Signs of a committed relationship

it's funny how your perceptions change.

Yeah, I know that's an incredibly vague statement. But today, it refers to relationships. Now, don't worry... I'm not going to get all "lovey-dovey" on you. But I had an interesting thought.

It's been a long time since I've been in a "committed" relationship and so a lot of this isn't second nature yet. And when I see a new development, I like to share.

This is my latest.

Sign #245 that you're in a committed relationship: When you notice something about your significant other that deviates from your perfect perception of a member of the opposite sex, it doesn't make you run for the hills.

Let me explain. I've had a lot of relationships that lasted 4 months or less. We'd date for a while, and everything would be going fine. But then, one day, she would do something, or say something, or some situation would occur, that would scare me. I would suddenly think, "Wow, I don't want my wife to be like that." And the relationship would die soon after. I would weigh the pros and cons, and find that it was better to run away than to work it out. (I could get into poker terminology here, like implied odds or expected value, but that would be a tangent...and we all know that I don't do that).

Well, moving on. This happened to me recently. A situation took place that really threw me for a loop. It wasn't necessarily that my girlfriend said or did something specific.... just more like a combination of events took place that went horribly wrong.

However, it never even occurred to me to talk about ending things. All I could think about was, "Well, we'll have to talk about this and work it out." It was like there was no other option on the board. We would just have to fix it.

I guess that's what makes this different from my relationships in the past. The little things don't scare me as much, because they get outweighed by the big things.

k, that's all. I know this is all common sense... but it really surprised me when it happened.