The concept of a LTR is not in itself the "problem" or necessarily the "cause" of the decline as many would like
to believe.
What I see here is that there are certain posters who have never had the experience of a LTR and will pontificate to all
and sundry that the LTR is the "woman's frame". Which is short sighted to say the least. Then there are those who have had
really bad experiences and instead of engaging in self-reflection and health analysis they will look at the aforementioned posters pontificating on their soapboxes and buy into their sermons concluding "yes, it's the fault of the LTR. It can't be me."
There's a quote from Sam Kean that I'm reminded of when certain posters rail on about frame:
"There are two questions a man must ask himself: the first is 'where am I going?' and the second one is 'who will go with me?' If you ever get
these questions in the reverse order, you are in trouble." Sam Kean,
Fire in the Belly: On Being on a Man
In the case of
@Infern0 's friend..........is it the LTR's fault that the man has gone into decline? Is it the LTR's fault that the man
has stopped going to the gym? Is it the LTR's fault that the man is chasing the woman all over town? No. It's his fvcking fault.
You fit women around your life, you don't fit your life around women.
Those that fit there life around women are left like broken shells stranded on a desert island when she decides to sail into
the sunset. For she will if you lose a sense of who you are. Broken with no sense of who you are any more. Damn LTR's really are the frame of the woman. Nah you just gave your ****e up man.
What constitutes if it will be "healthy or not.
Two codependent people entering into a relationship together will not make a healthy dynamic. It may last, it may even appear "successful" to
the outside world, but it will not be healthy. Two people who depend on each other for their emotional needs......eventually one will probably take advantage of the other. This is what happens with unhealthy or undefined boundaries.
One codependent person entering a relationship with and independent person will probably not make a healthy dynamic. The codependent person will probably suck the life out of the independent person and drag them down, or one of them will start taking advantage of the other.
Two independent people.........independent in the sense of they rely on their selves for their emotional needs, would be a healthy dynamic. However, they will need to have the ability to be interdependent if the dynamic is to truly work. A lot of people, possibly from bad experiences go from being codependent. i.e. former nice guys/doormats with no fvkcing boundaries (yes men, don't know how to say no), to the opposite extreme.........bad experiences make them throw the boundary wall so fvcking high that nobody stands a chance of getting in (fearful boundaries ). These are immature boundaries and those that state dogmatically "LTR's are the woman's frame" usually have immature fearful boundaries.....
Remember: The man is an island, the woman is the waves crashing up against you. You cannot fold, you cannot crumble. You cannot ever lose a sense of who you are. If an island crumbles because of the weight of the waves it crumbles and sinks to the bottom of the sea....