware that being together is far more pro-survival than stopping to create what we have. Do I knowingly say nasty things to Georgie from time to time and she to me. Once again, YES but we are both able to take responsibility for doing this and I’d like to think that it’s happening less and less all the time.

In recent times we have both realised that being healthy, slim, dressing well and generally looking after ourselves will be a positive thing for our relationship. We are now on that journey, still a way to go but oh, we’ve made huge improvements this year and the results are showing and impacting the quality of our lives.

I find myself experiencing huge surges of love for Georgie which could be a result of my gratitude and current mindfulness. It’s like so easy to take the good things in life for granted and then you start not being aware of and missing the pleasure you get out of them.

What a waste that is. In actual fact by becoming complacent about what you have you are doing yourself a huge disservice.