Partners

Musing of the day:

Over the course of a long-term relationship, do people naturally stop planning and dreaming together and start working around each other? Maybe over time, as goals are achieved one after another and there are fewer things on the list of mutual goals, the list of things we want to accomplish together seems short compared to the list of things we want to do that the other person isn't interested in. Or maybe we become specialists, either by design or default. Managing a relationship and/or a household becomes more efficient as the couple negotiates who will replace the furniture when it becomes worn and who will clean out the garage when the clutter starts to build up. Our busy lives can pressure us not just to specialize, but to work independently and alone. Efficiency is good, but it runs the risk of creating territories, and human beings can be very territorial. I know. I'm pretty territorial.

I think it's good to get together now and then to plan and dream, and to work toward projects as a team rather than individuals. Tasks might still be divided, territories will still form, but with big dreams of big futures that require two people, two friends, two lovers (come on you guys, this is poetry, not me talking about six different people!) to achieve, maybe the things that change a relationship into rote roles and territories won't seem like the whole of the world. Maybe those things will become the lesser part of the relationship, the maintenance part, and the purpose behind the relationship, the dreams and plans, will take their rightful place as the things that make two people into partners instead of room mates.

I have a great partner. I wonder what we'll plan for next.

And he'll say, "the same thing we do every night, Pinky. Try to take over the world!"*

Except it'll probably be something more like, start pricing fencing materials for a new goat enclosure.
Carving out new pasture is pretty much the same thing as trying to take over the world.

Taking over the world might actually be slightly easier.

* quote from Pinky and the Brain, an animated TV series produced by Steven Spielberg that aired from 1995-1998