Reactions

"It's a second marriage," she whispered to me. As if I was supposed to understand that this made it less important or a silly little trifle. It was as though she was confessing a sin, and cleansing herself of the situation; as if to say, yeah I'm driving a Kia now, but my other car is a Mercedes.

Somehow relationships take on different elements as you get older. The ones you have in college are often not like the ones you had in high school and the ones you have after college are often not like your previous ones. There's even something to be said of the statistics relating to the marriages of people who marry for the first time after the age of 25, and the comparison of those to first marriages of younger partners and second marriages for the same age group. Perspectives seem to change ... maybe.

It seems men and women get jaded with relationships over time. They start out believing the fairy tales. The man on a white horse riding to their rescue. Rescuing the princess. Finding that perfect someone. That person that just instantly gets you and it's like magic. The glass slipper. Happily ever after, and the whole deal. Then they get some false starts. People cheat on them, or hurt them, or they see the relationship going in the wrong direction somehow, and poof. Suddenly, this relationship that was supposed to last forever is done, but forever hasn't come yet.

So now these injured lovers spend time looking over their shoulders, always wondering when the next hit is going to come and trying to bob and weave out of it. Fast on their feet. Ready to run at a moment's notice. "I won't get hit again," they think. They begin expecting less, or they demand more, or a little of both. They don't want to get stuck in another relationship like the last one. Never again. They are more cautious. They ask more questions. They analyze every person they meet, trying to see if this one is like the other one. Every misstep scares them, like a gunshot to a deer. Fast. Must get away. Don't want to be trapped. Don't want to be hurt. Don't want to be ... safe?

Safe?

Well the theory runs, it is possible for one that has been hurt before to be too scared of ever being in another relationship. That they will either sabotage them or run away from them because even though the relationship they are in is safe and exactly what the person is looking for, they cannot deal with it. It scares them, or they do not feel they deserve it or something. It's all rather individual.

It's like we are all chemicals in a big experiment and some of us interact well together, some do not, and some just should not be mixed with anything. Some chemicals need catalysts to react, some take forever, some only react well at certain temperatures, some remain suspended for excessive periods of time, and some reactions occur amazingly fast and are quickly done.

So what's the point you ask? The point? I need a point? Well ... ok. How about this one: We are luckier than chemicals because we all have the ability to figure out why we react the way we do and change it.