I remember back in May '11 a girl I was talking to and really wanted to date couldn't decide whether or not she wanted to date me. Her reasoning? She confessed it quite clearly: "I really like you. I like your personality, you're funny, we have a connection that I haven't felt with anyone in a long time, I know we'd be great together, but I don't want to jump your bones. I want someone who's tall and dark and strong." She was afraid she'd be settling by being with me, because settling, despite what we're told, is ending up with someone who doesn't make you all hot and bothered. Thus dating someone who doesn't respect you, treat you right, or even abuses you, but who makes you feel really horny, isn't settling; but being with someone who doesn't make you want to go at it like rabbits but who wants to provide for you, sacrifice for you, share life with you and love you, is settling.
It's dumb on so many levels, it really is. Chemistry isn't enough anymore: you need to be hot and sexy. That becomes the benchmark for deciding whether or not to date someone, regardless of the fact that in a good five years either one of you may have gained 200 pounds and be far from attractive. The preponderance of cheating and affairs within marriages testifies to this fact. It's not a good way to measure who you should be with, and it's no surprise that so many marriages end in failure. Chart a course through the past several decades, and what to do you see? Divorces and failed marriages on the increase as people base their decisions on things like physical attractiveness, material wealth, and fleeting feelings of fancy.
When the honeymoon phase is over, what matters? Life continues: the good, the bad, the ugly and the beautiful. What matters is having someone who won't leave your side, who will help you and encourage you through all of it, someone who will share your highs and lows, and someone who shares all their glories and shit-storms with you. Marriage is sharing life together, two lives rolling into one, and what matters then is the QUALITY of the person rather than how they make you FEEL. Not only are feelings circumstantial and fade, but there's no historical precedent for it. The very concept of romantic feelings is relatively new, an ideal born out of the Middle Ages and cemented by the Renaissance and Enlightenment. Mythical stories of knights in shining armor and damsels in distress excited the people, and we made the mistake of blurring the line between fiction and reality. We take these fairy tales, these fables and all their off-shoots, and we mold our lives around them, to the detriment of ourselves and our relationships.
We're so obsessed with that feeling as a prerequisite to a relationship, of sharing life with someone, that we fail to see the obvious people whom God has put in our lives, people who want to share life with us. We measure everything against feeling a certain way, or we measure people against a certain ideal that, half the time, we can't even sketch out if we tried to ("I'll know it when it comes," we say; and, "When the right person for me comes along, I'll just know." How many have found such "right people" only to find themselves divorced ten years later?). Because we're waiting on something we can't even put into words, we blind ourselves to the wonderful people whom God has put before us. We push them away because they don't "measure up" and continue asking, "Why hasn't God brought me someone?"
And in all of this, I can't help but think of Mo. She would've been a good wife and a good mother. Sure, we had our differences, but nothing we couldn't get over. What bothered me most was that I didn't feel with Mo what I felt with the one who came and went before her. But my life had changed a lot by the time Mo came along, and though Mo and I dated off-and-on for about eight months total, the other girl and I knew each other for four years. When I first liked her in 2009, I didn't feel the way I felt in 2011. It was the evolution of the friendship, the steady getting to know her, the good and the bad, her strengths and weaknesses, her highs and lows, that I found my heart opening without restraint. I wanted to be vulnerable with her, share my life with her, serve her and sacrifice for her. But this feeling didn't come out-of-the-blue, but evolved over time, and it reached its pinnacle right as the axe fell. There was never an end to the honeymoon stage; all I knew was that with her I felt something different. When Mo came along, there wasn't time for love to grow. I didn't give us time. I don't fall in love fast; many of my girlfriends have told me they love me, but I've only told one girlfriend out of nine that I loved her. I take love seriously, and because I didn't feel right away for Mo what I felt after four years of knowing the other girl, I questioned everything with her. I expected too much, expected something illogical and irrational, and I couldn't see what I had.
She loved me and was devoted to me.
She accepted all my quirks and weirdness.
She knew my weaknesses and vulnerabilities and loved me anyways.
She was affectionate and sweet; she cared for me.
She wanted to spend the rest of her life with me.
She wanted to have beautiful children together.
And because I expected too much, because I was blinded by my own obsession for irrational and illogical fairy-tale feelings, I threw away the best I ever had: someone who loved me, wanted to be with me, and who wanted to build a family with me. An answer to so many prayers, and I didn't see it.
Self-sabotage.
It's how I roll.
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