Long Relationships

Hello and welcome to this week’s installment of love questions.

Once again, as I am wont to do for this site, I am thinking about romance.

I am quite a romantic woman at heart. I may not do it 24/7, but I like taking care of my husband. I like going to the shops and picking up the foods I know he likes. When he comes home and I know he’s had a long, hard day at work, I like to have something nice waiting for him.

Of course, massages, a cold beer, some time to himself… All of these things are what I like to be able to give to him whenever he needs/wants them.

But that isn’t to say he’s not romantic. He likes to bring me my favourite things to each when I’m taking a bath. He runs me a hot bath when I’ve had a hard day, complete with candles and everything. He has also brought me home flowers just because I’ve had a rough day.

Who is more romantic? I think we’re about even for that. I just tend to have more time to think about these things and execute my plans than he does.

This week I’m wondering:

(If you’re not with anyone at the moment, feel free to call on past relationships.)

If you do answer on your blog, please spread the link love and link to:

Aud from Mom.Dad.Chat
Jenera at Just Me

And, of course, I always appreciate your links to me.

Don’t forget to leave me a link in the comments to your response.

Have fun!

Hello and welcome to this week’s installment of love questions.

Comparison. What’s the better deal? What gives you the most ‘bang for your buck’? What’s the best price? Yada yada.

I think that we live in a world filled with a lot of comparing. Many of us live in a so-called land of plenty, but many of us can’t afford the plenty on offer, so we scramble and save, compare and contrast, all to get the best possible option.

Does that extend into relationships?

To be honest, I have compared Mr. JM to the guys I was with in the past. Mr. JM has it pretty easy, though, because a lot of my past relationships were with jerks.

I don’t think we can help but compare sometimes; we don’t think about it on a conscious level. Does that make it right? Well, that’s what I’m thinking about this week. I would never say to my husband, “Well, you’re nothing like boyfriend X because he wouldn’t have done that.” I think that’s wrong and just plain hurtful.

But to idly compare every now and then…

This week I’m wondering:

(If you’re not with anyone at the moment, feel free to call on past relationships.)

If you do answer on your blog, please spread the link love and link to:

Aud from Mom.Dad.Chat
Jenera at Just Me

And, of course, I always appreciate your links to me.

Don’t forget to leave me a link in the comments to your response.

Have fun!

Hello and welcome to this week’s installment of love questions.

I was watching one of my favourite comedy shows the other night and an interesting statistic came up as a trivia question. According to the latest statistics, 19% of couples are having their wedding paid for by their parents.

Now, this is certainly a lower statistic than I expected, but you don’t know just what went into the findings. Did they include civil services or only big weddings? How many people were surveyed? That sort of thing.

My husband and I paid for our wedding, and I’m very proud of that fact. I hand made my wedding invitations, got my dress and veil on ebay, got married at the local park/lake for free, etc. I definitely wouldn’t have minded some extra cash, but I am very proud that I did without.

When I was younger, it was ‘the thing’ where I was from to take out a wedding loan. Some banks were even starting to create special wedding loan packages.

This week I’m wondering:

(If you’re not with anyone at the moment, feel free to call on past relationships.)

If you do answer on your blog, please spread the link love and link to:

Aud from Mom.Dad.Chat
Jenera at Just Me

And, of course, I always appreciate your links to me.

Don’t forget to leave me a link in the comments to your response.

Have fun!

Hello and welcome to this week’s installment of love questions.

I was sitting down today thinking about what question to ask for this week’s Love Question, and something Mr. JM said (I can’t remember now) got me to thinking about all the big decisions couples make together. Everything from which refrigerator to buy to what house to buy, big decisions make up a lot of compromise in relationships.

The first big decision that Mr. JM and I made together was that we would give our relationship a try despite the distance, despite the time zone differences and despite our age difference. You can thank me for that one, as I virtually smacked some sense into him. (Why deny yourself love if the other person loves you back?)

The second big decision was that I would fly out here to live, to give our relationship a go in person. While some external factors influenced when that happened, Mr. JM and I had been saving up for it anyway. And, of course, the rest is history.

This week I’m wondering:

(If you’re not with anyone at the moment, feel free to call on past relationships.)

If you do answer on your blog, please spread the link love and link to:

Aud from Mom.Dad.Chat
Jenera at Just Me

And, of course, I always appreciate your links to me.

