Meet the Greens

Today is about the greens and an insight into their over three decades of marital bliss.

Rosalind Louise Green is a social media friend, and we belonged to a group of common interest, the ‘Read and Write Community’ by author and motivational speaker, Lisa Nichols, now (Lisa Nichols Community Connect).

Recently however, she and Ronnie Green (her hubby) celebrated their 34 years of a blissful union and I could not help but have a scheduled interview.

Oh well, I was able to do that with the wife, so excerpts;

Titipetral: “How did you two meet?“

Mrs Rosalind Green: “My husband and I met at church. It was during a time that I was one thousand percent not looking for anything close to a relationship because I had just gotten out of one that I knew was not good for me. I had just made a decision to totally sell out to God and recommit everything within me to Him. So, even though I had little heart flutters when I first saw Ron, I did everything I could to ignore them. And him, I’d secretly wanted to meet Ron, and had no idea that secretly he had wanted to meet me too. So, it seems that it was the same on both sides.”

“We finally met ‘officially’ while we were both signing up for the church bowling team. I’d been trying to kind of stay away from him for a few months so I could stay focused on “why I was really there.” LOL This particular Sunday after church at the sign-up table, I turned around and he was just standing there right in front of me. He put his hand out to shake mine and said;”

“Hi, my name is Ron. I’ve been wanting to meet you.”

“You could have blown me over with a baby’s breath. I was so excited that when he asked me for my number, I forgot to give it to him.Oddly… when the day came for bowling that week, nobody showed up but him and the guy he rode with and me and my girlfriend. Since nobody else showed up, we just sat and talked, then exchanged numbers, and the rest is history. We’ve talked practically every day from that day to this day. Pretty ironic that out of everybody who signed up, nobody else showed up. Talk about one of those God things… lol”

Titipetral: “Was it love at first sight?”

Mrs Rosalind Green: “I honestly never believed in love at first sight, but when I think about what I felt the first time we locked eyes, I became a believer. The first time I walked into the church, Ron was playing base with the praise team and I was just visiting. I remember that he stood out to me in a major way. It was almost hard to focus on anything else. I think that’s why I ran away from it so hard at the beginning. I was really serious about being there for God, because I had somewhat disconnected from church for a while. I never recognized that God might have been trying to do something here. In my mind, if I focused on this guy;“

“I wasn’t being spiritual.” Go figure. But, I honestly couldn’t help it. Of course, now I know why. So, yes… I’d say this is as close to love at first sight as I’ve ever known.“

Titipetral: “In these times of premature marriage lifespan amongst partners the world over, how have you and partner been able to keep the flame going for 34 years?”

Mrs Rosalind Green: “This is a real hard question for me to answer simply because we’ve never really done a lot of extra things to keep our flame going. I know that may be boring, but that’s who we are. I think one thing is that we met when we were both 30 and we married at almost 33. We were both in a very mature place in our lives. I had been married and divorced, raising a daughter alone, and he had never been married and had no children. I think we both were in a place where it wasn’t all about the “fireworks and giddy feelings” although we did have plenty of those. We were already firm about our relationship with God, both career minded, and solid in other areas of our lives. I didn’t need him to complete me, and he didn’t need me to complete him. Neither of us had a lot of “baggage” and everything we bought to the table was an asset to what we both already had.“

“In other words, we didn’t really need each other to fulfill anything in us. We were together because we just loved being around each other and knew that we wanted each other in our lives for the long haul. Our love is kind of like just happy knowing that the other person is there. For both of us, our home is our happy place, and we don’t necessarily have to be doing a lot of things, going a lot of places, spending a lot of money, or even having a lot of sex. Even though we have plenty of all of those, we’re also good when we’re just together with whatever we might be doing, even when it’s nothing.”

“I think because our relationship was not built on bells and whistles, but on a somewhat more mature love, we don’t need a lot of that to keep our sparks flying. Here’s one thing that’s part of that being complete within yourself. We have your own interests separate from each other as well as interests that we share. I feel that this gives us the best of all worlds, and I think that may be a big part of our “spark.” It’s kind of like you have yours, I have mine, and we have ours together. Sometimes I participate with him in his, sometimes he participates with me in mine, and we always participate in what we share together. That works beautifully for us and we’re never unfulfilled or depending on the other person to keep us happy; even though we do make each other happy. I hope that makes sense to you because it makes perfect sense to me. lol

Titipetral: “Oh yes, it does.(lol) And has there been any time you got tired and just wanted out? If yes, what kept you going?”

Mrs Rosalind Green: “This question is one of the reasons I never counsel with couples when I’m asked. I believe that what Ron and I have is quite unique. In our almost 35 years of marriage, we’ve never separated and neither has anything remotely to that even come up. When we say to people that we don’t argue, most people will respond with“

“every couple argues, so you gotta be lying.”

“I hate to disappoint you who think that, but who says you must argue just because you’re married? Do we always see eye-to-eye? Absolutely not.”

“Do we fuss and fight about it when we don’t see eye-to-eye? Absolutely not.”

“I’ve heard that a good argument is good for a relationship. It may well be, however, we both come from families that didn’t argue or raise their voices to get a point across. So, that’s not a normal thing for us. We’re just living out how we grew up. I don’t knock or look down on people who do argue at all. I’ve been in relationships where there has been a little arguing and I can’t say that there was ever anything good or better about it. I guess you can chalk it up to our personalities. We’re just not argumentative people.”

