Flights of love and children

OK. So this is a really interesting discussion and for me I was very suprised to be taken through the simple but very useful Maslow system in relation to WE. Something I was left with at the end however, was a sense that with so much (useful) discussion of partnering and relationships and how long they are likely to last, very little, indeed as I recall, no consideration was given to the effect of "I want to marry you" from whatever stage/level, of the nurture and developement of children, after all, how we all get our initial WE in the firstplace - through some kind of family experience as a child.

It's much easier to consider whether you and your chosen one are at different growth stages when there are no children and to embrace even a love evolving divorce and perhaps to deal with the splitting of family patterns in a new way. People often allow themselves to make new "partnering" potential connections when they have decided that they have "outgrown" their current one but I wonder whether this is more often than not an escape or at best a way of surviving (back to stage 1 yes).

I accept that the future of Western social democracy has flexible family changes written into it, but see also a lot of unnecessary pain in the process, and I guess growth does seem to inply some pain. Indeed Diane elsewhere talks of accepting pain as a given in relationships, a healthy view I would agree.

??

Nigel