Kathy, IIRC, several Buffistas have skulked their way to foreign nookie while traveling with parents. IJS.

Jilli, it's early. Perhaps they are still sleeping?

Also, damn Damned.

The sleep of the Damned

Good news, tommy.

tommy, D and I moved in together after knowing each other for...7 months, and got married a little more than a year after meeting. I think one of the advantages of meeting someone when you're a little older is being able to decide when you are truly compatible or just thinking you are.

I mean, I did a fair amount of should-I-or-shouldn't-I here, but, really, it was over fairly quickly, and more from "EEP, I've never lived with a romantical type interest/Holy shit, marriage? WTFF?!" than "We'e not right for each other."

javachik, reading about those women, I also wonder how many of them are actually happy in their marriages (or still married) now. I mean, I certainly hope they are; I don't wish them unhappiness. But I'd guess it's not uncommon for someone who really, really wants to get married NOW -- in other words, someone for whom the goal is "marriage," not "finding the right person" -- to end up marrying someone with whom they're not super happy or compatible, long-term.

I am still Facebook friends with most of them, and they're still married. Two of them I'm close enough with to know they're actually very genuinely happy.

At the beginning of our relationship Will kind had reservations because how it might affect (effect?) me if we broke up. "I don't want to hurt you or cause you stress" that kind of thing.

I told him - if our relationship doesn't work out then it will be sad and I'll mourn the end of our relationship and cherish the time we had together but it won't break me.

Then when I told people at work I was moving I got a few comments like - but what if you move up there and then it doesn't work out? What will you do?

It would be sad and I'd figure out the next step, maybe stay in Vermont or move back to Florida or move somewhere else.

I also got asked when we were getting married. I don't know when that will happen, but it will and even though sometimes I want to happen Right noW! I'm not in too big of a rush.

I was...19? Yeah. Had no idea who I wanted to be, let alone who I was. I had a whole career planned, a life without a SO, focused and single-minded. H snuck up on me, sandbagged me, and hard as I struggled for the better part of a year, the outcome was both foregone and inevitable.

We've been lucky enough to have life and growth paths relatively parallel--they do an outward curve--sometimes pretty far divergent--but eventually curve inward toward the other. I said years ago that neither of us is the person we married--though we carry that baggage, we both have changed and grown. But for the most part we've had the support, or the resistance--often as necessary--of the other.

I might have been happier if we'd parted at one of those overstressed and dislikeable points. But I'd be no stronger. And different. If I may quote: It ain't Ozzie and Harriet.

Hubby got evicted from his place a couple of months after we met, I offered him my floor to crash on. After a couple of weeks, it seemed very silly for him to leave the bed, and he's been there ever since. I never felt the need to get formally married to him, but landlords disagreed.

Hubs and I also moved in together about 7 months after we met. We've been together 22 years and, as I like to joke, we haven't killed each other yet.