Living: Personal Life
1 year, 5 months agoThe Right OneHow do you know when you’ve met your life partner?
By Randi Bjornstad
The Register-Guard
Published: Feb 8, 2009 04:42PM
Given that the Internet has plenty of advice on just about every topic, it shouldn’t come as any surprise — especially five days before Valentine’s Day — that cyber-omniscience extends to picking the right mate.
What is a bit surprising, though, is that guys don’t seem to be nearly as concerned with the topic as their feminine counterparts. If you search the subject, you get 29 million sites telling you whether a man’s a “keeper” or not, and fewer than half that tell you if you’re with the right woman.
What’s also interesting is that many of the lists of essential relationship traits are drawn up by men telling women when to run the other way, instead of offering up words of wisdom to their fellow fellows. Maybe those are the most reliable.
In any case, reading through these lists may be more instructive than the vague advice many of us received from our own mothers — “when it’s right, you’ll know it” — but not as sweet as hearing it from the people who have spent decades walking the marital walk, even without the benefit of counsel.
Take the case of Fred and Flora Engle, who celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary last month, without benefit of a list to tell them they were perfect for each other.
“Honey, we didn’t know it — we just thought we were so in love,” Flora Engle says. “When we got married, we didn’t know anything. They train them now.”
Flora and Fred met in Big Spring, Texas, when she was a high school senior and he, a little older, had graduated recently.
“In that town, back then, not everyone had a car,” she recalls. “The football stadium was north of town, so people with cars would drive down Main Street and offer a ride to those who didn’t.
“We didn’t know Fred, but he was with a boy we knew, so we picked them up.”
From then things happened very quickly.
“We got married on Jan. 5, after meeting at the first football game in the fall.”
Because she hadn’t graduated yet, the young couple “ran off and got married” in nearby Odessa. Then she continued to live with her family while he rented a room in another home.
“But then we got mad at each other, and we had to tell it,” she says. After that, her parents remodeled a bedroom in the family home for the newlyweds, complete with lowered ceilings, hardwood floor and a brand-new bedroom set, until the young Mrs. Engle graduated from high school.
She attributes their long marriage to one word: Commitment.
“We’ve had ups and downs, but we’ve lasted,” she says. “We were brought up that when you married, that was it.”
Communication the key
It happened much the same way for Dawna Wieseke, who married her husband, Carl Wieseke, 50 years ago on Jan. 31.
“We met at a restaurant called the Cascade Club,” Dawna Wieseke remembers. “My parents were looking for a restaurant to buy. I had just turned 21, and I went with them.”
Her mother, a cook, had come to this country from Germany, and someone at the restaurant “told us a gentleman happened to be there who spoke German, too.”
An introduction followed. It was Carl, of course. That was in 1958, and that very night, Dawna says she knew he was the man for her.
How?
“My heart fluttered,” she says. She and Carl married in 1959.
Then, of course, came the work of keeping the relationship healthy. Her advice?
“Keep the communication open,” Wieseke says. Then she adds, “I listen to my husband,” but you can tell she’s only partly serious. When they have differences, they have words, followed by a cooling-off period, “and then we talk about it and work it out,” she says. “I can’t believe it’s been this long.”
But if you don’t trust yourself to figure out whether it’s going to work or not, a compendium of other people’s lists might be helpful.
An interesting one comes from relationship writer Nicholas Aretakis, who’s just published a book called “Ditching Mr. Wrong: How to End a Bad Relationship and Find Mr. Right.”
Aretakis warns women that “when guys are on the prowl, they have an uncanny ability to be charming and oh-so-romantic, say all the right things to woo you, and even do things they’ll never do again once you’re together — like cook dinner and bring you flowers.”
Don’t mess around with a guy who hasn’t had at least one serious relationship, and it’s even better if he and his “ex” don’t hate each other, as long as they don’t like each other too much either, he recommends.
Other important attributes you’ll find on a lot of other lists: career goals; close to family; long-term nice friends; willingness to listen; reliability; considerate; and monogamous.
Watch for the subtle clues
Next, listen to what New York writer Lisa Lombardi — she’s written for a bunch of top magazines, among them Marie Claire,Glamour and Cosmopolitan — has to add to that list on lifestyle.msn .com.
Pay attention to how he treats wait staff, taxi drivers and — although not around here — the doorman, because that’s a surefire “good guy alert,” Lombardi says.
Beyond that, if he answers his cell phone incessantly on your date, or talks about how much he pays for everything, or talks about himself all the time and doesn’t stop to find out anything about you, cut and run.
For a real early warning system for the younger set, consider a list put together by Julia Bodeeb on www .associated content.com, who distinguishes between a “playa” — a guy who’s charming only as long as he needs to be to charm his quarry — and a keeper (or maybe that should be a “keepa”).
Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference, Bodeeb says. But “actions often speak louder than words, and the playa’s actions sometimes scream their message loud and clear: I am not to be trusted with your heart!”
So, look for these warning signs:
Joking about wild ways that might not be funny very long.
Having a lot of e-mail and instant messaging addresses.
Calling you only from work, never from home.
Not listening to phone messages in front of you.
Calling you “babe” instead of your name. Forgetting details about you, including your birthday.
Lying a lot, even about little things.
Wanting to be complimented on his appearance all the time.
Making excuses for other people’s infidelities.
Not having close friends.
Even with all that advice, consider some words from the wise, in this case Carol Barrett, who with her husband, Rodney — better known as Johnny — just celebrated anniversary No. 60 on Dec. 17.
“In high school, when I was 16 or 17, I was at the ice cream parlor with a friend, and he came in with one of his friends, and we started talking,” says Barrett, who grew up near Johnny as a small child, so probably had a pretty good idea he was good relationship material.
Although he was five years older than she, “I had always liked him — I just thought he was neat,” she says. “You never know if it’s right or not — you just hope it is.”
They were lucky, based on pearls of wisdom from the side of a Celestial Seasonings tea box, quoted from “Life’s Little Instruction Book” by H. Jackson Brown Jr.:
“Choose your life’s mate carefully. From this one decision will come 90 percent of all your happiness and misery.”
“When we got married, we didn’t know anything. They train them now.”
— Flora Engle, Married 70 years
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