The Other Half

Not surprising to most, but I happen to be one of the youngest employees in my office and in my industry. I had the opportunity yesterday to go out to lunch with a sales representative, one of his team mates and my own "boss". All of which are 5-15 years old than I am and have also been married 5-15 years longer than I have. Exception: I have been a mom longer than one of them, but, that still makes me "more immature" I suppose in their eyes since it's probably blatently obvious that at least one of my pregnancies was unplanned (which hey, since we're being honest here, it was).

The conversation got on the topic of marriage and being comfortable in  your marriage. Comfortable enough to "not care" what your in-laws think about you. It's been a long time since I genuinely cared what others thought about me. All those cares seem to go out the window at some point in college I suppose, but in truth, I still REALLY care how my in-laws perceive me.

Why is this?

Maybe it's because deep down I know they will never think I'm not good enough for their son? I know I will probably feel that way when our sons bring home "the one" for the first time. I mean, is anyone ever going to be truly good enough for your child? I don't know. I guess I'll find out when the time comes.

Or maybe it's because they do SO MUCH for our family. They give their love, their time, their money and their everything basically into loving us and caring about us.

I like the second option better.

Honestly, I don't ever want to stop caring what my in-laws think of me. Because when I do, or when anyone does stop caring, I can bet that they definitely don't care what their spouse thinks of them anymore... Am I right to have this assumption? I guess I'm in no shape to tell someone else how to live or how to act or how to be, but I just know that I never want to be someone that stops caring about anything or anyone that I marry or marry into.

You can bet if Luke started acting disrespectful toward or disregarding manners and basic courtesy toward anyone in my family he would hear about it. Pretty sure I'm expected to show the same towards him and his family...

But - yesterday when I voiced this I was perceived as "you're just not there yet". Well, newsflash for ya'll - I hope I never get "there". Because "there" didn't look like it was was a very good destination to be.

Oh, life - how you continue to teach me and show me new things that I don't always want to know or see....