Don’t forget to leave me a link in the comments to your response.

Have fun!

Hello and welcome to this week’s installment of love questions. I think you all know the drill by now. If you have any questions, just keep reading because you’ll figure it out.

While he’s incredibly bashful about it and doesn’t really believe me for one minute, there is a lot I find incredibly attractive about my husband. Physically and personality-wise, there are things about him that I sometimes almost can’t believe I found a man who loves me possesses.

I’m sitting here trying to avoid going into drooling statements about how I love this and that about Mr. JM because, while it might stroke his ego, I really don’t think the readers here are all that interested in how sexy this or that is.

Must avoid talking about his…

Ahem.

Mr. JM is a pretty shy guy, mostly modest with the best of intentions (even when it gets him into strife). I’m not all that surprised that he would refuse to agree or disagree with whatever statement I made about his best features.

So while I may not be able to complete this week’s love question in all ways…

This week I’m wondering:

(If you’re not with anyone at the moment, feel free to call on past relationships.)

If you do answer on your blog, please spread the link love and link to:

Aud from Mom.Dad.Chat
Jenera at Just Me

And, of course, I always appreciate your links to me.

Don’t forget to leave me a link in the comments to your response.

Have fun!

Hello and welcome to this week’s installment of love questions.

In my opinion, Mr. JM and I didn’t spend a lot of time as friends before we became romantically attached to each other. In fact, we may have spent all of three seconds as friends, if that.

We may not have admitted it to each other straight away, but near from the moment we first started chatting, Mr. JM and I were attracted to each other. I don’t think it’s a bad thing that we weren’t friends first, and I don’t think it puts us at some sort of advantage to have been so nearly instantly attracted. That’s just how it worked out for us.

I certainly consider Mr. JM my closest friend now, but I don’t think of him - nor have I ever really - in traditional friend terms. Being my husband is just plain different. It doesn’t feel quite right for me to say “My husband is my best friend” like some other people do.

Maybe that would be different if we had been friends first. Maybe it wouldn’t. I’ve never had a friendship that later turned into a (two-sided) romantic relationship.

This week I’m wondering:

(If you’re not with anyone at the moment, feel free to call on past relationships.)

If you do answer on your blog, please spread the link love and link to:

Aud from Mom.Dad.Chat
Jenera at Just Me

And, of course, I always appreciate your links to me.

Don’t forget to leave me a link in the comments to your response.

Have fun!

Hello and welcome to this week’s installment of love questions.

I’m apparently feeling a bit philosophical this week, and I’m contemplating the very nature of romance.

It sounds very impressive when I put it that way, doesn’t it?

Honestly, a Saturday a couple weeks ago sucked something terrible and I ended up working for nearly the moment I woke up to late at night. Mr. JM left me alone to work, which was nice but depressing at the same time.

That night, as I finished up the final bits that needed doing, he walked over to me and gave me a neck and shoulders massage. Wow! It felt so incredibly good, especially after such a long, annoying work day that should have been a lovely, enjoyable weekend day.

To me, that massage was an incredibly romantic gesture. Without words, he said he was sorry that I had to work on the weekend and that he commiserated with me being pouty about it. In my opinion, the small, lovely gestures are the ones that are the most romantic. Romance is doing the things your partner would like without them having to ask. Anticipating their wants and needs and treating them to things they wouldn’t think to treat themselves to.

This week I’m wondering:

(If you’re not with anyone at the moment, feel free to call on past relationships.)

If you do answer on your blog, please spread the link love and link to:

Aud from Mom.Dad.Chat
Jenera at Just Me

And, of course, I always appreciate your links to me.

Don’t forget to leave me a link in the comments to your response.

Have fun!

Hello and welcome to this week’s installment of love questions.

Dating is one of those things that I don’t have a heck of a lot of experience with. Most ‘dates’ I went on consisted of group dates. Then, as I got more involved with online work, physical dates weren’t exactly possible.

When I moved to Australia, Mr. JM and I were already very committed to each other, so we didn’t go on dates in the traditional sense of getting to know each other and such. Even so, I do consider them dates. Especially as he was introducing me to his part of the world.

A couple love questions ago, we talked about our worst dates. Well, I figure it’s time to talk about our best dates.

