My life stages have all coincided with different relationships. That was never the intent - I would have been very happy to have one relationship in this life - but it makes me wonder if this was all coincidental or if there was a causal relationship (and if the latter, was the relationship the cause or effect?)
In my teens, my best friend was a woman in her 50s. I know that sounds weird, but it wasn't. I had no interest in being a teenager -- I wanted to skip that phase and was desperate to grow up and be taken seriously, so for me this felt quite natural. However, the very thing that enabled that relationship is also what doomed it -- by the time I was 17, I had outgrown her and was ready to move on.
When I was 18, I moved in with a woman in her 30s. I adored her but I still had to deal with the actual transition to adulthood. I thought I could take a shortcut and skip university but I wanted a job in IT, and so I ended up working full-time and going to school part-time, which left very little time for a relationship.
For her part, she was not happy falling in love with someone so young, and I think that doomed the relationship from the start. I don't honestly know if I could have done anything to keep the relationship through that transition.
My next relationship started when I was 21, just as I was finishing school and settling into my career. Those were the salad days: Neither of us wanted kids, both of us were working, and I was no longer trying to grow up or be someone else. Those days passed in a blur of sunshine, friends and distractions. When we decided to move to rural Pennsylvania and open a B&B, I really thought our relationship was strong enough to survive that transition (otherwise I wouldn't have committed all of our savings) but I was wrong, and I walked away with practically nothing.
I felt like I was starting over so I decided to make it even harder by moving to another country. A relationship was the last thing on my mind, which is probably why I had my guard down and immediately fell in love. I was 38 and she was 35 and suddenly we were talking about having kids. I'd never wanted kids until I met her, and suddenly it was all I wanted. It was her desire to raise the kids Jewish that started me on the journey to convert to Judaism. That relationship was all about opening myself up, navigating a new culture and embracing change, but in the end she didn't really want a relationship with me. (If you thought I'd learned my lesson about protecting myself financially, you'd be wrong, and I walked away from this relationship with practically nothing, as well.)
Then at 44 I moved to New Zealand and was suddenly raising three kids. (My "pop-up family" as my wife used to say.) So that relationship was all about learning to be a father. My wife passed away and the kids are all now in their 20s, but they're still my pop-up family. Hopefully they will teach me about being a grandfather.
I'm sure there will be relationships in my future - I seem to fall into them - but I have no idea what they look like, or what I'll take away from them. What I can say is the adage, "the only common denominator in your dysfunctional relationships is you."
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