Recently I met an interesting individual who started me to thinking about something. We were talking about relationships and he said that when he dates someone and a problem arises he asks himself if it’s a dealbreaker, or something he can live with, and if after whatever has happened/he has found out about he can still see himself marrying them then they stay together and if not, they break up. Date to date he continues a relationship based on the idea that he could see himself marrying the girl. “Well after all, that is the goal of dating,” he said.
My mouth fell open in awe for a second. This philosophy did in fact make perfect sense. And yet, it was something I had never thought about before.
To me, relationships are still somewhat of a fantasy. So many years I spent just wishing someone would like me. And though I’ve grown and come to learn that the one thing in life I am amazingly good at is being the world’s greatest girlfriend, well hell, I still find myself a little flustered with disbelief at the thought that someone wants to date me.
My mom brought the point up again last week. “Well, why would you sleep with someone you don’t intend to marry?” she said. Because I’m too young, I thought. I don’t think about relationships as being that serious yet, it’s impractical. I have dated two people in my lifetime. The odds are so unlikely that I’d meet anyone now and end up spending forever with them. I thought that I had just been a matter of logic, but perhaps it’s something more.
Thinking about this rationale, I’m suddenly rethinking a lot of things in my life of late. I mean if I intend to be married by thirty as I would ideally like, shouldn’t I be dating with the intention of marriage? But the thought seems so impossibly overwhelming. I can hardly pick my own clothes in the morning, how am I possibly suppose to pick the right guy?
We grow up with this vision of our lives. We’re going to be astronauts or presidents or princesses. We’re going to drive fancy cars and have plenty of money and of course, we’re going to meet our soul mate. But how in God’s name am I suppose to do that?
When you think about the actual relationship process, perhaps as this kid did, you meet someone and get to know them and if you still like them you stay, and when you don’t, you leave it doesn’t seem like the right way to find “the one”. I mean, how will you know if they really are “the one,” how do you know if you haven’t just found someone you’re compatible with, settled down, and you’re soul mate is still out there. Your whole life could be unfulfilled and you wouldn’t even know it. And when you think about this, in relation to my life, it personally seems unsurmountable. I have this thing where I’m so incredibly afraid to fail that I tend to fail on purpose so as to at least feel in control and as if I have some hidden potential. The moments I do actually take a leap and apply myself are few and far between and tend to be completely minuscule things like calling my old boss to ask if I can pick up shifts over Christmas break. My entire life is one giant moment of hesitation.
In purpose of real world application on a smaller scale, my boyfriend has lately been talking about us getting married, and brought up proposing, and how he has a five year timeline - clearly he got the note about dating with the intention of marriage. I, on the other hand, no for a fact that this is not someone I want to spend the rest of my life with. I play along as if there’s a “maybe” but I know that this is not what I want. And yet…I’m still here. I’ve rationalized the reasons - I’m happy, we’re good together, it’s better than being single, I love him, how I ended it too soon last time and will always regret it - but is any of it valid? Naturally, I know I will not regret this. I tend to follow the rule of knowing 100% what I want in any given moment, and so long as I listen to that voice and know that I am always doing the best I can to make the right choices in any given moment, I will never reget them, whatever those choices may be.
But how do you end things with someone you love and are happy with? All my life I’ve been the girl boys just stopped talking two. Only two guys I’ve liked have continued talking to me for more than two weeks, and I dated both of them at great length. To me, ending a relationship feels like giving up. I’m too nice for that. How do you just up and quit on someone you care about? And furthermore, the fear creeps in…a boy actually likes you Katherine. Don’t fuck this up. I start to worry he’ll be the last one that ever will.
But I hear him talk about vacations we’re going to take, and the house we’re going to live in, and all these beautiful things I know are just daydreams that he firmly believes will come to pass. I’m starting to think maybe it’d be nice to be in a situation where I could dream about a future with someone and actually believe it. When I see the frames we sell at the gift shop I work in it’d be nice to picture my face with someone’s in there, them having visited my childhood grounds and actually believe it could come to pass. The potential let down of such a serious relationship sounds terrifying - I barely survived Nathan - but maybe it’s worth it.
It seems like everyone else in the world is on the same page. Maybe it’s time I was too.
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