100 Words, animals, Family, home, pets, Uncategorized

Mutual Support

27 Comments

I am sad to report that on Monday, Husband and I had to take Millie, our Tortie,  to the vet to be put down.  She had been doing quite well with her steroid treatment for lymphoma for the past two months. She took a sudden turn for the worse on the weekend, and we knew it was the end, so we loaded her up and went together to the vet. It was sad, but we are relieved her suffering is over.

Husband said he was really glad we went to the vet together, and that neither of us had to do it alone. Then, he suggested a question for the Trail:

What do you think are essential qualities for a spouse or partner?

27 thoughts on “Mutual Support”

  2. So sorry, Renee (and Chris), that you lost your dear Millie. Glad you were able to buy a little extra time with her, and glad, too, that you were able to relieve her of her misery. I agree with Christ, that last visit to the vet should be a joint one if at all possible, saying that last good bye is just too hard alone.

    I’ll need a cup of coffee before I attempt to answer today’s question.

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      1. Shees. I’ve also noted lately that when I type the word an, very often I end up typing and instead. Don’t know what’s with all of these extra letters.

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  3. So sorry, Renee. Sometimes the last gift our pets offer us is clarity about that terrible decision. It is always difficult, but sometimes there is simply no doubt that the time has come, and that makes it just a little better.

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      1. I do exactly that. Another problem for my old brain is based on my linguistics classes, which I loved 53 years ago. I have retained almost all of my phonology (sound structure) study of English. And a language’s sound system is very structure. English is full of voiced and unvoiced pairs, like g and k, s and z, t and d, p and b. Somehow I sometimes mix up these pairs, so I type things like pake instead of bake.

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  4. Sorry for your loss.
    I should, I suppose, have an answer to this, having been married for 55 years and having been a pastor guiding people through marriages and divorces. I did not do many weddings, maybe about 8. I know 6 of those did not last long. And I saw a lot of very long marriages, 50-72 years. I saw little in common between the failed marriages and between the long term ones. So 1) I thing marriage success is as idiosyncratic as is most other things in life. For instance, respect and sensitivity to the other. In almost all of those marriages the wives were subservient to the husbands, waiting on them some cases when the husbands should have been attending to the wife. They were married in the 20’s. The glaring exception was the Mennonite husband raised, and still of that faith despite attending a Lutheran church. It was a joint marriage in every way. Lots could be said, but I will pass on that. He told me he was guided in his marriage by the teachings of that church and by the many models he saw of marriages. (He was a orphan, passed from home to home, which sounds awful, but he said it was fine. His parents, by the way, died in an epidemic of the 1890’s.)
    2) I will take a shot at one generalization. I think a very important part is beginning the marriage with a true commitment to it, I might say to the marital vows, and sustaining that commitment.

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  6. Rise and Shine Baboons,

    Oh, Renee, so sorry to hear about the kitty, but I am so glad she is not sick anymore. But those decisions make the hardest days ever.

    Tomorrow and Friday I am doing a trauma treatment training, so my day yesterday was packed, as is today. So I am just poking my head in here to express my sympathy, and now I gotta go.

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  7. Sorry for your loss, Renee and Chris. Always harder than you’d expect to lose a pet.

    Essential qualities of a spouse? Hmm. With only 42 married years under my belt and no experience counseling or working with other couples, I can only speak for myself. I got lucky and married my best friend. I think the mutual liking part is often overlooked because the love component is supposed to be so strong. But you have to enjoy just doing stuff with your spouse without thinking of the romantic side of things. We’ve traveled a lot, XC skied, canoed, camped, hiked, gardened, did some remodeling back in the day. We have our separate activities–she quilts, I golf–but we still enjoy each other’s company.

    I’ll add a few more qualities that I appreciate: loyalty, devotion, compassion, understanding, and trust. The last is a tough one for me to earn because my wife is the adult child of an alcoholic and one of the standout features of those kids is the inability/unwillingness to trust anyone. My wife trusts me far more than anyone else, but her level of trust is about 50% of where most people’s levels are.

    Chris in Owatonna

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  8. So sorry about Millie the Tortie, Renee and Chris, that’s harsh. Glad you tried everything you could before letting her go.

    I think having a similar world view is pretty important – you don’t have to agree even about seemingly big things, but if you both believe, say, that the world is either a safe or an unsafe place, that helps. I also think mutual respect is really important, and a willingness to bare your soul, which I suppose involves trust. I remember at one point early on when I realized I could go anywhere with this man.

    And being able to laugh at ourselves is huge.

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  9. Such sad sad news. I’m so sorry. As to the marriage question, I really don’t think I should weigh in. Clearly the two times I tried it I didn’t have the knack.

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  10. I wonder how many marriages would last if they were based on contracts that both partners had to agree to renew, or not, say, every five years? I believe a lot of marriages fail because of complacency.

    That said, we all change over time, and what might have been a satisfying relationship at one time, may no longer be fulfilling twenty years down the road. Guess I don’t think that a marriage that ends in divorce is necessarily a failure. Likewise, I don’t necessarily think that because it has lasted 40 years, it’s a success. My parents remained married to each other until mom died, but I’d be hard pressed to think of their marriage as a happy one.

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  11. My somewhat idiosyncratic view is that each marriage involves three “people”: me, you and us. “Me” and “you” are pretty obvious, but “us” is critical because good marriages depend on two people treating the relationship itself as a priority.

    What seems essential for me is that both halves of a spousal relationship have a healthy commitment for all three: me, you and us.

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  12. HI-
    I’m sorry too Renee. Pets are hard to lose.

    I think one of the biggest things is just to be able to talk. Like Chris said, Marrying your best friend helps. A little bit about semantics there; at first I thought “wife, lover, partner” was a step above ‘best friend’. But whatever it’s called, the meaning is the same.
    Comfort with each other, an intimacy that there isn’t with others and that can be emotional or physical helps.
    Our partner really needs to be someone who supports and encourages us. Or at the very least, is not a negative energy to us.

    People and relationships are so different; each couple has to figure out what works for them.
    I feel like I’ve been very lucky. 30 years for Kelly and I.

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  13. Sorry about the cat I always wonder why we knowingly enter into a relationship that’s going to rip her heart out in 7 to 10 years maybe 15 if we’re lucky but guaranteed to hurt more than anything else for a while good luck with the mending as for marriage whatever you think it is it’s not and you need to be flexible enough to roll with the punches and figure out how to deal with what you got instead of what you thought you were getting and they do too

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