Stories and Relationships

This is Steven Petrick Posting.

One of the problems with being around someone for a long time is you run out of stories. One of the reasons you should not marry quickly, as you may find that after both parties have exhausted their stock of stories, one party may not find the other as interesting anymore. One way around that, of course, is to cultivate new stories with your own points of view, i.e., be able to see something the other missed that is interesting.

But when you run out of stories, your relationship begins to exist purely on personality, and personalities without distractions tend to clash (not in all cases, but often enough).

Husbands should not cheat on wives, and wives should not cheat on husbands, but both need to have separate interests and things they do apart so that they both have stories to tell the other (the humorous anecdote about Fred falling off the boat while duck hunting, or George taking a pratfall with a full load of soft drinks at the baseball game, or Marlene's boys bringing home the snake, or Harriet's . . . and so on.

This keeps some interest in the other person.

While I mention marriage, it works for friends and of course gamers. Although gamers have advantages in that if they play the same game they can almost always find something new about a game they both played to talk about.