As a stone-age person on Lemmy (47) allow me a response please.

First of all, I agree with you. Spent my 20s going through the motions thinking “maybe I just won’t meet someone I can bear to be with in the long term”.

And then I met her.

But in some respects she also met me at the right time. My assumptions about what I needed to help fix changed. My way of talking to women about their day, their challenges, their ambitions slowly morphed. So I don’t know if “she was perfect for me” or I had finally learnt how the differences between biological males and biological females drove how we communicated, what we needed and expected from each other, allowed me to finally commit to a long term relationship. We’ve been together for 17 years, married for 15. She drives me mad at times, and most days she wants to strangle me slowly, but despite all those small details, we also make each other laugh till we can’t breathe, we agree on almost everything (probably why the small disagreements become so “important”), we manage to parent four kids relatively well and when we finally find the time to have a day by ourselves, I am reminded why I fell in love with her.

I guess I’m trying to tell you that it might still happen to you too.

I'm only a few years older than you, but I agree. And I'll also say that some (respectful) criticism at home is ok, and if I'm honest, should be expected.

We're all not perfect and can't expect to get nothing but praise or adoration from our partners, nor should it be expected of us. But all criticism should come from a place of love and respect; it's not your partner against you about a problem, it's you and your partner against a problem.

Healthy relationships require hard conversations like that, but no one deserves to be in a relationship where they can't feel comfortable to be themselves without being attacked for it (with some obvious exceptions).