I’ve never been one to believe in one true love or finding your “other half.” What I do believe is that you can and usually do, fall in love more than once and each time can be special and unique, just different. Even with my views that some might find unromantic, I do believe in romance and the kind of love story that transcends everyday life. I have had that kind of love and I believe I have it now, but sometimes you lose a bit of the Cinderella story in the quest to live real life. Fairy tale romances might be the ideal, but they are not easy to maintain in a workaday life. So what do you do when you lose the fairy tale somewhere in the reality?
We all know relationships are difficult. Love itself is hard. Perhaps when we were teenagers and both idealistic and inexperienced, the songs made sense. You know the ones: All You Need is Love, Love Will Keep Us Together, Saving All My Love For You, etc., the list goes on and on. The message is the same in each, that as long as you have love, your life is complete and your relationship cannot fail. Love, though intangible, is bandied about like a commodity in song, poetry, and story. It’s no wonder we grow up thinking our life is incomplete without love. Childhood stories are littered with references to love conquering evil and creating a happily ever after. When love turns out to be hard work it is a surprise to many, and often those relationships do not last beyond the “honeymoon phase” or that first 6 months to 2 years, depending on how good the “honeymoon” is.
Where does that leave the rest of us who are forging through the honeymoon and trying to make a life with the one we love? It’s not all rainbows and good days and as the stress of everyday life seeps in and the hazy glow of perfection seeps out, we’re left with two people just trying to make it work. The hardest lesson, I think, is in realizing that your chosen partner might not be everything you ever dreamed of. I’m pretty sure when my husband Jeff thought of his future love, he didn’t wish for a bitchy, self-absorbed slob, who is also oddly enough, a control freak. Not really a wish list for the prospective bride, but he fell for me anyway. I have many flaws and there many things he might secretly wish I could be that I’m not. Just as for me, I have reconciled the fact that he will never be cooking alongside me in the kitchen, or the neat freak I clearly need in my life, or the Harley guy to ride off with me for a week.
There are so many things that we are not and during the hard times it’s easy to get caught up in what is missing. I often wonder if we are meant to be with one person our entire lives. How can one individual meet all your needs? We have different friends for differing circumstances. I certainly would not call my Mensa friends to discuss Jennifer Aniston’s love life or my conservative pal when I want to go dancing at the gay bar. True, some friends are a bit of everything, but we still have more than one friend, so isn’t it strange to think we can go through life with only one love interest? Do we simply forget about those aspects of ourselves that crave certain qualities in another? If we do that, then we risk living an unfulfilled life and that can only lead to unhappiness. It makes sense then, that being unfulfilled and committed to another, might lead to emotional attachments outside of your relationship. If you’re not lucky enough to be with someone who fits you perfectly (the soul-mate I don’t believe in), then are you doomed to either partial fulfillment or adultery?
Maybe the answer isn’t to find fulfillment in someone else, but to actively seek to make ourself whole. It is unfair to expect someone else to make us happy in life. Our happiness is our own responsibility, so rather than look for that soul mate or other half to complete us, we should take on that mission ourselves. If I want a clean house, I guess I should clean it. If I want to ride on a Harley I guess I’ll have to buy one and learn to ride it. True, my husband can’t exactly undo the bitch in me, but he can take steps to find a peaceful place in his own life that my foul mood cannot collapse.
Since Jeff has been deployed to Iraq I have learned some difficult lessons in self-fulfillment. I have also realized that the burden of my happiness is mine and rather than selfishly complain about my life while he is stuck in a war zone or for that matter hiding from my life by partying too much, I am facing it head-on. I’ve started volunteering, working at whatever job I can get, reading more, writing this blog, making new friends and being thankful for the wonderful life I have and the partner with whom I am sharing the journey.
When we met, we were that fairy tale couple. Friends and family commented on how in love we appeared and our perfectly suited for one another we were. I felt it then too, that all consuming happiness that comes from meeting and living a life with someone with whom you are so completely in love. Unlike Cinderella, however, we are not living happily ever after. We live with the bumps in the road, the annoying habits, the miles between us, and the reality that we cannot be all things to another. Ours is a modern fairy tale and rather than a prince kissing and making it all okay, we’re doing it together and sometimes it’s bliss and at others it can be a real challenge. Still, I’d rather be in this story than any other and I will fight for my ever after.
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