{"id":1323,"date":"2016-01-21T11:24:32","date_gmt":"2016-01-21T11:24:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/therelationshipdeal.com\/?p=1323"},"modified":"2016-01-21T11:24:32","modified_gmt":"2016-01-21T11:24:32","slug":"out-with-the-new-in-with-the-old","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therelationshipdeal.com\/wp\/2016\/01\/21\/out-with-the-new-in-with-the-old\/","title":{"rendered":"Out With The New, In With The Old"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"All<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the benefits of sleeping alone this week as John worked in Ottawa was bringing my laptop into bed, and firing up Netflix <\/em>without any protest. I settled on All About Eve<\/em> a 1950 film with Bette Davis.<\/p>\n

I loved this smart retro chick-flick. My favourite character was Karen, the Radcliffe educated wife of America\u2019s most famous playwright. Karen suspects a young promising actress, Eve, is maneuvering to win her husband Lloyd\u2019s heart. Ironic, given that it was Karen who had taken the young Eve under her wing, and opened big doors for her\u2014even helping her land the lead role in her eminent husband\u2019s play.<\/p>\n

As Karen lies awake one night, staring at the ceiling, she sighs heavily:<\/p>\n

It\u2019s seemed to me I had known always it would happen and here it was. I felt helpless. That helpless you feel when you have no talent to offer outside of loving your husband. How could I compete? Everything Lloyd loved about me he had gotten used to long ago.<\/em><\/p>\n

The last sentence zapped me like a lightening bolt.<\/p>\n

After decades of being a couple, what \u201cnew\u201d is there left to discover, to fall in love with all over again? Those heady days of mystery have faded into black, and we become known commodities, as familiar to our partners as the back of their hands. My husband recently handed me a copy of the New Yorker<\/em>, \u201cHere, you\u2019ll get a kick out of this cartoon,\u201d he said. The cartoon was of a middle-aged couple sitting a safe distance from each other in their living room, staring blankly. The caption read, \u201c100% Recycled Conversation\u201d.<\/p>\n

How can the fictitious Karen, and the very real \u201cus\u201d compete with someone like Eve, who offers our partner something fresh, something that they have not \u201cgotten used to long ago\u201d? Should we even bother to try?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not one for competition. I don\u2019t have a killer instinct And, I don\u2019t want to win at all costs. But mostly, I don\u2019t like to compare myself to other women, and viewing them as my adversaries. Karen asks herself, \u201cHow could I compete?\u201d Is this the right question? After all, she\u2019s well educated, kind, loving, unwaveringly devoted. Isn\u2019t this enough?<\/p>\n

Why is \u201cnew\u201d often considered better than \u201cold\u201d? What\u2019s wrong with \u201crecycled conversation\u201d\u2014making each other laugh with inside jokes that were co-scripted long ago; finding comfort and stability in the familiar; continuing to appreciate the qualities that drew us to our partners in the first place?<\/p>\n

\u201cRetro\u201d has become the fashion in clothes, music and furniture. Shouldn\u2019t it be fashionable in love too?<\/p>\n

Photo credit:Flickr\/bswise<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the benefits of sleeping alone this week as John worked in Ottawa was bringing my laptop into bed, and firing up Netflix without any protest. I settled on All About Eve a 1950 film with Bette Davis. I loved this smart retro chick-flick….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,8],"tags":[44,18],"class_list":["post-1323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-marriage","tag-boredom","tag-marriage-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3B2G4-ll","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therelationshipdeal.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therelationshipdeal.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therelationshipdeal.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therelationshipdeal.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therelationshipdeal.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1323"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/therelationshipdeal.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1348,"href":"https:\/\/therelationshipdeal.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1323\/revisions\/1348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therelationshipdeal.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therelationshipdeal.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therelationshipdeal.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}