Rob, Rambling - A lot of things interest me...

New favourite word: “sinlaws”.

As defined by Urban Dictionary: “The parents of your live-in boyfriend/girlfriend.”

I always find it too long to say “the girlfriend’s parents”, and I don’t quite feel comfortable with “the inlaws” just yet, so “sinlaws” is just perfect for my situation.

(This post brought to you in conjunction with quotation marks…)

Is having fights a sign of being in a more mature, longer term relationship? The girlfriend and I seem to have had more arguments in the last two months than the previous two years, although they’re still very few and far between.

We seem to end up having arguments about the bigger things in life: where we’re heading; marriage; religion; our future; etc. Thankfully, we don’t argue about minor, trivial things, which I guess is a good sign.

I just struggle to talk about the deeper things, I guess. I enjoy living life day to day, and figure that if today was great then tomorrow will be better. And that’s how I feel about our relationship too: I enjoy each day more than the last, because things aren’t necessarily changing.

It’s when we talk about the future, the changes that something like marriage will bring, that I find myself not wanting these changes. I’m comfortable with how it is, I really am, and I don’t feel the need to introduce unnecessary changes to anything.

Call it comfort, call it fear, call it what you will, but it’s how I am. I like my life right now, I really do, and I don’t see why it has to change.

And, with a nod to the whole theory of the act of merely observing something changing it, when we begin to talk about changes, then the relationship itself changes too. I’ve felt more uncomfortable recently than I have done previously, purely because we’ve started talking about these things.

It’s not that I don’t want to get married, have kids, and do all that. It’s that I feel I’ll just know when the time is right to do those things. I don’t want a time-frame, or pressure to do certain things by a certain time. I’ll do it when I’m good and ready, really.

She wants reassurance from me that I’m in this for the long term, and that I’m not going to just decide one day that it’s not working. I can see it from her perspective, I can, but I struggle to see how I can provide absolute reassurance when I simply don’t know myself.

I love this girl, and never want to let her go, but I find it incredibly difficult to adjust myself to doing/saying exactly what she wants. She’s been in long-term relationships before; I haven’t. I’m still learning it all as I go, and probably fucking it up a lot. One previous girlfriend used to call me (only half-jokingly) a terrible boyfriend.

I think we cleared things up last night, but who knows.

So, it’s Valentine’s Day on Sunday, and I’m wondering what to do with the girlfriend. We’re going to be getting back to London around 2.30 in the afternoon from my parents’ house, giving us the whole afternoon and evening.

I don’t particularly want to go out to dinner and get absolutely fleeced in a restaurant, so am trying to think of something a bit different.

My current idea (if the weather’s ok) is London Zoo, which I think will be quite fun. We don’t really make enough of all that London offers as it is, so this would be a good chance to do that. I’m a kid at heart, and so’s she, so wandering around looking at animals could be a good laugh.

Any other ideas?

lapetitefigue asked: Sorry to be so impertinent; you don't have to answer ... but you? Girlfriend? Ring? Yes? Ever? You just say such sweet things about her.

Well, this is definitely the most difficult question that I’ve been asked so far… I don’t really know how to begin to answer this, to be honest. I saw that you asked me this on formspring a few weeks ago, and it’s taken me this long to formulate an answer.

It’s something that’s been running through my head the last few months, courtesy of a lot of friends getting engaged (I’ve got 4 weddings to go to this year!), but the girlfriend and I have kind of skirted around the subject, to be honest.

We’ve discussed the future in an abstract manner, talking in ideals about kids and how to bring them up, but details are completely off the menu for the time being. I’m not reading any pressure from her to hurry things along.

I really love where we are right now, relationship-wise, and I’m more than happy for it to continue that way, day by day. I’m pretty sure that she feels the same way too.

I don’t feel the need to change things, to be honest. Marriage isn’t necessarily the be all and end all of a relationship. I appreciate the legal reasons for getting married, but I don’t think that it proves your love to get married. Odd way of phrasing it, but you know what I mean.

And it’s not like I’m scarred by divorces in my life, or have a fear of marriage. My parents are coming up to 35 years of married life, and all of my close family are in long marriages. I know that marriages work. I just don’t know that it’s for me.

I want to be with this woman for the rest of my life, but I’d rather prove that each and every day with actions and words, rather than a piece of sparkly carbon or a bit of paper with some signatures on it.

Ask me anything.

Also, the family bucket of KFC the other night was probably a subconscious recognition on the part of the girlfriend that we are basically a family now.

Or maybe that is a bit too deep and she was in fact just pissed.

I feel like I’ve just taken a fairly big step, relationship-wise.

It’s my mum’s birthday this Sunday, and I just wrote her card to pop in the postbox later today. But this is the first time that I’ve ever signed a card for anyone in my family from me and someone else.

I’ve never been this deep into a relationship, this long with another person, and definitely have never lived with someone like this before. We really are a couple nowadays, rather than two individuals, and I have to say that I love it.

Yes, signing her name on a card to my mum isn’t really a big thing, but it feels like another step forwards for me/us.

Man, I am so loved up. It’s really quite sad/amusing.