“Have we ever gotten on each other’s nerves? Absolutely. How do we handle it? We say what we need to say about whatever the situation is and move on. We communicate. So, he knows how I feel about things, and I know how he feels. We know we don’t always agree, and we’re okay with that. In those very rare occasions where we’ve had words, I’ll go to my office, and he’ll go to his studio (both in the home) and we’ll come back to a good place, which usually happens within the hour. No going to bed mad or threatening to leave or anything close to that. We never drag anything out for days. That’s unhealthy in every way and who wants to feel bad for days at a time?”

“Side story: One time, in the first year of our marriage, he did say to me;

“If you’re going to do that, I’m going to leave.”

“I looked him straight in the eye and said”

“I don’t play with that kind of talk (because of my past experiences which is another story.) Never say to me that you’re going to leave, unless you mean it because once you do, there’s no coming back.”

“He never said it again in almost 35 years. One time I made a “yo momma” joke to him. It was something I’d done all the time in a previous relationship. I thought it was funny and endearing. He looked at me and said“

“I don’t play like that when it comes to my mother, so don’t ever say that again.”

“I never said it again in almost 35 years. So, I guess my point is, communication goes a long way. You have to let your partner know what you will and won’t tolerate. You bend a little here and there and together, you find that happy medium where you’re both good.“

Titipetral: “What advice do you have for young people who though want a life like your, but haven’t been able to?”

Mrs Rosalind Green: “In my personal story, I found my husband, or I like to say that he found me… when I was least looking. Could that be a clue? I don’t know, but it’s where I was, and I don’t think he was looking either. But, don’t get me wrong. I firmly believe that you have to put yourself in a position to be found. You’ll never meet anyone if you always stay to yourself.My advice to young women is never, ever, never chase a man. If he wants you, he will not do things that could put him in the position of losing you or not having you at all. If he is careless enough with you that there’s a chance that someone else could come and swoop you away, then he’s not serious, or doesn’t want you bad enough. If he doesn’t call, doesn’t take you out, doesn’t pay you enough attention now, that won’t change just because you marry him.”

“Don’t always look for perfection. Tall, dark and handsome isn’t always what it’s chalked up to be. Yes, you want to be attracted to him… by all means. However, there may be some areas where things aren’t exactly what you want. And it goes without saying… if he has ever, ever lifted a hand to you, even if he didn’t touch you, it’s over before if it starts? sigh!! another point.” Your guy may not have everything in place when you first met him, that’s usually a sign to say, but no thanks and keep moving. But, when I met Ron, he didn’t have his own place and drove a beat-up old, and I mean old truck and his work was a musician.”

“I had my own place, an okay car, and a great job. By society’s standards, I was doing better than him. However, It wasn’t long before he was making way more money than me (and I wasn’t doing too bad) and we bought our first home and first new car together and that wasn’t because of me. If you want certain things in life, just make sure that you’re both on the same page about what you want, and that he’s not lazy. He needs to have the wherewithal to take some action towards what he says he wants. As they say… put your money where your mouth is. If he’s all talk and does absolutely nothing, that’s a red flag.”

“Ron wouldn’t ‘officially’ ask me to marry him until he had a career, not just a job. His words…“

“I can’t take care of a family as a part-time musician.”

“He went to school to learn IT, graduated #1 in his class, and proposed the day he got his diploma (which also came with his first IT job.) Now, that’s what I call taking action. Who wouldn’t marry a man like that!! 😊 When it comes to my advice for the men, I can’t really speak from that point of view because I’m a woman. But if I had a son, I would tell him to please ignore the glitz and glam.”

“Yes, you want a pretty wife with a banging body and there’s nothing wrong with that. You certainly want to be attracted to her but, what is her heart like? Who is she inside? You might call this a little old fogie, but… what can I say? It’s real.”

“The outside will fade over time. What will you be left with then? Who she is as a person is what matters most. I’d tell my son to think with his heart first, his brain second, and the sexual stuff last. Not to say that it’s not important. Believe me. It is, especially for men… I guess. But if you lead with that, you may end up very disappointed. Believe me… looks fade. Ron and I look very different now than when we first met and married, and it doesn’t matter to us at all. Another unique thing about us is that we did not consummate our marriage until our honeymoon night. I’m not going to say we didn’t have some sessions of what the older folks used to call heavy petting, but we both said that we wanted to be virgins to each other until we were married, so that’s what we did, for 2 1/2 years.”

“Neither of us were virgins, but we were to each other until we married. I know that hardly anybody believes in waiting today, but it’s one of the reasons I believe that we totally trust each other to this day when it comes to the opposite sex. We didn’t cheat with each other when we were both single, hot and bothered, so it’s not something that we concern ourselves with now. That dedication to God and each other helped to build the kind of trust between us that I have never, ever experienced in life. I am never concerned about the possibility of him being unfaithful and it’s the same for him. I couldn’t be in a relationship where I had to check a cell phone every time it rings or ask 99 questions about what he’s doing whenever he’s out of my sight. That’s crazy to me.”

“So, I guess my biggest advice for those who are waiting would be to always be working on you. Get yourself to a place where you are happy as a single person first. When you’re complete on your own, when your person does show up, you won’t NEED them. You’ll WANT them and that’s a huge difference.”

“Lastly, but most importantly, always put God first. And when you do, find your person and choose to marry, be sure to keep God first. Before we were married, I watched Ron put God before me at a time when we were both weak in our flesh. I will admit that I might have faltered. I was ready to. Ron’s exact words were “I love God too much for this.” That’s when I knew without a doubt that he was the one. God first, family second, careers and everything else third. That’s how we live our lives and that’s what continues to keep our marriage strong. We’re both in our 60’s now and we’re married going on 35 years and counting and I wouldn’t trade any part of it for the world.”

Titipetral: This, I’d call, DIVINE.