Livre d'Or

Oh, very glad to hear your thoughts! I'm always a bit conflicted about relationship related navel-gazing, because I do find the mechanics of how relationships work really fascinating, but I can quite see how people might not be interested in me babbling about how I feel about my sweetie. Generally curiosity is fine, it's the nonne questions that bother me, when people aren't really asking, they're already assuming that my relationship must be fraught with problems.

I don't think you're being hostile, though perhaps that's due to your making a concerted effort not to be! I think it's fair that in theory, yes, I would prefer a partner who could be a part of [my] community stuff and commitments. But the point is that the theoretical criteria I might select if you bought relationships from shops and could tick off desired traits to constract an ideally compatible human being, aren't necessarily relevant to the real life situation where someone I felt very positive about asked me out.

You're right that it is a huge part of my life which is unshared, but I am finding that supportive and interested is good enough. I think you speak for me too when you say on balance, we have more shared background than unshared background. Also, I do like explaining; not needing to would be comfortable in one way, but being able to explain reassures me that my Beau is interested in me, and we have good conversations about my weird beliefs and practices.

It's definitely interesting to compare your situation with mine! I mean, you had more family and community pressure to "marry in" (do you guys have that phrase?) than I do, but at the same time you're less attached to that aspect of your heritage than I am. And I doubt that you have the problem of embarrassment over people assuming your husband is in fact from the same background as you!