How To Have A Long Term Relationship

I was just brain­storm­ing some blog ideas with Robert, and he sug­gest­ed some­thing about how dat­ing works these days. Good idea, but I have no clue ac­tu­al­ly, since I’ve been in a re­la­tion­ship with the same woman for eight years now. Hon­est­ly, I don’t en­vy you kids with your so­cial me­dia dat­ing and your hid­den sex tapes and what­ev­er oth­er sci­ence fic­tion shit you get up to when it comes time to bone. Al­though it might have been nice to be able to in­stant­ly look up every sin­gle po­ten­tial part­ner in her un­der­wear on the in­ter­net back when I was sin­gle. I re­al­ly dropped the ball on that one, sci­ence. On the oth­er hand, I do know how to make a long term re­la­tion­ship work. Here’s some ad­vice:

LEAVE EACH OTH­ER ALONE

A sig­nif­i­cant oth­er isn’t like a pet, al­though you should prob­a­bly get used to the smell of their shit and mak­ing sure that they’re fed ever day. Go­ing on walks to­geth­er is pret­ty nice too. Nev­er mind, they are sort of like pets. But the point is it’s ok to leave them at home for ex­tend­ed pe­ri­ods of time. I have good friends that I’ve been hang­ing out with for years, do­ing, let’s say… ac­tiv­i­ties that my la­dy friend is too smart to in­dulge in. “Where’s your girl?” they still ask every time, not re­al­iz­ing that it’s not im­per­a­tive that you drag your s.o. out to every sin­gle event or show or af­ter hours you at­tend for the rest of your life.

So your man isn’t in­to shop­ping, or a cer­tain band you love, or go­ing to the gym or sit­ting up all night start­ing at each oth­er and smok­ing a thou­sand cig­a­rettes while you talk about how killer that one Oa­sis b-side was 15 years ago? Sim­ple so­lu­tion: don’t make him go with you to those things. Weird, right? My girl­friend doesn’t like shit­ty met­al bands and scen­ester dance par­ties like I do, most­ly be­cause she’s a ma­ture adult who doesn’t pre­tend she’s 22 years old and ac­tu­al­ly has a re­al job. So when it’s time for me to punch in for my side gig as hip­ster Pe­ter Pan, she gives me a kiss, says “have fun” and goes back to do­ing what­ev­er weird shit she does when I’m not around. (Star­ing at the wall? Not sure.)

One of the sin­gle biggest mis­takes that peo­ple in un­sta­ble re­la­tion­ships make is think­ing that it’s some sort of fail­ure if they don’t spend every wak­ing mo­ment at­tached at the hip and/or vagi­na. That’s well and good at the be­gin­ning when you need to rub as much of your sweat and pheromones as you can all over them to mark your ter­ri­to­ry. It doesn’t last. Or it shouldn’t, any­way. Some­times you grow to share each oth­er’s in­ter­est, which is awe­some — what’s more fun than go­ing to see “your band” to­geth­er and singing along to every song to­geth­er? Not much. But a lot of times some­one else’s hob­bies are just that: some­one else’s hob­bies. I used to drag my girl to all sorts of shit she didn’t want to be at, then she’d want to go home, and I’d re­sent that I had to leave ear­ly, and vice-ver­sa. Then it oc­curred to us — wait, I’ll see you in a cou­ple hours! I’m ghost.

When you’re young and stu­pid you con­sid­er “bad taste” a deal break­er. You break up with some­one be­cause they didn’t like a band or a book or a movie that you con­sid­ered so im­por­tant to your per­son­al mythol­o­gy that you couldn’t en­vi­sion your­self stay­ing with this oth­er­wise love­ly per­son. That’s teenag­er bull­shit. A boyfriend or girl­friend isn’t an ac­ces­so­ry you wear on your arm like a tat­too. They aren’t a Face­book wall that ad­ver­tis­es your set of cul­tur­al “likes.” They should be a per­son that you’re in­to enough that you can leave them alone for a cou­ple damn hours while they go pur­sue what­ev­er go­daw­ful shit they’re in­to when they aren’t ly­ing to make you feel bet­ter about the go­daw­ful shit you’re in­to. That’s called be­ing ma­ture: ly­ing on­ly about the im­por­tant things.

YOU DON’T HAVE TO LIKE ALL THEIR FRIENDS, JUST SOME OF THEM

Same rules ap­ply when it comes to their friends: you don’t have to pre­tend to like them all just to con­form to ex­pec­ta­tions of how a re­la­tion­ship is sup­posed to work. Trust me, a lot of your friends suck. I know this be­cause the vast ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple in the world suck, it’s just sim­ple arith­metic. So let’s say she has some snooty girl­friend that thinks you’re “weird” be­cause you don’t have, I don’t know, “a job” or “any fu­ture.” Who cares? They were friends be­fore you came along, and if you blow this one, they’ll be friends long af­ter too. Let them do their thing. Some of your guy friends might be re­al­ly in­to sports, or get­ting wast­ed, or band re­hearsal, or com­ic books or any num­ber of oth­er girl-re­pel­lent ac­tiv­i­ties. You’re not invit­ing her to join the fan­ta­sy foot­ball league or pok­er game, are you? So it doesn’t mat­ter that she thinks your boy is a prick. Un­less she’s ac­tu­al­ly in­to that stuff too, in which case, right on. Al­so, what’s her num­ber?

That said, you’d bet­ter at least scrape to­geth­er one or two pre­sentable friends you can pull around to cou­ples events, dou­ble dates and week­end get­aways and the like. Go­ing out to din­ner to­geth­er just the two of you for the ten thou­sandth time doesn’t seem like a thing, but if you in­vite one of her friends or one of yours along – pro­vid­ed that per­son can string to­geth­er an hour or two of rea­son­able con­ver­sa­tion – then it’s more in­ter­est­ing for every­one. Bring­ing a friend along is like go­ing to see a movie be­fore din­ner, it gives you some­thing to talk about when you get home, even if it’s just about how fucked up it was.

