What was the “She’s the one” moment in your relationship?

10 comments

1. There’s no “the one”.

   But when she is attentive to my emotional needs and communicates hers clearly so that I can fulfill them, that’s when I know the relationship will be good.

2. My wife and I have been married over thirty years. I never felt that she was the one.

   Let me explain.

   We met in college, and I was still attending classes when we got officially engaged. People would ask me when I knew she was The One.

   What I’d seen in other relationships, though, was that people who felt they’d met The One often assumed that meant they wouldn’t have any problems. When they did have problems — people are fallible, after all — then they concluded they hadn’t met The One and would break up.

   I think there are pragmatic reasons to not go for the whole soulmate concept:

   * What happens if your soulmate is on the other side of the planet?
   * What if they are on their deathbed right now?
   * What if they have just been born?
   * Suppose someone was happily married, then their spouse dies. Some time later, they find someone else and are again happily married. Which spouse was the soulmate?

   What makes for a happy, long-term relationship isn’t fate. It is a willingness to work together to resolve the problems that inevitably appear.

   We get swayed by the “in love” feeling early in a relationship, but that’s just desire mixed with obsession. It says nothing about compatibility, let alone that someone is The One. Any important life decisions — having sex, cohabiting, marriage — should be made with careful thought, not on feeling “in love” with someone.

   I recommend the book *The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work*, by John Gottman and Nan Silver, to learn more about what makes relationships succeed and fail. He did actual research into it, and found some surprises.

3. Had mine very recently, it wasn’t an exact moment or “thing” but a culmination of times and moments that I just realized I was 100% certain I wanted to marry this woman. I was engaged before and then I was “almost” certain (obviously I wasn’t and she sure as hell wasn’t) but now I’ve never been so certain of something.

   One morning when I woke up super early to get ready to go on a business trip and she was just peacefully laying on me half asleep and was just kind of in my thoughts for a bit and just looking at her and stroking her hair.

   I started thinking about how people say “I want to know everything about you” and she knows literally *everything* about me and there’s nobody I’ve ever felt completely comfortable telling everything to like that. I’ve told her things I’ve told no one and never will. I can be 100% “me” around her.

   I also started contemplating what our life would be like together and how happy she made me and how supportive we are of each other.

   Then the thought ” Holy shit, I’m going to marry this woman” popped in my head. Getting engaged is not something we’ve explicitly talked about at this point. She never said it, but I knew she was ready to discuss it through very subtle mentions in passing but was trying to be easy about it and not pressure me, given my past engagement circumstances. But I’m 100% in and I’d marry her right now If I could.

   I didn’t mention it right off the bat that morning, but the whole time I was gone it was literally the only thing I could think about. When I got home, literally the first thing I did is let it all out and tell her how I felt about us and that I’m 100% committed to there being an “us” for life.

   Only thing I’m not excited for is going ring shopping here soon. But worth it. 🤣🤣

4. She said she thought of me as family. Like she had such a connection with me that she felt the same way about me as she felt about her mother and sister. I never had anyone say anything like that to me before. This explained why she treated me so much better than anyone I’ve ever know including my actual family. We’ve been together almost 25 years now and she still feels the same way. Hell, she probably loves me even more now. And I sure as hell haven’t lost my feelings for her.

5. I hit her with a ridiculous, impossible Hypothetical question, and she thought it through and started asking questions to figure out exactly how she’d handle the situation, instead of calling me an idiot for asking such a dumb question.

   9 years later we can still talk about anything, no matter how crazy the idea

6. I believe there are many “the ones”. If you have a 1/7B chance of happiness you might as well not try.

7. She got me a WII for Xmas 2006.

8. There’s no *”the one”*.

9. When I met my wife 19 years ago, the relationship was easy. We didn’t fight. We never broke up and got back together. There was never any jealousy and neither of us ever gave the other a reason to be jealous. I thought she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.

   We are in the process of getting divorced. There is no “one”. There are some good ones and some bad ones, but there is no “one”. There may be many “ones”, and there may be no one, but there is no “one”. Kind of harsh, but I’m actually finding comfort in acknowledging this truth.

10. I’ll let you know when it happens. Maybe my 30s have something good in store for me.