Lou, I'd like to pose a serious question for your consideration...
Suppose YOU are just a nit-picky person and no matter who you were married to, you would find fault with their way of doing things and always want to fix and correct them?
I'm NOT whacking you with a 2X4... really... I'm just asking you to consider the possibility that you would be you no matter who you were married to.
In my own case, I find that I keep having the same relationship issues even though over the last 30+ years, I've been in a marriage, a live-in, a long-term non live-in, another marriage, and now a another long-term. You've spent those 30+ years with BB, so you don't know how you might have been with a series of other partners.
But just SUPPOSE, for purposes of self-introspection, that you had been in a series of relationships like I have, and SUPPOSE that in each one of them, your partner paid a lot of attention to pets, complained about your junk, was a picky eater, didn't have many friends... or maybe had other faults that annoyed you, like bought lots of clothes, let food get old and spoiled in the refrigerator, insisted on keeping the bedroom at 80+ degrees every night.
Putting aside the issue of sex for the moment (because you might be thinking, "If I was getting boinked every night, I wouldn't care about her other obnoxious qualities." Hmmm.. maybe or maybe not.)
But just WHAT IF it's YOU! What if YOU would be Mr. Fix-It with any partner, not just BB? What if you are the kind of guy who just HAS to fix people? The way you want to hang onto old equipment and fit IT?
If you can get past the sheer annoyance of such a thought (and the sheer audacity of me for asking the question), do you see how liberating this might be?
If it's YOU who's picky, and not so much a matter of the PARTNER having irritating traits/personality quirks, do you see how that puts ALL the power in your hands and how it matters NOT ONE BIT whether your partner ever responds to your suggestions for improvement?
If it's ALL you, and you would be the same with ANY woman, then you can make the decision to STOP right now! If you left BB and in a year or so found yourself with another woman (and I'm ABSOLUTELY 100% POSITIVE that you would, not only because you are a nice guy, but because at our ages a single guy is vastly outnumbered by single women), you would probably be bugged by the way she likes her eggs, or the tv programs she wants to watch, or the way she likes you to dress...
Having had multiple partners, I can tell you that they ALL bug you in one way or another. Nobody doesn't bug you somehow. (And Nobody Doesn't Like Sara Lee!)
What do you think? Can you wrap your mind around this possibility without wanting to whack ME with a large feather pillow?
