Life and A Stable Relationship?!

I have had 3 relationships in my life that lasted greater than a year, with many, many much shorter relationships in between.

My first long-term partner was amazing, at the time, and we maintained a friendship for a decade after our breakup. Despite the truly amazing quality of that relationship, I was never high on anyone's list of most likely to be happily married. 

My current relationship is coming up on nine years. Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined I would be someone who would get this kind of relationship. We are absolutely built on the foundation of a friendship, though we've vascilated between being mostly romantic and mostly platonic as long as we've known one another, and I don't think it would've worked out any other way. 

When one of us is sick, or injured, or just going through something difficult, that friendship we have is what saves us, and I'm so, so grateful for it. 

Our relationship has survived things that most relationships cannot. We have survived losing more than half of our income, we have survived a life-changing injury, we have survived disabilities and major family conflicts, as well as others attempting to break and injure and end our bond. We have buried more than one loved one nearly every year. 

I'm really grateful and astonished that I get to experience this. I did not have many good examples of healthy relationships when I was a child- to the best of my knowledge, neither of my biological parents ever had a healthy relationship in their entire lives. Despite this, and partially because of it, I've been in therapy for the better part of my entire life, and done a tremendous amount of work on myself. I would like to credit all that hard work with my ability to sustain and support this relationship, but I'm not sure it's possible to really know for sure. 

In a petty way, it's kind of comical looking back at at least one of the people who tried to come between us. I am, very firmly, of the opinion that they thought they deserved the life I have built more than I do/did, and truly believed they could walk into my home, my relationship, my life and take it from me. To my eyes, they spent years trying to build a wedge between us, to make my partner pass judgment on me, and never for one second did they succeed. After literal years of attacking my character to my partner, they then reached out directly to me for the first time in years, requesting access to me and a relationship with me. I'm sure that had something to do with the significant difference between my income level and theirs, and the holiday we had provided for their child. It's kind of bizarre in retrospect that someone could disparage me, disrespect me, my relationship, my home and my relationship with them to the extent that this person did, and still believe they had any right to even suggest that they could/should have a role in my life, however small. I'm more than a little disgusted by this person, and by whatever lack of boundaries I once had that made them think any of this was acceptable. 

And, yet, years later, I still have this beautiful life, home, relationship, family that they believed could simply be taken out of my hands and into theirs, and I'm so grateful for all the work I have done to make this life I have so fully

my own.