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Difficult Choice?

  
 
SemperFiChick
03:49 / 02.09.04
Where to begin....Ok, how about the beginning

I have a fiance that I love to death, unfortunatly, he is on the other side of the world working on his Masters (less than a year left) and is thinking about going on to his PhD. I see him about every 6-7 months but we phone and email regularly. We only got together just before he left (almost 3 years now) so it had been a relationship built across the waves. We are planning on getting married, hence the fiance bit but because we are in different places all the time and both of different nationalities, marriage is a real issue and task with all the paper work. I do love him above all else and I know that despite the distance that has been there the whole time, we are very close. We talk more about our feelings and thoughts and dreams and issues than any couple that I know of who live near or with each other! We have the same values and we have a great time together when we can be together Our lives are very much the same and we move in the same circles comfortably. We are really great friends and it will make a great marriage, not only because we are friends but because I know that I love him and he loves me.
But...

I have recently talked to a really old friend of mine and just being with this guy makes me realise how much I love HIM...maybe it is just the platonic love of two people who grew up together (as much as kids in the military can) but it is a very strong love. He came to visit me and we have spent the past few days together and it is so awesome. We laugh, talk about everything that has happened in the past few years (we have only seen each other at holidays and only for a few hours at airports) and it has been great. We talked about a serious relationship between us but only marginally seriously because I am engaged to this other man. This man is a researcher for NOAA and is at sea 230 days of the year, leaving precious little time together when he is back (its like a few days on/few days off). I can see myself marrying him and being very happy...I have never been the kind of girl who really needed to have a partner to do things...I like going out alone to movies, dinner, bars etc. We both like the same kind of lifestyle, being alone and comfortable and together and happy too so it really is a good match. We have been friends for a long time and it would be easy to move into a marriage that would grow without us killing each other or hating each other either We both love each other and have told each other this on many occasions but it is different than the love I have for the first man. THe first love is passionate and searing...the second is deep and have actually stood thru time and major life changes and distance.

I dont really know what I am asking myself, but I know that I have to make a choice between having a fiance who may stay that way for another few years and will become a husband who is home and near to stay versus having a friend who has stood by me (although from a distance) and is here now become my husband who will only be around for short bursts of time.

This is not a "Who do I love more" kind of issue because the love is different...its like asking you if you love your mother/father/sister/brother more than your partner...Which would you choose?
 
 
Studygirltash
04:01 / 02.09.04
Wow...this sounds sorta like my life You have to know where the other guy, the one that isnt your fiance, stands on the marriage issue. Does he WANT to get married? Does he want the same things from marriage that you do?

It sounds like you have a pretty good thing with the fiance dsepite the "waves" and if you are sure that you love him the same way that he loves you then I would choose him.

On the other hand, if you would be happy with a husband that is gone all the time and not active in your life than maybe the second is ok. It really depends on what you want from your husband. Do you want a new last name and a partner in all things in your life or a new last name while you continue your life how you like it with a partner sometimes?

Sorry its not a real decision and just more questions but hopefully you can make a good choice in the end!!


PS Dont worry Darling, I'm keeping you!
 
 
Charlie's Horse
04:21 / 02.09.04
Wow, SFChick, I really think you have the best damn dilemma in the entire world. To think I thought the sex/chocolate choice tough...

The last post seems so balanced that I agree with just about all of it. It seems like the best advice I can give wouldn't be statements, but more questions. Does the passion of the first relationship come from the distance? So if you moved in together, would it lessen/change/grow? Would that be an issue? I just ask because it seemed like one of that relation's primary descriptors.
 
 
Benny the Ball
06:58 / 02.09.04
This isn't too great a dilema. The problem is that if you chose one there is the risk of forever living in the what if world that soon becomes resentment if you are not too careful. Also what's to say that your boy number two, who spends a lot of time on the waves isn't going to mean that you spend more time with your boy number one who is currently over the waves?

Are you sure you're not just projecting the love of man one onto man two because he is familiar and close by?

If you are having doubts of any kind about marrying someone, then I would say, don't. You have to be absolutely sure.
 
 
Cat Chant
11:11 / 02.09.04
You talk like marriage is fixed and the only thing in doubt is which of the two options to go for. Why do you have to get married to anyone at all? Why not just get married (if you really must) as a response to the situations that arise in your life and relationships, rather than tailoring those situations towards marriage as if that were inevitable? Why, in short, use marriage as a tool for choosing between two people who obviously mean a lot to you in different ways? I don't get it.
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
11:22 / 02.09.04
Got to say I agree with Deva here - I don't understand either why your thoughts are so focused on marriage, or really what the problem is here... are you unhappy at the prospect of trying to continue your long-distance relationship? If so, why will swapping it for another one where your partner is mostly absent help? Or is the problem more that you find it hard to comprehend having strong loving feelings for two people at the same time? I think maybe, given that you say your feelings towards each person are different, you should try and think of them as two different relationships, in which you do different things - perhaps one will be primarily a romantic 'love' relationship, the other primarily a deep friendship, for example (though there are of course hundreds of different ways in which this could be configured).

If you're having trouble working out exactly what your feelings are and what you really want, maybe you shouldn't be thinking about long-term partnerships at all...
 
 
Cat Chant
11:37 / 02.09.04
...its like asking you if you love your mother/father/sister/brother more than your partner...Which would you choose?

