WHAT ARE YOU MOST AFRAID OF?

What are you most afraid of? This challenging question was posed by authorblog: Weekend Wandering.

I guess my long-term fear is the fear of being alone. This is not uncommon and leads to many compromises that are not always of benefit. But….. I know many people that are totally uncompromising and that is sometimes even more harmful.

I know that this is a mad example, but one of the things that I love is to socialise and eat out - OG hates it and refuses to give in. I could bang on about this and it could become a real contentious issue but there are many things that we have in common that we DO enjoy.

So is my fear of being alone causing me to compromise on something that I love? I don’t think so, I simply go on “Orient Express” trips without him, enjoy long summers in Switzerland, go out to lunch with my crazy mate on Saturday and generally have a good laugh. Now if he objected to me doing that, that would be a different thing altogether. Then I would have to ask myself if I was compromising too much.

I know people that would let this become a BIG ISSUE, much like – “if you loved me you wouldn’t play football”, “if you loved me you would pay me more attention” etc. I know that I'm going off on a bit of a tangent here, but my dad loved football and my mum hated it. On the day of the cup final he would get a bottle of pop and some chocolate and sit and watch it through from midday to finish. Every year she made a "statement" by doing the ironing in another room! The sad thing was that after he died she started watching the cup final too and I ofter wondered if she ever regretted not sharing his passion with him because he absolutely adored her and it would have made him so happy.

Surely you should (and I paraphrase that great JFK quote) ask not what your partner can do for you, instead ask what you can do for your partner - provided you keep your core person intact and don't become a doormat. No-one gets it entirely correct, but I try to give it my best shot.

I also know people who would rather live alone than make the "sacrifice" of living with someone that might have different goals and make demands on them, but who do they share the evening sunset with? Who is at their side when the going gets tough? Who do they laugh at daft things with?

I think the important thing is not to be so scared of being alone that you compromise to the point of losing your own personality. Here endeth the first lesson.