In the past I have probably had six or 7 serious relationships with both women and men. When I was in those relationships nobody ever asked me what I had in common with them. Now that I am in an age gap relationship it seems to be the question that people love to ask. I am never quite sure what they are asking. Do they want to know if we both like baseball?
I would never ask a gay couple, a straight couple, a couple with different nationalities etc. what they had in common with the person they were seeing. First of all I don’t think it is any of my business even when they are my friends and second of all I would assume they just loved each other. As far as I’m concerned that is the only thing that matters. People seem to think it crazy that Aaron and I could possibly have anything in common with each other.
What do they want to hear. Before we married all I knew was that I had never loved anyone so much. I always hoped and I risk sounding corny, but shouldn’t love be enough. Isn’t that just about the most you can have in common with someone? Sharing a love of one another and wanting to be with that person because you enjoy their company so much.
I think it is wise to know that you and your future partner have certain wants, desires and values in common before you marry. I know that Aaron and I did not want to have children. I know that neither one of us were deeply religious and that our different religions or nationalities would not cause us any difficulties. I felt that growing up we were brought up with similar values towards family, money and right and wrong. In this sense I certainly believe the more you have in common the easier it will be for 2 people in love to navigate their life together. I don’t believe this is what people are asking.
I realize people are people are probably only interested because it is something they haven’t seen before or that often. The funny thing is we are just like everyone else. As I said above, more than anything we love each other’s company and being with each other. If we wanted to get more specific the list could go on and on. We love to travel, we love adventures, we love food, we love to hike. Most importantly though if one person loves something that the other doesn’t we love to see the other person loving it. Aaron loves soccer and because of his love for it I have been learning about it through him. If he were playing I would love nothing more than to be there rooting for him. I love to swim and if I were competing I am sure he would love to watch. Needless to say our love one another is all we need to have in common and that makes us enjoy the others persons interest whether we take part or not. We love to see the other person enjoying themselves.
I realize people are only asking out of curiosity If they only got to know us they would see how much we have in common. They would see our hidden glances or our eyes roll when we hear something we find stupid. They would see us laughing at the same things or each other jokes. They would hear us raving about how much we enjoyed or disliked something. If people did not think we had enough in common they would only see us having more in common as each day goes on, We are now sharing two families and becoming friends with the other one's friends and sharing countless adventures together.
When I was a little kid if my mother caught me staring at maybe a little kid with a birth deformity or someone in a wheelchair she would always give me a small whack and say stop staring it’s not polite. Later when I grew up I, before I came out I would sit and watch someone I thought was gay and think is that going to be me or is that who I am. I was scared and probably a bit prejudiced. Unfortunately I never tried to get to know them.
I have since learned not to close myself off from people different than me. There are so many different types of people in the world making everything so much more interesting, gay, straight, lesbian, trans, bisexual. People of different races, cultures , religions. If more of us, including myself only took the time to get to know one another we would see we are all so similar and probably have more in common with most people than we ever dreamed. The more we embrace our differences the more exciting our worlds become.
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