Time for a Paradigm Shift – without a roadmap!

Okay, we’re in love. Now what? Let her wear my Letterman’s Jacket? No. Engagement? No. Marriage? Abso-friggin-lutely, no! How about setting some goals together like we did before committing to marriage? It seemed to be helpful when we were getting married in our 20s; not quite the same timing. Now in our 70’s, the 10 year plan is simply to live that long. Fitting in a relationship goal doesn’t quite fit the bill.

I decided (and from the first letter you will notice a problem) that finding a place to live together should be tops. You will recall that I just bought my family home to allow my aged mother and a younger brother a place to live for the rest of their lives. Nice idea. Mom didn’t want Nina moving in. It also meant that my disposable income was now used for mortgage and living costs leaving me with a small allowance. Nina wanted out of her apartment so that’s where ‘I’ made the decision that ‘we’ would look for a place. Again, I made the decision for us. The results were as one might expect – backfire.

Heartfelt discussion time. We shouldn’t live together. She loved her privacy and needed her meditating time over her work in both painting and poetry. I loved being busy with projects. She liked quiet and no television, I was opposite. But we did love our time together. One might wonder how people so completely different in basic living styles found the commonality of love.

As I was about to find out, Nina knew herself much better than I knew myself. I was the person lacking in self-development and needed to discover how to find my soul. Introspection, a truthful look inside myself, for which I needed some guidance, and meditation to help with the introspection. After we had a heavy discussion on finding a place to live, she felt like there was too much pressure being applied to her. Nina wanted to reassess us being together all the time. Moving somewhere just to be able to make love was not a top priority. We decided that moving anywhere, especially rushing to find a place, was not necessary. We agreed and things suddenly got easier. Actually, the desire to make love increased, a nice bonus.

We decided to slow down and enjoy our time together whether it was walking on the beach or around town, sitting together with a glass of wine, exploring cooking ideas for gluten/dairy free dinners, and trying to learn more about ‘us’. There was no rush. Thoughts of our mortality because of advancing years did not come into the picture at all. When we were two, the only thing that mattered was being alive in each other, not unlike the slogan of ’69-ish, ‘Live for today’ usually preceded by Sha-na-na-na-naa. We also planned a few small trips, either camping or motels, to see if we got along while being together for more than a couple days.

What I found in my soul search was I loved being in love and the pleasant, overall-contented feeling that emotion gave to me. I expanded some of my texting to Nina, when we were apart, of course, to fashion some poignant notes, occasionally an email, more private, in the form of love letters (I don’t know what else to call them) that helped me express my adoration and love, something I found easier and more precise with written words than my spoken words. A side effect I discovered was that tears could well in my eyes depending on the words I wrote. I don’t know if it’s a universal translation, but those emotional words, I was told, produced the same results in Nina as she read them. How powerful is that? Pretty sure that if I tried those same words unrehearsed, the results would not be the same. Probably just me. I love to write.