I don’t mean that you should know what you want in a partner or in a relationship; I definitely don’t advocate checklist-style mate-shopping. No, the idea that it’s important to know what you’re after–something that should have been a no-brainer but that I hadn’t consciously considered before–came to me while I was reading Lori Gottleib’s book, Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough
The book was funny and apt and I found that I agreed with much of what Gottleib said, but with a big qualification: what she says (overall) makes a lot of sense if your goal is to get into a lasting relationship. Now, it might seem like a no-brainer that if you DON’T want a lasting relationship, this advice wouldn’t apply to you, but there’s a third category of people (at least a third–maybe there are still others) who seems to slip through the cracks.
We all know that there are people who want to get married (or in some other way “settle down”) and people who don’t…but what about the people who come at the decision in an entirely different way? What about the people who are simply open to whatever life brings? Television portrays single life as a non-stop quest to “find someone” and dating as a series of unfortunate events tolerated only because somewhere in all that dreck, you might find the brass ring and be able to get off the ride. And for some people, that’s undoubtedly true. For those people, Gottleib’s book undoubtedly contains a lot of wisdom. For those people, in fact, maybe the grocery-store style mate shopping that I’ve so derided serves a purpose. I don’t think I believe that you can find true love that way, but if “a relationship” is what you want, then going looking for one makes sense.
But I belong to a third category, and I don’t think I’m alone. Once upon a time, I really enjoyed living alone. I’ve really enjoyed being in relationships. When I was married, I loved our family life and letting it go was hard, but now I really enjoy being alone with my daughter and would have to think twice about disrupting the rhythm of our lives with a serious relationship. At this stage of my life, with my daughter getting older and closer to moving on, I could go almost any way. I could socialize more. I could take my career up a notch. I could write another book. I could volunteer more. I could travel with friends. Most of those things could happen with or without a man in my life. I don’t need to know the answer now.
For me, dating is a different animal and serves a different purpose than it is and does for someone who is serious about finding a relationship. But it seems (as is so often the case when emotions are involved) that few of us stop to clearly understand what our purpose is before forging ahead. That, I think, is why we see people who want more than anything to be married repeatedly cutting off their options with wish lists created more or less on a whim. And why we see people who were happy and successful on their own bending their lives out of shape to try to make bad relationships work.
Take a step back. Stop running in the wrong direction. You can’t formulate a game plan until you know where the goal is.
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