The mods removed this post yesterday shortly after I posted it. The community was giving some really great and helpful advice, so I’m posting again with a “ThrowRA” username. Hopefully it won’t be deleted this time!
I (30M) got married to my dream girl (30F) last year. We’ve been together for 7 years and I’m more in love with her than I ever imagined possible. She’s smart, fun, hilarious, successful, beautiful, energetic, charismatic, defies stereotypes, and generally is just an extraordinary human being and a joy to be around.
Anyway, sometimes when I think about our relationship, or when I’m still awake and I see she’s sleeping peacefully (she’s adorable and I just melt), I feel a strange sadness. Almost a quiet and gentle mourning of the transitory nature of things—because I know these beautiful moments and this precious time is slipping by and there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it. It’s like a recognition that all things are temporary, which makes these priceless moments feel so sad.
I feel like the more precious the moment, and the more I try to be present in it, the more likely this tinge of quiet sadness is to appear. Because I know that it is just a moment and, as is the nature of moments, it will slip into the past.
Is this normal? How do you cope with these feelings?
PS – Thank you so much to everyone who was commenting yesterday before the post was deleted. I read every single one of your comments and they were all so helpful. In an ironic twist, all of your great comments were lost (see what I mean about the transitory nature of things) when the mods deleted this post.
I think what you’re feeling is melancholia. You regret the passage of time. Do you know what might help? Avoid pressuring yourself to be present, you are naturally mindful, the memories are getting created. Don’t make yourself be there in the moment because you are in it!
Hey, if it helps at all: My wife and I have been married for ~17 years. I know what you mean, about the sadness that comes with the transitory nature of things (oh, man, if you don’t have kids yet, just wait for that heartsqueeze). But also, it keeps being beautiful; there are new lovely things you never expected, and that shit just grows and grows and grows.
Sink into the pretty moments, the warm moments, the contented moments. Let them be like water, that just closes over you.
This next thing will sound corny as hell, but I was just reading this book to my little daughter–a book I’ve read a ton of times, when I was little–and I was brought to tears by how goddamned true it is:
++++
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
++++
(FULL DISCLOSURE: I’ve struggled with anxiety and depression for a long time; these feelings of melancholia or ennui are different than that, but my tools for sitting with them are the same.)
I’ve actually felt the same way in multiple aspects of my life. I feel like I can’t enjoy the happiness because I always have this nagging thought in the back of my mind that literally anything at any moment can take away that happiness in an instant. ?
I experience something like this, too. Sometimes when I look at my SO I just cry because I love them so much. It’s a really weird thing.
This is very tender and sweet, first of all. These feelings are normal! It is normal to grieve the passage of time and the idea that these moments will not last forever. I would just take care not to associate sadness with these small moments. Just speaking from personal experience, I would encourage you to reflect on these feelings, and if they give you any extreme distress, don’t be afraid to speak to someone about it. There is a difference between feeling melancholy now and then and the anxious fear of losing these moments forever to time/space/life changes. Enjoy your life with your wonderful wife, and take these moments to have thoughts of gratitude rather than sit in fear or sadness.