DON’T BE A SPY

Re­mem­ber those ab­stract jum­bled paint­ings they used to sell at the mall where you had to stare at them for an hour be­fore they took shape in­to some­thing like a dol­phin or a badass bro spik­ing a vol­ley­ball? That’s what’s go­ing on when you start star­ing at your s.o.’s Face­book for too long. You start think­ing you see shit that isn’t there. Love is a drug, right? Well, in this case jeal­ousy-trolling is like star­ing out the blinds at 6 am think­ing that flash­ing red light down the road is the cops get­ting ready to break down your door any sec­ond. Some­times a winky emoti­con from some web-cam slut is just a winky emoti­con from a web-cam slut (Freud said that). Does the dude at work that posts on your girl’s wall want to fuck her? Of course he does, but that doesn’t mean you need to spend all your time wor­ry­ing about it. First of all, look at this putz. Sick hat, bro.

That’s how things go south re­al quick in a re­la­tion­ship. The ba­sic break­down is this: as­sume every­one your girl or boyfriend talks to is try­ing to bang them, but then don’t wor­ry about it un­til you’re forced to. I don’t want to get mauled by a fuck­ing bear and dragged back to his bear house to be eat­en, but I don’t ex­act­ly spend all my time wor­ry­ing that it’s go­ing to hap­pen. Be­sides, they can smell the fear on you. Girl­friends, I mean.

DON’T LOSE YOUR EDGE

It’s pret­ty com­mon for peo­ple in long term re­la­tion­ships to let their shit go all flop­py and un­kempt. They’re al­ready shacked up, so who have they got to im­press any­more, right? How about the per­son who has to look at that naked mess of a body every day? Even if you’re not bon­ing all the time any­more it’s still im­por­tant to come cor­rect. Here’s a good test for whether or not you should be ac­tu­al­ly wor­ried about that Face­book jeal­ousy stuff I men­tioned above: poke your­self in the stom­ach. Are you a fat turd? Then the an­swer is yes.

You nev­er know when you’re go­ing to get dumped, so it’s im­por­tant to be pre­pared. A bad break up helps you lose weight, sure, but you want to be able to hit the ground run­ning as soon as the shit hits the fan. Think of prepar­ing for a break up like be­ing pre­pared for a hur­ri­cane or a zom­bie at­tack and stock­ing up on bot­tled wa­ter and shot­gun am­mo in your base­ment. Sure, you hope it nev­er comes, but just in case, you’re ready to blow some fuck­er’s head off. Don’t take it too far though, be­cause that’s telegraph­ing your move. One of the surest signs your ass is about to get dropped is when you’re girl­friend or boyfriend starts los­ing a ton of weight out of nowhere.

LAUGH­ING IS THE NEW FUCK­ING

Laugh­ing is ba­si­cal­ly an or­gasm that comes out of your mouth in­stead of the oth­er way around. You’ll want to get used to that, since af­ter a few years you’re prob­a­bly not go­ing to be do­ing the lat­ter every day any­more. Sor­ry, that’s just how it works. I didn’t in­vent the rules. There’s a rea­son that you’ve heard this rou­tine from every sin­gle stand up co­me­di­an ever, and that’s be­cause it’s true. Show me a cou­ple that’s been fuck­ing every day for ten years and I’ll show you a cou­ple of re­al­ly in­se­cure liars.

When you’ve been to­geth­er for a long time, oth­er things start to take pri­or­i­ty over get­ting one off. Like catch­ing up on all the stuff record­ed on your DVR or scrub­bing the bath­tub. And be­sides, you’re not go­ing to be fuck­ing the per­son you spend the rest of your life with af­ter the age of like fifty-five or six­ty or so any­way, un­less you are, in which case that’s fuck­ing gross dude. You’re go­ing to need some­thing else to fall back on that brings you close to­geth­er on a phys­i­cal, im­pul­sive lev­el. Be­ing able to make each oth­er laugh is vi­tal then.

When I think about get­ting old to­geth­er with my beau­ti­ful, hi­lar­i­ous, in­tel­li­gent la­dy, I don’t en­vi­sion us fuck­ing on the beach or in front of a fire­place while smooth slow jams play on the stereo, lo­tion­ing-up one an­oth­er’s wrin­kled ass­es. I think about us talk­ing about our day, about the fun­ny things that hap­pened to us, and try­ing to make each oth­er burst out laugh­ing with a sil­ly joke that no one else in the world would ap­pre­ci­ate. Laugh­ter is based on sur­prise, right? Any­time you can sur­prise your s.o. af­ter years of be­ing to­geth­er, that’s a pret­ty good sign that you’re do­ing some­thing right. Plus, just think about all the new tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vances in porn they’re go­ing to have by the time we get old. I can hard­ly wait.

Oh, and one more thing:

DON’T POST PHO­TOS OF HER ON THE IN­TER­NET WITH­OUT ASK­ING FIRST

Woops. All of that ad­vice up there is prob­a­bly moot, since she’s prob­a­bly gonna be pissed that I post­ed these pho­tos with­out ask­ing first. So, I guess I’ve had a pret­ty good run. Some­one write an ar­ti­cle on how to meet new peo­ple af­ter hav­ing been in­volved for years, be­cause I’m prob­a­bly gonna need it. Thanks in ad­vance.

You’ll find waaaaaaaay more sage ad­vice from Luke at Put That Shit On The List…. Go check it folks xxx