Diary

I'm taking a short break from Beethoven for some personal news. If you have been reading my Diary entries recently, you may have noticed signs that cracks have developed in my relationship with my partner. Although I had thought that the relationship was salvageable, it has gradually been collapsing over the last two years or longer. There are several reasons for this, and I won't go into all of them now. The two main ones, from my perspective, are different interests and an absence of psychological concordance. After we moved to Vermont, it became apparent that she prefers to participate in the local garden club and other hobby groups, mostly with rich retirees in the eighty-plus age group. This in itself would not be bad except for the fact that I don't identify with these people, because they represent an earlier generation than mine. Although I don't really identify with the Baby Boomers, they are my generation. Thus, I am somewhat anti-materialistic and like the outdoors, whereas she likes physical possessions and dislikes insects and sweating. She prefers being indoors knitting, cooking, painting pictures or working on interior decoration projects. Also, I am interested in eclectic nonfiction, particularly biographies and science writing, which don't seem to capture her imagination. This leads to the second group of differences, which concerns our psychological profiles. Although she does have intellectual proclivities, she doesn't read as widely as I do and is not as interested in the human psyche as I am. In some ways, that is the main topic of this blog, which she stopped reading some time ago.

The upshot is that she has decided to move to Seattle to be near her younger son and is selling her house here in Middlebury. Since I won't be leaving with her, I am going to attempt to buy a house locally and move into it, which will take some time and effort. This probably won't have much effect on my blog production, though it could slow me down a little. Although I'm not exactly happy with this state of affairs, note that, historically, humans have engaged in serial monogamy, and this particular relationship has already lasted for about two decades. I should also mention that biology is probably at work in situations like this. The theory is that the reason why women continue living after menopause is in order to help others, particularly their living descendants. It is readily apparent that, in this age of mobility, elderly parents tend to move close to their children. In a situation where an aging couple each had children with a different partner, there is less of a biological incentive for them to invest in unrelated offspring. I think that the data would support this theory. As with many similar points I've made, reason may play little role in the decision to end relationships in situations like this.