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1. It feels like you guys are one. (Even though that sounds so cliche) The whole world doesn’t matter, your stress, anxiety, depression, and everything negative you go through is gone. It’s just you and the person you love. Your senses are so alert. It can be wild but it can also be subtle. It depends what type of couple you guys are in the sack. There’s no place you would rather be. It will feel like forever.
Only once in your life, I truly believe, you find someone who can completely turn your world around. You tell them things that you’ve never shared with another soul and they absorb everything you say and actually want to hear more.
You share hopes for the future, dreams that will never come true, goals that were never achieved and the many disappointments life has thrown at you. When something wonderful happens, you can’t wait to tell them about it, knowing they will share in your excitement.
1. My mom always made time to listen to me, no matter how busy she was. Like, I’d come home stressed about school or life, and she’d sit with me and just let me vent without judgment. It’s something that stuck with me, and I’ll never forget how much that helped. Made me feel like I wasn’t alone in dealing with stuff.
There’s a moment and I don’t know exactly when it happens, maybe it’s 32, maybe it’s 44 — when you stop assuming the future will be better than the past. You stop thinking the world is a machine that refines itself. Instead, you start noticing the rust.
And it’s not that things have objectively gotten worse. Not always. It’s that your perception of everything — politics, culture, the people at your grocery store — has been quietly rewired while you weren’t paying attention. You go from assuming things will eventually make sense to realizing that nonsense might be the default setting.
It’s such a simple sentence that you almost overlook it. The kind of sentence that belongs in the corner of a page or whispered over coffee. Every person you meet has lived an entire life before that moment. It sounds obvious. It sounds like something your therapist might nod toward before sitting back in their chair. It sounds like something you’d find taped to a fridge in a halfway house or the caption under a stranger’s face in a yearbook you’re not supposed to be reading.
And yet.
It holds a kind of quiet gravity that grows heavier the longer you stare at it.
There’s a certain question that follows people like a ghost with unfinished business. You don’t ask it out loud. You don’t bring it up at barbecues or family reunions. You just carry it around in the quieter corners of your mind, pulling it out when you’re too tired to be productive but too restless to sleep: Is having kids worth it?
I don’t mean in the abstract. I mean you. Your life. The only one you’ll ever get.
It’s not dramatic. It doesn’t announce itself. There’s no single moment where the middle class collapses. It just gradually erodes. Quietly. Relentlessly. One expense at a time.
I have an old dog in kidney failure too. Haven’t told her yet, she just keeps being happy.
I’m old too, and I’ve had animals my whole life, mostly cats and dogs in various multiples. Do the math and you can see I’ve been here before.
The way I reconcile it is pretty straightforward, and well in line with the overall Stoic approach to things. It always begins the same way- see things plainly for what they are, understand the natures of the things involved, and respond reasonably and virtuously to the reality around us.
It’s easy to think we’re alone out here.
That we’re all just wandering through the dark, clutching at meaning, dodging pain, trying not to fall apart in public. Life can feel so staggeringly individual—your thoughts, your wounds, your fears—like you’re the only one who wakes up with the weight of it all pressing down on your chest before your feet even hit the floor.
1. My soon to be ex wife has adhd and it played a huge role in our divorce. It was like having a 3rd child, and she never made me feel like she appreciated all the work I did to make our lives work.
Day to day was rough. I did all the house chores, managed finances, ordered groceries, cooked and so on.
Look for a partner who is actually a partner. Someone who reciprocates and can think of you, do things that work for your love language even if it doesn’t come naturally to them. Someone who values your option and wants to make big decisions with you.
