If you’re happy and you know it... tell me how!

When you ask yourself if the person you’re with is The One, more questions can pop up. If you ask google how to tell if you’re happy in your relationship, yahoo group trolls will shout back, “If you even have to ask, the answer is no!” Finding the person to share your life with is complicated, right? Why is all the advice pointing to a simplified version of reality? Maybe it just hasn’t happened to me yet and that’s why I question the logic, but I want to take a good look at this classic QA combo and see where we end up.

When it comes to knowing whether or not he is “The One,” you just do.

Okay, I get that. Sounds poetic and nice and simple enough to be written off as a zen, buddha, enlightened truth. Don’t overthink it, if it feels right it is. It also sounds like a real disservice to keep repackaging this Disney version of true love that could be keeping us thinking women from actually recognizing it when we see it.

With relationships carrying on longer and longer these days before questions are popped and vows are answered, there’s more opportunity for those icky moments to crop up. Those moments when it doesn’t feel right, or good or even healthy. When rough patches come before “I do,” can you still feel so relaxed and self-assured?

I know extremely happily married couples who admit to going through “rough patches” for months or even years here and there. So if you’re pre-marriage it follows logically that your relationships can still hit terrible roadblocks or less dramatic, “I don’t like you right now” weeks. All that yuckiness when you’re suposed to be feeling blissed out about your beau. Simple Certainty can feel rather like a pink, fluffy pipe dream … or maybe it’s true but it will be true with someone else, someplace else.  

I have felt the blissful “Aha, there you are” body rush that comes from love at first sight. If I were in a Meg Ryan film, pre-fish lips and messy divorce, I would have already married one of those guys. It would have felt right and there would have been no time for anyone to mess up and rile feathers. The “rough patches” would have come within the sanctity of marriage, a marriage which would have been celebrated and accepted by society as it waved back into better times, or washed up on the shores of divorce.

Knowing MUST be more nuanced than this. We are together longer these days, pre-marriage. We have a lot of opportunity to offend one another, to behave obtusely and fail to remember that this or that is important to our other.

Dating relationships that take a lot of work are also often oversimplified, “If it takes this much work now, get out while you still can.” It all takes work, on the front end and the back end. The thoughtful women I love to learn from on A Practical Wedding work daily and choose their partners daily. They also share how they “just knew” and for most people who commented on the linked-to post, they “just knew” only after enduring some scrapes and tumbles with their mates:

It was getting through the hard stuff together, and realizing that when we are not doing well together we will both commit to keep working on it together – and that we are capable of doing that together – and the fact that she was there for some really difficult times in my life and ours and didn’t run away. That was what made me sure too. The joy is there too, but it was the hard stuff that made me sure.

In the time they were with their partners before marriage, they were already working hard through rough patches, learning great things and not so great things about one another and about their shared dynamic.It is clear that in the face of rough patches, that sure as hell did come BEFORE “I do,” these couples were choosing to move forward together and address issues and icky feelings as they came up. What I want to know is, Why?

Or rather, HOW did they know enough to stick with it and not bolt? How did they know that the small triumphs they shared when they overcame issues early on were more significant and powerful than the small “Who the fuck is this person?” moments that they also experienced? How did they know...

That’s what I’m still sorting out for myself. When do you know if there’s enough good in all the right places to make working through the wonky stuff a responsible choice?

We can keep jumping ship and hope that the right one is still out there and with them there are no misunderstandings or rough patches. With him you’ll just know and loving him will come as naturally as breathing... but that’s a fantasy. A ding, dong, dang fantasy. And one with no happy ending if you choose to pursue it  in the real world.

As I get older, I realize that every single relationship is going to have the gross bits and the “Ugh, you are REALLY getting one my nerves” bits. There’s no getting away from that. So that moment when you “just know” means to me that you have thought long and hard about what your must-have list includes and what your deal breakers are. When you have a written set of these goals, it becomes easier to raise your own red flags and either step on the brakes or pause, pivot and nurture on. High value women are list lovers, and so I’d like us all to think long and hard about our lists and we will share ours in the next week. For now, I want to know... If you’re happy and you know it, tell me how?