Six Months
We haven't decided on an "official" anniversary date, but it was around this time six months ago that Mark and I got together. I've been joking that we need to have a proper "six month review" to talk about achievements and areas of improvement, but this milestone has genuinely made me thoughtful.
In all my previous relationships, we were still long distance at this point and I was giddy as everything. Everything was puppies and rainbows basically. With Mark, everything has been different, not just because we've been living together for half a year already, but also because we started out in such a vortex of emotional drama and pain. Even though I was happy to be with him, I cried a lot those first couple of months. It's only now that those wounds are finally healing and we've become genuinely comfortable with each other.
Even so, my continued unemployment has put us in an awkward situation of extreme power imbalance. We're managing okay - money fortunately isn't an issue currently as he earns enough to be able to afford to feed me in our current living conditions, and we've talked about how our respective backgrounds have seemingly made it easy to slip into the roles of breadwinner and housewife, if only temporarily. But it's weird being so utterly dependent again, and I know that it worries my family and friends. Hell, I suspect that it worries Mark's father as well, if more from an "is she just a scrounger using him for his money" perspective.
So, leaving aside the fact that I have obvious and purely selfish reasons to want to find a job soon, it also makes me look towards the future for Mark and myself with a strong sense of... curiosity, more than anything else. Will things feel different once I earn my own money again and feel more self-confident? Mark can be a pretty dominant character at times, will that mean that we'll clash more? And what about time? While my current unemployment means that I have a lot of free time, Mark's long working hours leave us with few hours at the end of the day to spend together even now. If I end up working different hours, we might not end up seeing much of each other at all, which is a strange thought.
I'm uncertain about so many things, but I remain hopeful that our shared path will be one of personal growth and achieving things together.
In all my previous relationships, we were still long distance at this point and I was giddy as everything. Everything was puppies and rainbows basically. With Mark, everything has been different, not just because we've been living together for half a year already, but also because we started out in such a vortex of emotional drama and pain. Even though I was happy to be with him, I cried a lot those first couple of months. It's only now that those wounds are finally healing and we've become genuinely comfortable with each other.
Even so, my continued unemployment has put us in an awkward situation of extreme power imbalance. We're managing okay - money fortunately isn't an issue currently as he earns enough to be able to afford to feed me in our current living conditions, and we've talked about how our respective backgrounds have seemingly made it easy to slip into the roles of breadwinner and housewife, if only temporarily. But it's weird being so utterly dependent again, and I know that it worries my family and friends. Hell, I suspect that it worries Mark's father as well, if more from an "is she just a scrounger using him for his money" perspective.
So, leaving aside the fact that I have obvious and purely selfish reasons to want to find a job soon, it also makes me look towards the future for Mark and myself with a strong sense of... curiosity, more than anything else. Will things feel different once I earn my own money again and feel more self-confident? Mark can be a pretty dominant character at times, will that mean that we'll clash more? And what about time? While my current unemployment means that I have a lot of free time, Mark's long working hours leave us with few hours at the end of the day to spend together even now. If I end up working different hours, we might not end up seeing much of each other at all, which is a strange thought.
I'm uncertain about so many things, but I remain hopeful that our shared path will be one of personal growth and achieving things together.