I think it's partly this analogy that's throwing me. I wouldn't marry my mother, father, sister or brother,* and there aren't that many situations in life in which you have to choose between your immediate family and your partner unless one party forces the choice on you,** which doesn't seem to be happening here, so... so this is a very unclear problem to me.

*Or my partner.

**"If you marry this man you must never darken my door again!"
 
 
Sax
11:45 / 02.09.04
So one's at sea for 230 days of the year and one's on the other side of the world and you only see him every six months...

Sounds fucking great to me. You could probably fit another one in there without breaking sweat.

But seriously, folks... um, not sure what to suggest. Fire 'em both off and - if you really, really, really, definitely, must have a man in your life - go find someone who's around a bit more for, nights out at the opera, filthy notes across the classroom and occasional snuggles in the back seat of a Morris Minor.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
13:54 / 02.09.04
Try living with someone every day, in the same space before you get married (or engaged).What do you know about these people? Their thoughts, dreams, attitude to current events? Very romantic, now let's shimmy back to reality for a moment here:
1)how many times a week are you going to argue about the clothes strewn on the floor?
2)Who cooks?
3)Cleans?
4)Is your sex life going to work when it's an every day thing?
5)Will this person know how to look after you when you're upset about something that doesn't really matter?
6)Do you want to go and see the same films or are you just humouring each other at the moment? If not how will you socialise with one another?
7)Children?
8)Pets?
9)Money?
10)Can you balance a cheque book?
11)Who pays the phone bill?
12)Will he be mad if you want to listen to radio 4 not Xfm? 13)Are your eating habits similar or are you committing yourself to cooking separately for the rest of your life?
14)Will he expect you to iron his shirts? Even if he says no, how can you be sure?
15)Will you be expected to throw things away to make space? If you hoard and he doesn't things will change.
16)Drugs- does one of you drink or smoke more than the other?

Marriage isn't romantic, living with someone isn't romantic (well it can be but not primarily), you spend maybe 25% of your time compromising about things like what to eat for dinner and throwing newspapers in the bin and that can be nice but only if it works okay.
 
 
HCE
16:31 / 02.09.04
AdL is giving you sound advice there. Money, money, money, and compromise. Marriage is substantially different from any other kind of relationship because of the legal and financial benefits (or obligations, in some cases) that come along with it -- whether or not you live together.

Also, if you're talking about a more traditional sort of marriage, one of the things you give up is the experience of falling in love with other people. You're committing not only to being present to your spouse, but also absent from enticing others, and not only sexually. While an intimate friendship with somebody else may not be something you can get busted for legally (insofar as adultery still counts in legal proceedings, I'm not too sure if it does, and to what extent), your fiance may well view this burgeoning intimacy as something hurtful, a betrayal.

Not saying this is a good or sensible thing, just saying it's part of the package if you go the old route.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
17:08 / 02.09.04
Yeah, but Anna, you're looking at this through a very specific " reality tunnel. "

Wouldn't a lot of the problems you've outlined above be solved by the simple expedient of getting fast-track jobs at say, Goldman Sachs, or related, not forgetting to delay cohabitation until your ships have come in, financially speaking ? Insofar as cooking, cleaning, balancing the budget, raising a family and so on, well you'd just get someone else in to deal with all that for you, it wouldn't be a big issue. Similarly, if one of you wanted a library that doubled most nights as a replica pub ( captain's wheel behind the bar, with a full set of optics, ) plus a foul-mouthed parrot with the run of the place, and the other a gym, you'd just need to save for a big enough house. And as for the romance, I suppose you'd be lucky enough to see each other for breakfast most days, never mind over a candlelit dinner, so again, no problem. Absence, as they say, makes the heart grown fonder. And that would apply to an even greater extent if one of you happened to run into difficulties with the authorities at some point, and had to go away for a while.

All I'm saying is that there are alternatives to the rather gloomy picture you've painted of love in the Twenty First century.
 
 
Cat Chant
09:13 / 03.09.04
the rather gloomy picture you've painted of love in the Twenty First century.

Rather gloomy picture? She asked some questions about how you negotiate sharing space; I don't see a "picture", I see some really useful questions that need to be answered before you can decide what your picture is going to look like. I met my girlfriend on the internet and we were on opposite sides of the world for the first year of our relationship; we never assumed that just because we loved each other very much we would automatically have the same ways of inhabiting real-world space or solve problems in the same ways. Cohabitating marriage is a different sort of relationship from long-distance love, and one of the things that is confusing to me about the problem as stated by SemperFiChick is the way we get from one to the other. Seems to me that SemperFiChick has a really nice life: she has two very loving relationships from which she obviously gets a great deal of emotional sustenance, and she seems to enjoy her day-to-day life and friendships. What I don't get is the vector that leads from a very well-organized and enjoyable life with non-traditional but apparently very functional and happy relationships, to suddenly having to choose which of two people to marry.

I think, to lapse into psychobabble for a moment, you are trying to make a different decision, SemperFiChick - about what sort of person you are, or what sort of life/relationship you want to have - and you're translating it into this "choice of husbands". If I were you I would try and work out what the real 'difficult choice' is.
 
 
Cat Chant
09:16 / 03.09.04
*rereads post* Hmm. Maybe Alex/Dave was joking. I haven't had any breakfast yet and am a bit dim.
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
10:38 / 03.09.04
I think its fairly obvious what type of tree-dwelling prehensile tailed creature is missing from this broad vision of love in the 21st century.
 
 
HCE
15:24 / 03.09.04
You! Gypsy Lantern! With your monkey obsession!
 
  
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