[rcoreyus]

I wonder how many of the life-long relationships were actually happy. I am unhappy in mine - but I won't leave. To all my friends and family my marriage looks perfect.

[Mes T]

I wonder how many of the life-long relationships were actually happy. I am unhappy in mine - but I won't leave. To all my friends and family my marriage looks perfect.

What are your reasons for not leaving?

[rcoreyus]

Not easy to describe. Partially it is because I love her and would never do anyting to hurt her. Partly it is because even after all these years I have an irrational hope that things will get better. We almost have a wonderful relationship - but the parts that are missing (intimacy, joy), wreck it. Every once in a while we have those - and it makes me believe it could get better.

[GoodEgg]

I say you guys hit all the main reasons. Either no one is willing to compromise, incompatible ways of communicating or there is no interest in maintaining a long term monogamous relationship in the first place.

Of course, I can't really talk, since my longest relationship has been 3 years (current one, currently hitting a rough patch)!

[nubianqueen]

I wonder how many of the life-long relationships were actually happy. I am unhappy in mine - but I won't leave. To all my friends and family my marriage looks perfect.

...I have seen FAR too many marriages like that!!! to me that's the scary thing, ending up with someone that you are unhappy with, but leaving is completely out of the question. Did you notice the unhappiness early on in the marriage? were things picture perfect when you guys were dating??

[GlitterAndStuds]

I think our generation/society is just more sexually driven than back when your parents and grandparents got together. Which, to me, is unfortunate. Not that we're more sexual, that's fine with me :P But back then, people were more concerned with courting someone they liked and building a great relationship... not so much on how many sexual conquests they can take... which is probably part of why they have lasted so long.

KMonte took a lot of the words right out of my head in her post. Last year, I was in a stage where I didn't date anyone for longer than a couple of weeks, if you would even consider it "dating". I had actually been seeing a guy for a few weeks (but was about to end it) when I met my current guy a year ago. The night after I met him, I never spoke to the guy again (it sounds terrible but trust me, he was worthless). I've never even looked at another guy since then and can't imagine being with anyone but him. And we're on the same page. He's not concerned with sleeping with all the girls that he can, and I've already gotten all that stuff out of my system.

Anyway, done rambling. Basically, I think it's completely possible if you find someone who has the same mentality and wants the same things you want. I don't mean to generalize, and I'm certainly not saying this applies to your friends, but from my experience most people that say we're not meant to be monogamous are either still feeling the effects of being cheated on or haven't found the right one. Someone will change their minds, I'm sure

[rcoreyus]

Things were not perfect, but I was (and am) in love, and believed that all the problems would just get better with time. Looking back would I have done anything different? It is so easy in hindsight to see what is wrong, and ignore all the things that are right. Easy to imagine someone just like your SO, except in the ways you wish they would change. Easy to see other women as matching that mould because you don't really know anything about them.

...I have seen FAR too many marriages like that!!! to me that's the scary thing, ending up with someone that you are unhappy with, but leaving is completely out of the question. Did you notice the unhappiness early on in the marriage? were things picture perfect when you guys were dating??

[Texasred]

Alright guys, it's known that some animals mate for life, but clearly this is not the case for many of us humans.

Reading so many posts on relationship problems and seeing so many of my friends break up with their partners really makes me wonder if it's possible to find ONE person and be happy with him/her for the rest of your life.

Sure, it's possible to have just one partner for life, even in these modern times!
If you have a really short life.
Like if one of you has a terminal illness.

I know I'll be married until I die: because my wife would kill me if she thought I was cheating on her...

[Texasred]

I wonder how many of the life-long relationships were actually happy. I am unhappy in mine - but I won't leave. To all my friends and family my marriage looks perfect.

You and me both, brother.
Friends even comment, "You two look like you have the perfect marriage!"

Little do they know my wife is ONLY affectionate in public, it's a little show she puts on.

[Texasred]

... were things picture perfect when you guys were dating??

I know things were for my wife and I, and we had a dating relationship that had lasted for years before she ever moved in with me (we marrie dthree months after that) and during the entirer time we were dating, the sex was wonderful, hot, can't-keep-your-hands-off-each-other lustful coupling, and this extended some time into the marriage.
Until she decided she wanted to get pregnant, and the odds were against it because of problems she had, so we started "timing" the sex, and not having it too often so the precious sperm-count wasn't reduced, then started the visits to the fertility clinic, and attempts at invitro fertilization where I was nothing more than the non-anonymous sperm donor...
It started downhill there and never turned around. Like rcoreyus, there kept being moments when I would think things had turned around, moments when we'd recapture that old feeling, but those moments got farther and farther apart.
Last one like that I can remember was during the summer of '09...