One of my fondest memories is of when Mr. JM and I picked up some sushi and spent the afternoon in the local park. It was my first time trying sushi, the day was beautiful and warm, Mr. JM and I talked about how amazing it was I made it to Australia, we talked about our future… All in all, I can’t really imagine a better first date in person.

This week I’m wondering:

(If you’re not with anyone at the moment, feel free to call on past relationships.)

If you do answer on your blog, please spread the link love and link to:

Aud from Mom.Dad.Chat
Jenera at Just Me

And, of course, I always appreciate your links to me.

Don’t forget to leave me a link in the comments to your response.

Have fun!

Hello and welcome to this week’s installment of love questions.

When it comes to relationships, many fail because one or both partners put on a face or a mask in the beginning of the relationship. When the mask comes off, things don’t go so well because you have to get to know a new person all over again.

This is especially apparent in internet relationships that don’t work out. It’s so utterly easy to misrepresent yourself that some people can’t help but give into the temptation.

My relationship with Mr. JM started on the internet, but we have always said that our relationship is so strong because we were our real, true selves right from the start. We still had our rocky times, that’s for sure, but we didn’t have to deal with getting to know each other over and over again.

Even so, it’s only natural to try to but on our best ‘face’ when meeting people. We want to make good impressions and be treated nicely.

This week I’m wondering:

(If you’re not with anyone at the moment, feel free to call on past relationships.)

If you do answer on your blog, please spread the link love and link to:

Aud from Mom.Dad.Chat
Jenera at Just Me

And, of course, I always appreciate your links to me.

Don’t forget to leave me a link in the comments to your response.

Have fun!

Hello and welcome to this week’s installment of love questions.

Eventually we all run out of creative juice. This isn’t a permanent thing, but it does mean that we sometimes have to ask other people for help.

So, for this week, you can thank Mr. JM for coming up with the prompt.

If there was anything I think my husband would say he loves me for, I’d say it was either bravery or loyalty. As part of the prompt that he created, I then asked him why he loved me. He sent me this:

“You open the world to me as if I was new again – I love your enthusiasm & wonder at things I have long since become blasé about or never really saw as special.

You need me – I haven’t really been needed in my life.

You make me be a better person than I am.”

(Yeah, go ahead and say ‘aaawwww’.)

So what we think our partners might say about something definitely isn’t always what they actually say about something.

This week I’m wondering:

(If you’re not with anyone at the moment, feel free to call on past relationships.)

If you do answer on your blog, please spread the link love and link to:

Aud from Mom.Dad.Chat
Jenera at Just Me

And, of course, I always appreciate your links to me.

Don’t forget to leave me a link in the comments to your response.

Have fun!

Hello and welcome to this week’s installment of love questions.

With this blog, I have talked about all kinds of things. Baby brain, sex, personal space, vacations, time spent apart… All sorts of stuff. (Do I need to direct you back to the series I did on sex? I promise I have written about it.)

However, there are two things I can’t write about here because I don’t have the experience.

The first topic is children. I’ve never even been pregnant (though we’ve had a few “scares”), so I look to my wonderful friend Jenera to help me out with posts when it comes to things I’d like to know about motherhood.

The second topic isn’t a ‘not yet’ topic - it’s a ‘not ever’ topic. In-laws. I have never met a single in-law of mine and Mr. JM has never met a single in-law of his. He divorced his family long before he met me and my family is across the world (and we have no intention of seeing them any time soon).

So, though I’d love to talk on the subject of in-laws, I simply don’t and won’t have the experience.

This week I’m wondering:

(If you’re not with anyone at the moment, feel free to call on past relationships.)

If you do answer on your blog, please spread the link love and link to:

Aud from Mom.Dad.Chat
Jenera at Just Me

And, of course, I always appreciate your links to me.

Don’t forget to leave me a link in the comments to your response.

Have fun!

Hello and welcome to this week’s installment of love questions.

While Mr. JM and I went on our mini-vacation this past long weekend, I got to thinking about how Mr. JM doesn’t get a lot of private ‘me’ time. I work at home, so I have the whole day to myself if I don’t have to go to the shops or somewhere else for whatever reasons. Mr. JM works in an office and does jobs in other regional offices as well. The only time he really gets to himself is in the car or if I go to bed earlier than he does.

