I keep coming up against people that seem to have some kind of issue with my relationship. It's nothing they say up front but you can tell they have a problem with it. Or even if they don't know my totally circumstances, they have stances and viewpoints which knock down and flatten my known way of being and living.
None of the issues/stances are things I believe in myself. Every relationship is totally different, their circumstances and what's taken two people to that point is always different and can't be so easily defined as, well they've been together x number of years so they have to be at this point in their relationship, anything further is too risky and anything less is obviously frigid.
Me and JJ fall into the former point, so we're obviously risking everything and acting like love sick teenagers. Yeah but we're 24/25 - not really teenagers.
[Background - we're in a huge Long Distance Relationship (LDR) with me in the UK, my Joe in America, we got engaged after a year of being together, and we hoping to get married autumn this year.]
Apparently we fail in a number of ways;
- Long distance relationships are always seen and watched from afar with judgement. I always get asked how do I know he's not cheating on me? How can I trust him? Why can I be bothered when I rarely seem him? Apparently people forget what love is all about, just because you can't be with that person in person, it doesn't mean you love them any less.
- Getting engaged after a year - how can you know someone that well to know you want to marry them after that amount of tine. When you're with the one, you just know. Back in the day people got married yet alone engaged after months.
- By having a small wedding - apparently goes against the grain and you should know invite a million and five people to your wedding, just because. We're having 20 people there, deal with it we're not getting married for the sake of having a big do, we're getting married because we love each other. We're both shy people we'd hate all the attention of a big thing, we just want our closest, most important people to be there to spend the day with.
- Oh yeah and not even having a wedding on a budget, apparently you can't have "proper" weddings on anything less then £15,000, we're doing ours on £2000 maximum, because we refuse to get into loads of debt.
- But how can we afford to get married when we can't even live together? Yet along getting married before we've even lived together. So because I haven't lived with JJ that means I know NOTHING about him, or his habits, or his quirks.
- Not wanting a traditionally all white dress causes issues too.
Sometimes it feels like your always hitting a brick wall. It's not that I want to meet or match everyone's expectations of what a relationship or wedding should be. Just wanting a little more respect. Relationships should be welcomed and enjoyed whatever way they appear.