Today would have been our wedding anniversary. Seven twenty-two, I liked that date. I liked it so much we had the ceremony on a Sunday, inconveniencing everyone, and I didn't care. I made everyone fly cross-country so they could watch me marry someone else, someone I had spent the last five years of my life with, someone I would leave within eight months.
Eight months.
The justice of the peace was late. I had five minutes to take her book and cross out every reference to God. I didn't want God in on my wedding; He had nothing to do with this. I didn't know how I felt about God then and I don't know how I feel about God now, but I will tell you this: He was not invited to my wedding.
Why do people stay in a relationship for years, only to break up the moment they're married? Everyone knows someone who's done this; I know myself. You ask them before they decide to take the plunge and they tell you marriage is just a piece of paper; it doesn't mean anything. Then you turn around and see the couple that's been together for less than a year getting married on their first anniversary. To them, marriage is anything and a piece of paper, but it's not the piece of paper that they want. It's the anything. The everything, even.
Yesterday I took the bus home. Sat in front of two teenagers, dissecting the love lives of their friends. "He said he loved her - really loved her - and I was like, you CAN'T love her, you're only sixteen. You don't even know what love is. It's biologically impossible."
Biologically impossible? I couldn't help thinking that she sounded just like me when I was sixteen. She would have sounded a lot like me when I was only four months younger than I am now, if only she had said no one can love, period. But these feelings that we have for certain other people, whatever name we give them, they're not unreal. They're not imaginary. And surely when you're sixteen you can't know if it's not "real" love if you believe you're inherently incapable of making a comparison. "I think I love you, baby; I'll call you in twenty years to confirm."
God.
Maybe it's the insufferable optimist rising up from within, but now I think that maybe people do find that... person. Or that thing-within-a-person. And maybe you even know right away, even if you're willing to take the time to make sure. I don't know. Maybe I'm just making stuff up. But I want to believe that these people getting married - you know who you are, all ridiculously and somewhat insanely in love - really do have something that I've just never had the time or good fortune to find. They better. Because if they call me in eight months, I am not going to rub it in their face. I'm going to be really sad.
I'm not sad for myself, though. I never thought that I had that-thing-whatever-it-is, so I didn't lose it, didn't have to grieve. I do hope that he finds it with someone else, though. He's a good person (a great person, even). And I hope she's kind, and that she wants him and appreciates him on a level he never thought possible.
Anyone that endured five years with me deserves at least that, and I don't mean that in a self-deprecating way. I mean that in a very honest, I-know-exactly-who-I-am way. I'm hard to deal with. I'm erratic, moody, and stubborn. I'm non-cooperative. I'm anti-social. I have a hard time accommodating someone else without showing resentment. I'm preoccupied with my own goals.
In other words, unless my partner has an ego of steel, I can be pretty horrible company.
Chris, though, he's a trooper. He's nice, in a very genuine sort of way. He likes people. He's willing to set aside (I think I referred to it as "derail") his own goals and plans, at least temporarily, for someone else to follow their own dreams. (That irritated me to no end, actually, but most of the things that irritate me in a partner are generally considered assets, so I'm putting it down as one.) Most of all, he's loyal, and he will work through anything at all that's thrown his way. That much, I am certain, is definitely a good thing. For some people.
I just read this over. It seems so abrupt - I was just going to end it there - but somehow that doesn't seem like a dignified ending to an entry acknowledging the beginning and the end of my last relationship. I didn't mean it that way. I don't know what a fitting ending would be, though, except to say that it's a day, it's a day that meant something but it wasn't really what it should have been. It was a day that I tried to do something I couldn't do. And, I'm sorry. I guess I never said that before, but I am. I didn't mean to try so hard, didn't mean to think so much about what I thought I should do and so little about what I could do.
I'm sorry.
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11 years ago
5 comments:
Many disagree with me, but in my mind in order for there to be love there must be absolute acceptance. Absolute acceptance IS love. What drives most relationships apart? Standards, requests, ideals - this person is perfect if only XYZ didn't exist. Those differences are easily over looked at first when the passion is hot but with time and after the thrill settles, the differences are still there - more apparent than ever. That is when resentment slowly begins to build, contempt squeaks out like a fart and before we know it the whole relationship stinks. If absolute acceptance, AKA love, truly existed, then these differences may not be desired but they are still accepted because they are part of what makes up that person who is loved. To embrace what is not desired is not easy, and may be one of the great challenges we face as humans. Where do we draw that invisible line? This goes for relationships and more importantly for ourselves. Love cannot exist between two unless the two involved already love and accept the good, bad and ugly within themselves.
I have only uttered the L word a couple times in my life. At the moment i truly believed it, but in hindsight i wonder if i was in love or in love with the idea of being in love. does it really exist or is it just wishful thinking?
I just got your name - I'm slow like that.
"Love" is whatever it is. It's caring about a person, and mutual love is being cared about in return. I don't think that we can ever say that we weren't in love with someone just because our idea of love grew more sophisticated in the interim - there's just no universal love "standard" or "definition". If you think you're in love with someone, you are. (Might want to give it a few days, though.)
If I had to guess, I'd say compatibility is the strongest factor in long-term relationships. In that respect, I think you can find someone you're ultimately compatible with, to the point that their faults just aren't that attention-worthy.
Nagel (was it Nagel...?) wrote this bizarre but interesting paper called "Sexual Perversion" or something like that. He was trying to evaluate whether perversion was objectively possible or whether it was purely socially dictated, and while he never quite got around to doing that, he did make an interesting speculation. Sexual attraction, he thought, is amplified by the realization that the other person is aware that you want them (and so on and so forth, like seeing an infinite number of your reflections in two mirrors). I don't know that I necessarily agree with that, but in the context of love relationships:
Love is, to a great extent, liking the person that your partner thinks you are.
I am slow too. I describe myself as a hi-resolution scanner that scans very very slowly - the resulting image is pristine and multidimensional, but only if one is patient enough. I read your last sentence a dozen times before it clicked. Its interesting. Early this year I dated someone for a couple months. It never entered the arena of lurv but what I discovered was that I was pulling away because of the things she LIKED in me. These were things that I did not particularly identify myself with, and started to feel objectified or simply a means to an end. I could have been anyone, and often felt like she was referring to someone else when expressing her feelings towards me. Our brief time together was stiff, contrived and did not feel natural or organic. Needless to say we dissolved rather quickly. it was the shortest relationship (intimate) i had ever been in. normally I am more selective with who I invest myself in, both physically and emotionally. no regrets. Just a reminder that life is one big experiment.
I think you've got that right: one big experiment.
And it works both ways. We all want to be loved for who we are, and, if we have to be, disliked for who we are, too. If you're going through a period of rapid growth/change, you can suddenly realize that you no longer identify with your partner's view of who you are, and frequently you can't even bring them up to speed. Very disconcerting.
Love is grand, though. I don't fall in love as easily as I used to, before I realized how big the world really is. So much to do...
the last time i was in love passed before I even knew i was in love. it became obvious after i walked away. i am still sore from it today. that relationship taught me that absolute love requires absolute acceptance. I broke us up because i could not accept a certain attitude and world view she possessed. it was a hot topic and immaturity got the best us. for 10 months we were best friends and lovers. we never talked about our mounting feelings. now, its been 2 years and she still refuses to speak to me. my only regret is that she never knew how i felt about her. and more than anyone she should have known. forget this love stuff. drugs are better for you.
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