Fully knowing the importance of time just to yourself, I began to think about ways I could give Mr. JM alone time to relax while not being forced out of the flat. (It’s winter here in Australia and nearly everything closes at 5pm.)

For now, I have settled on a mutually beneficial plan: I go to bed at least a half an hour early and work on my writing in the bedroom (which I can do now that I have an electric blanket to keep me warm), and Mr. JM gets the extra time to cruise the internet, watch television or do whatever else he wants.

We have plenty of time together, and I think Mr. JM will benefit from time dedicated just to him.

This week I’m wondering:

If you do answer on your blog, please spread the link love and link to:

Aud from Mom.Dad.Chat
Jenera at Just Me

And, of course, I always appreciate your links to me.

Don’t forget to leave me a link in the comments to your response.

Have fun!

Hello and welcome to this week’s installment of love questions.

For a while now (as you can read from the previous posts made by Mr. JM), the husband and I have been tossing around ideas for a bit of a holiday. We both have an absolute passion for travel and tend to get a bit itchy if we don’t at least take a day road trip somewhere every so often.

The hiccup with our travel is the fact I don’t drive. Oh, I have a license and I can drive, but I don’t. The main reason is that we have a manual and I have always driven automatics. I’ve had a manual driving lesson and the husband says I did well, but I almost went into fits with past memories of my horrible, horrible driving instructor.

Otherwise, our trips are quite nice. Mr. JM usually doesn’t mind putting in the kilometres anyway, so we’re good in that respect. We have comfortable silences as well as good conversations. We’re good about packing food and water, so we don’t have any problems with that. As I said, we love to travel, and I can’t recall us ever having a fight while on the road.

This week I’m wondering:

If you do answer on your blog, please spread the link love and link to:

Aud from Mom.Dad.Chat
Jenera at Just Me

And, of course, I always appreciate your links to me.

Don’t forget to leave me a link in the comments to your response.

Have fun!

Hello and welcome to this week’s installment of love questions.

This week I have been thinking about the fact that I usually stick to marriage - or at least couple - questions. There are so many more aspects to love that I guess I tend to not think of because I’m cozy and warm in my marriage. I’m not always that great about thinking outside the box.

But this week I have thought outside the realm of marriage, and I figured it would be fun to share some ‘worst experience’ stories. I know, some of them are painful, but I’m sure you have some that you think are funny now.

I’ll share a short one to get the ball rolling. There was this guy in high school that everyone - including our parents - thought I should date. I didn’t feel much other than friendship toward him and I think he felt the same, but it was one of those ‘PRESSURE’ from friends and family things.

Anyway, we did end up going out to the movies. He worked at the theatre to the time and took me to see a cute kid’s film. He decided to hold my hand, and I was so uncomfortable and unsure of what to do, we just held hands the whole time. Of course, our hands got really, really sweaty. Gross sweaty. Bleugh.

We both were embarrassed and uncomfortable with the whole thing and wiped our hands afterward. Lots of fun.

Okay, not the worst story out there, but I never dated much.

This week I’m wondering:

If you do answer on your blog, please spread the link love and link to:

Aud from Mom.Dad.Chat
Jenera at Just Me

And, of course, I always appreciate your links to me.

Don’t forget to leave me a link in the comments to your response.

Have fun!

Hello all! I apologize for the late question. We had some fun internet troubles over the last few days. Thankfully things are all back to normal now!

This week I have been thinking about what Mr. JM and I have in common and how we differ from each other.

When it comes to the typical Myers-Briggs personality test, Mr. JM and I are members of the introvert camp. We enjoy our social time, but we’re just as happy with a night in, a day spent with just each other or even a day spent doing our own things.

Mr. JM is a bit less introverted than I am. While he doesn’t seek out people to get energy or need to be in the spotlight, he is still an excellent communicator (which is pretty much essential to be good at his job).

Me? I’m not a social phobic, but I’m darn close. I do okay in social situations and can usually hold my own, but find myself easily exhausted by people - especially the bubbly, yappy ones. I am always happier in smaller groups.

This week I’m wondering:

If you do answer on your blog, please spread the link love and link to:

Aud from Mom.Dad.Chat
Jenera at Just Me

And, of course, I always appreciate your links to me.

Don’t forget to leave me a link in the comments to your response.

Have fun!