Figuring it out

What makes someone your perfect partner?

Is it the endless list of qualifications you can check off the list? Is it the fact that they make you laugh? How about the ability to provide for you? The simple ability to handle them in large doses, day in and day out? What constitutes a certain amount of resilience and fight for a relationship and what constitutes turning a blind eye to make something "fit" your life? When is it your "life" that doesn't fit and when is it you who refuse to adapt?

With all the self help books that exist out there why isn't there one that has ever come out that simply explains life? They say companionship and love at the end of the day are what all people are looking for. To find a certain niche that they can identify in someone else, since no physical form continuously exists in this life to hold us. And yet day in and out people will come up with any number of reasons to over analyze all phases of life. If someone has found someone they could be with forever, we assume they are settling. If someone doesn't like another, we assume they're not giving them a good enough chance. If someone wants to be alone, we think they're hiding something that they REALLY want. If someone wants to have casual sex, we assume they're trying to fill a void. The proverbial We has a whole list of ways of explaining away other's seeming happiness but no ways of simply accepting that others could have found someone or something to keep them going, at least for now. We also haven't found a way of accepting that people can find something for the now which is just as common as finding something to complete you forever.

Being alone is vastly unaccepted in this society. As an individual if you are alone, you can expect to feel it from all sides. You stop being able to relate to your friends who are in relationships and start being forced to only relate to your single friends. It's as though there was one definitive stage of singleness: single and looking for a new boy/girl toy. What about those of us who are single, fairly established in our lives and simply looking to get to know someone on a path to possible relationships.

After graduation from college is there a stage between the booty call and the path to marriage? Is there a way to maintain balance between the two, or is that simply not an option? As I look around at my friends in various stages, it seems that if you aren't on one track or the other, no one relates to you. You thus segregate yourself to an island of confusion, with no one there to pull you off (though they will all stand admirably at a distance to watch you attempt to accomplish the impossible feat.)

This month I met someone who had most of the qualities I always thought I was looking for. He was cute and nice. Cared about me and keeping me happy. Called when I wanted him to and sometimes when I wasn't even thinking about him. Without being a pansy he basically spent our time together being all about "me". And yet, something came up short. I wasn't feeling the full on connection. When we spoke about this he said he doesn't always do these exceptionally nice things(which goes against my theory that this was just "him" and therefore not special to our situation). He said it was me who brought these things out in him. Could it be that there is a one sided connection? I wouldn't classify this as unrequited love because he didn't seem all that broken up when I called to, in fact, break up. Was he just able to accept less than perfection in a connection or am I over choosy in deciding what will keep me happy long term? Will we ever know the answers? Do we finally settle down with someone as a result of being worn against our resistances or will we really find that magical person to complete us? Is there a way to maintain our image of picture perfect romance and love? Even when approached with someone who wanted to give those things to me, I didn't want them because he wasn't the right man. Is this normal or the ultimate shooting of myself in the foot? One day these things will all make sense but until then I guess I'm left making reckless decisions with the assumption that they are in fact serving me.