Quote:
Originally Posted by Narona
I was secretly expecting you to share some of your feelings and experience on this topic since, if I'm not mistaken, you're in love with the same woman for a long time now 
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She-who-is-small-and-cute-and-must-be-obeyed and I are very different people than we were in our late teens -- I'd have to say we've refallen in love several times and even rather rebooted our relationship. The most challenging part over the years has simply been accepting each other for the way we are. We don't have the same interests but we have overlapping interests, we don't have the same friends but our friends overlap.
I've no illusions that there are such things as "soul mates" - staying connected takes daily work and conversation. I've probably met at least a half dozen people in my life I could easily have spent "the rest of my life with" and in a few cases the feeling was mutual but we both already had commitments so ... we're all just good friends and thats as far as it goes.
Probably our biggest 'quality time" challenge recently is that I've completely dropped American network television in the last 4 or 5 years - I loathe it and think most of it is toxic. I'll try to watch it with her and I find the characters in a show appealing but after 10 "serial killer pedo rape slash" episodes in a week (worse on ratings evaluation "sweeps" weeks) I'm just done with it. We watch public broadcasting/news/documentaries together and we'll watch rented movies together but otherwise I'm out of the room (she has a knitting hobby she does while she watches her crime shows). She'll watch the anime I suggest as long as I filter the "crap" out so she only has to watch the "Vexx recommends" items and I've figured out what she likes.
Otherwise, we just try to make an effort to do things we both like: travel, festivals, artshows, parks, conventions, go to the athletic club, etc. Physical contact really helps even if it is just curling up on the couch and her falling asleep 10 minutes after the movie starts.
We also make sure we take time and do things that *don't* involve each other. This summer makes our 30th of our legal bond (our anniversary is on Bastille Day, we perversely thought that appropriate for our somewhat Taiga-Ryuuji or Hazuki-Kaoru relationship) and the 34th since dating fairly monogamously.
All this applies to general friendship as well (okay, not the sex part o.O) -- I have friends that I developed in the 1980s at NASA that I still keep in email contact with and anytime one is in the same region as the other we'll get together. People come up for Thanksgiving - I have one friend I've known since the 4th grade who visits from Texas then. Games, movies, pubs, etc ensue. I also have friends of widely varying ages (late teens, 20-something, etc) - frankly, outside of my NASA and hi-tech buddies a great many of my age-peers are mud bumps. Attending parent meetings when sons were in K-12 was almost as depressing as an AOL chatroom as far as knowledge or IQ. Granted that is true of any age group, but if you want people with a clue, don't restrict whom you befriend by age.