on the other hand, being individually happy is not enough. if your partnership does not add anything to your happiness then you are more like roommates.
you are fortunate until now, but i would not rely on being able to keep that going without your partners help. you say you are happy as a couple when you are happy individually, but there is more to a relationship than just your individual happiness.
i would investigate how your relationship is really doing. is your wife as happy as you are? how would you deal with difficult times as a couple? what might happen if your work changed and you no longer feel happy there?
how are you supporting each other?
I've semi-jokingly referred to my relationship as 'like roommates'. We've discussed at length that 'this time in our lives' is the busiest we've ever been with early teen kids playing various sports, playing musical instruments, having braces, dealing with hormones and their personalities developing into 'who they're going to be as adults', fuck it's a lot.
I just had a couple of days off sick, and it was like a fucking holiday.
Unsolicited advice: If your long term relationship hasn't yet reached 'pre- and early-teen kids', then make sure you're ready for it. Get your house in order, because it's going to feel like your life and dreams are on pause for five to ten years whilst you develop the best little adults you possibly can. And you will need each other to lean on for the duration.
As in, when children are born, the first 6 months are a nightmare, the next ~3 years are extremely tough, then as they get more independent and grown that's when it gets good? That 'pre- and early-teen' is supposed to be the best part, when you can more-or-less deal with them like with adults and they are fairly independent?
It's not happening here, but: I really really don't understand people who get offended by "unsolicited" advice. Chances are it's coming from a place of honest care and concern. Just ignore it if it doesn't pertain to you. When you get a strong reaction from someone in response to unsolicited advice, I find more often than not it's actually striking a chord and probably more needed than the person realizes. I'd want that feedback whether I solicited it or not, personally.
The comment to which you're replying makes some good points and isn't finger-pointy, and is more suggestive of potential gaps to fill. Any long-term relationship requires hard work, and so advice is often a helpful reminder of this, whether the advice is good or not it can trigger a re-evaluation of perspective; a view from the outside of what may have become taken for granted from the inside.
Someone else can’t make you happy.
I mean.. it's not like most people haven't tried that. Things are just more complicated than that in real life, and not all problems can be fixed. Consider perhaps you guys are lucky to not have any such issues and are therefore both able to find happiness on your own
