Bring Me My Dinner, Bitch!

The dynamic of the married couple is astounding to me. I watch my senior citizen couples who have been married since the stone age and at first, they seem sweet and gives a spinster like me hope that marriage can work and be wonderful. But then, as time passes by, I realize that these couples who are still married are, in fact, just as a close friend of mine describes every relationship. There is the controller and the controlled. Generally, it seems the woman is the controller, and the man the controlled. But that is because the majority of people in this place are women, and therefore, an accurate study is not possible. The widows all claim that their husbands were saints, wonderful men who took very good care of them. But the couples who are still both alive and together have a different story. The resentment is very apparent in these couples. Imagine being controlled for 60 years of your life by one person. For some people, this relationship could be a parent, but for most it is a spouse. I'm not sure if the controller experiences as much resentment as the controlled, but it is definitely there. I only know three couples, at this point in my life, who seem to have it together right now, although, if I look closer, the signs of inevitable resentment is sprouting in all three. I wonder, if "T" is right? If we had another relationship, he says I would be the controller, even though, I am pretty submissive in general, and so is he, but he claims he would submit to being controlled. I am pretty damn positive that I do not want anything to do with that dynamic. He says that it is just the way things progress when you label a relationship as boyfriend/girlfriend, and then fiancees, and then husband/wife, that as those labels are placed, the relationship turns into the controller/controlled dynamic. Why does a healthy relationship between two people who care for one another have to morph into the less extreme version of master and slave? Is there a way to be with the person you love without letting it evolve into a resentful, drawn out path of unhappiness? The last time I tried, I played the slave role, I was under the control of someone else, and am struggling to find my footing now. I would not be any happier if I were the controller, because I think that a relationship should be an equal partnership of two people who want to be around each other. But no matter how many books I read, and how many hopeful couples I come across, I see the same thing over and over and it makes me want to avoid it all and remain the spinster that I am. Then again, to remain in the same place all the time is to stunt evolution of the human mind, and we can't have that. My goal, aside from finding an apartment that won't suck me dry financially, is to figure out how to make a good thing last, and not let it fall into that pattern of resentment and inevitable disdain for your life partner, and all that unhappy shit. It seems like a grueling task, but I have to try...to be continued...